Unsolicited advertising when using Sonos SW


I don’t think iti is fair to impose to the buyers of sonos speakers unsolicited advertising.
It isn’t consistent with the idea that we have bought top of the line speakers.
It isn’t consistent with proper customer care and… have you listened to the ads?
In German and Italian they are unbelievably primitive.  Truly ugly stuff.
I don’t think it is a money spinner for sonos. Just a stupid embarassment.


This topic has been closed for further comments. You can use the search bar to find a similar topic, or create a new one by clicking Create Topic at the top of the page.

12 replies

Sonos has no control over ads run by TuneIn. You should be directing your concerns directly to TuneIn itself. 

Oh, and Sonos gets no money at all from those ads…or any stream at all, except for the HD Radio subscriptions. There are no financial ties between any audio streamer and Sonos. 

I don’t think iti is fair to impose to the buyers of sonos speakers unsolicited advertising.
It isn’t consistent with the idea that we have bought top of the line speakers.
It isn’t consistent with proper customer care and… have you listened to the ads?
In German and Italian they are unbelievably primitive.  Truly ugly stuff.
I don’t think it is a money spinner for sonos. Just a stupid embarassment.

 

Each music service has to pay the rightsholders for each piece of content they stream.  There are two ways of doing that, charging the end users a subscription, or inserting ads between content.  Did you actually think you would have access to someone’s artistic or intellectual property without paying for it?  Sorry, but the days of pirating music via Napster are over. 

Oh, and as stated, Sonos has no control over when or what ads are inserted by a music service.  You may as well blame Samsung for the ads on your local TV channels, it would be about as effective.  

Sorry, but I am an IT lawyer and your replies are incorrect.
In the agreement between sonos and TuneIn clearly it has been allowed to propose advertising to sonos users.   In the best case, the topic has been “forgotten”: which is tantamount to authorising unsolicited advertising.
So a sonos buyer, for some thousands of euros has to listen to terrifying jingle “TuneIn! TuneIn” and ridiculous advertising (in Italy) about Cleopatra and how she purportedly would treat her diarrhea.

PS
It is also a bit sad, that the only replies to my post seem to come from corporate bots.


SONOS!

This is a motivated complain by a loyal customer that you will lose if you don’t address seriously the topic.
Who buys good speakers in exchange for being bugged by crappy advertising for the rest of their lives?
Much better to have JBL or any other speaker that doesn’t believe that they have sold also the right to intrude in my personal sphere.
https://www.amazon.com/Digital-New-Deal-Natural-Society/dp/8813372388

So you have access to the “agreement between Sonos and TuneIn”?

Also, please post pics of your face when you purchase a “JBL or any other speaker that doesn’t believe that they have sold also the right to intrude in my personal sphere” when you start playing a TuneIn station and the ads play.  

 

Userlevel 7
Badge +17

If there is such an agreement, it seems logical that Sonos would allow advertisements for TuneIn - if not TuneIn would not be funded and could not perform their services.

I’m not sure what legal standing Sonos would have in denying any service the ability to make a profit off their listeners. 

You’re not paying a monthly subscription to Sonos, so they’re only making money from hardware sales. You’re not paying a subscription fee to TuneIn, how are they supposed to support their product? 

 As you are an IT lawyer, I’d love to see what access to confidential data (I assume) you have, including this supposed ‘agreement’.
 

You seem to be claiming that Sonos has the right and obligation to censor the streams that Sonos uses….which would be hard for them to do, since this all comes directly from the streaming company, and not from Sonos’ servers. 

I’m afraid that modern, user friendly, App driven electronics is mostly advertising financed. User financed consumer Apps are not widely used because there is likely something similar that is “free”. 

Specifically for music, the most viable ad free option is an old style stereo system and a CD library. Fortunately, CD’s don’t have the space or bandwidth for modern, multimedia advertising. The public is not helping their case by freely copying and sharing their CD’s. Copy and sharing resulted in the demise of a few Gaming platforms. A few people bought the Game, yet “everyone” was playing. It’s somewhat more trouble to deal with LP’s and copying an LP to an LP is not very practical at home. (This is possible if you dig around.) While there is a small group of enthusiastic LP fans, I don’t think that the market will return to its former luster. 

Unfortunately, if you want Atmos music, you need to go to DVD or Blu-ray and it’s been a while since I’ve come across a Blu-ray without a big block of ads at the beginning. Sometimes you can skip through the ads, sometimes not.

Userlevel 1
Badge +1

Guys, I have the same issue with advertising only on tunein channels. 

 

I have noticed that if I start the Tunein channel in Sonos app the stations do not have any advertising only the annoying TuneIn announcement every once in a while  but if I start stations through Amazon Alexa on Sonos then there also  advertising is before the actual station starts playing.  Can someone confirm that? 

Sonos does not control advertising done by the streaming companies. If TuneIn is putting in ‘pre-roll’ advertisements, you should be complaining to them. Although then I would wonder how they would pay for all of their employees, maybe drop the ‘free’ streams and charge a subscription for access? 

I’m afraid that modern, user friendly, App driven electronics is mostly advertising financed. User financed consumer Apps are not widely used because there is likely something similar that is “free”. 

 

 

Somewhat true.  I think the fact that Apple/Google take a signficant cut off user based profit plays a big factor as well.  Then there are those that finance via required hardware sales, like Sonos, and other smart home related product. 

 

Specifically for music, the most viable ad free option is an old style stereo system and a CD library. Fortunately, CD’s don’t have the space or bandwidth for modern, multimedia advertising. The public is not helping their case by freely copying and sharing their CD’s. Copy and sharing resulted in the demise of a few Gaming platforms. A few people bought the Game, yet “everyone” was playing. It’s somewhat more trouble to deal with LP’s and copying an LP to an LP is not very practical at home. (This is possible if you dig around.) While there is a small group of enthusiastic LP fans, I don’t think that the market will return to its former luster. 

 

 

I am mixed on this.  While I completely agree that artists should be compensated for their work, there definitely was a period where production companies were overcharging consumers when they didn’t have to produce any physical product.  That changed when Apple worked out a deal to sell tracks for a $1, and pirating dwindled down rather quickly.  I’d also argue that much of what gets pirated is content that a user would have purchased anyway.

 

Regarding games, the issue seems to be somewhat resolved with user accounts and micro transactions within games.

 

 

Unfortunately, if you want Atmos music, you need to go to DVD or Blu-ray and it’s been a while since I’ve come across a Blu-ray without a big block of ads at the beginning. Sometimes you can skip through the ads, sometimes not.

 

Outside of streaming service?

Mostly, it’s the monthly service fees that are chafing people. Another chaff is the effort needed to learn something new.

Bluetooth and AirPlay are wildly popular. For some people they seem to “just work”. I find them to be quirky, especially with the iPad, and avoid them as much as possible.