At present, BBC Sounds is available on the Sonos controller app within the UK only.

This is a BBC Sounds restriction, not Sonos.

I think the native BBC Sounds app is available worldwide, and so if you have an Apple device and an Airplay-compatible Sonos speaker (or a Move or a Roam for Bluetooth) you could listen that way.

@Mr. T is nevertheless completely correct the the limitation on Sonos is BBC-imposed.  The BBC seems to get very twitchy about losing control of distribution to third parties, particularly where listening information is concerned.

Outside of the UK BBC radio should be available on TuneIn though.

It’s been available as a plugin on LMS for several years, without needing to be in the UK. Your Sonos speakers can be renderers on LMS via the UPnP/DLNA Bridge plugin.

If you switch your Sonos account to UK you can then add BBC Sounds. However to login to BBC Sounds you need a BBC account, and that might be a challenge to create from the US. I don’t know, as I created my BBC account while visiting the UK. Try it and let us know.

Once setup, BBC Sounds works fine in the USA (ie no geo-fencing).

Thanks! Out of interest, is there any reason to switch it back to the US, and does BBS Sounds go away of you do? On iOS it is such a pain to get as you need a UK Apple App Store account and Apple does not play nicely with switching between accounts if you are an Apple Music subscriber, but once installed, the apps (BBC Sounds and BBC iPlayer) work fine and update themselves even with a primary US account as the default. Of course on Sonos there may be no practical reason to change the country setting…

I add music services often (for testing purposes) but I default to a US account. Switching back to US does not affect BBC Sounds. I also do it on a PC when possible, I much prefer using a real keyboard and readable screen for admin activities.

How do you switch Sonos account to UK?  Thanks in advance for your assistance!

Go into your profile on the Sonos website and change your adress to somewhere in the UK. Give this a while to settle and then set up BBC Sounds on your system.

Worked a treat, thanks all! As already mentioned in the thread, do all this via your PC, very easy, took me about 2 mins to do.  Easy to get a BBC account, it’s free, use a VPN to fake your location if you need to.  I’ve had one for years as I am from the UK.

Strange thing is I tried this myself and it did not work for me in the Netherlands even after waiting for a couple of hours..

It’s entirely possible that BBC has been reading these forums, and has changed the way they confirm location, and is no longer relying on the location set in the Sonos software. 

I live in the Netherlands as well, but it worked for me (after 20 hours or so). So it’s stil working…

Worked for me too. As a Brit now living in the US I could just use my old UK address. Left it 12 hours or so and BBC Sounds (plus some other UK services) are now added. Thank you for the workaround