A way to show your customers you care: Hide Sonos Radio

Personally, I’m not bothered by this, and I’m not a Sonos Radio user.

YMMV.

The echo chamber of powerusers (nearly 30k replies) on this support page is very strong. Many of you attempted to shout down the complaints about the app, saying it was not a big deal, before the company laid off 300 people and fired their CEO. There is no world in which forcing a user experience like this - when I primarily use my personal library, which is not visible on the screen - is not a sign that they care more about pushing their service than the quality of the UX. 

I’m not certain I perceive ​@jgatie ’s response as an attempt to ‘shout down’ your request. It seems to me as more of a comment (that I agree with) that it doesn’t bother them. 

On my own perception, for Sonos, a company in existence to make money, not merely provide you an opportunity for a free service, to ‘push’ on their own product seems OK to me. Not ideal, mind you,  for me either, but I’m not ‘the company’ trying to make money. And my expectations are that Sonos, being a public company, wants to provide value to their investors/shareholders. 

Not sure you’re aware, but I think if you scroll your screen at the top to the right, you’ll see the rest of your installed sources, with ‘your library’ as the last item. It would be nice, certainly, to be able to re-order them, or at least have the most recently used appear first, but that would likely be a challenge, and a further UI/UX request.

And yes, I have more ‘replies’ than ​@jgatie . That doesn’t mean, by any stretch, that either of our opinions mean more or less than yours. They happen to be different, which I read ​@jgatie ’s response as, and why I agreed with it. 

I never said he shouted down my response, please don’t twist my words.

I am aware I can scroll over.

Both of these points seem designed to make me think you are deliberately attempting to misconstrue my response, to be honest.

Thank you for acknowledging it would be reasonable for them to allow us to reorder the services. The idea that I am asking for any “free service” is bizarre, as I am not in any way doing that and again you seem to be deliberately misconstruing what I am saying. Also, thank you for explaining publicly traded companies to me!

The frequent posters on here are very odd and have a distinct “internet” tone to them that is not doing the company any favors. 

​@areasonableflan 

I would like to be able to remove Sonos Radio from the services list - but until you mentioned it I’d forgotten it was even still there, so I don’t think it gets to me in the same way.

But it’s not Sonos selling to you in the results list. Sonos Radio is a completely free service, that happens to have a paid tier. The results page isn’t giving you a list of things you have to pay for, it’s suggesting another option for listening to the songs/genres you’re searching for. They would no doubt see this as a plus and a major selling point. Imagine the scenario where you buy a Sonos speaker but don’t subscribe to a music service. Sonos Radio provides thousands of songs for free. 

But I do totally get this is actually just about the ability to hide a service that you didn’t put there in the first place. The bottom line is when you buy into a brand’s ecosystem, you have to take accept their (sometimes unfortunate) aesthetic choices.  I’d also love to remove Apple’s built-in apps from my Apple TV home screen but it’s not possible, so I have to stick them in an ugly folder…!

If you only use streaming services it’s not as bad because it’s below them. But they put your personal library below Radio. 

Your response is fair but I would just note that Sonos Radio is not “completely free,” it has ads.

All I’m saying is that this would be a nice gesture on the part of Sonos that I happen to think would help their bottom line not hurt it. I know additional moves like this would help convince me to buy additional speakers I put on hold after the app update. I suspect there are more people out there who feel that way who don’t bother to come on here. 

TuneIn used to be the standard radio station service for Sonos, and it too was not able to be removed.  So while I don’t think Sonos is above marketing their service, they have a set precedent for including the default radio service in a search, and they made no income from TuneIn.   And just like Sonos radio, it didn’t bother me one whit to see it, no matter how little I used it.  I’m just not wired like that (30,000+ posts or not).

Oh and as far as the “echo chamber of powerusers” and various other insults go, when they are attacking the messenger instead of the message, you know you’ve made a point.  

I actually do use Sonos radio, so I obviously don’t mind it being near the top.  However, I would say that in general, if I buy a streaming device, any device really, I don’t want to consistently see ads in the controlling app.  It does not matter if it’s Apple TV, Google TV, Sonos app, or an app to control my robot vacuum.  I get that the businesses are just trying to make money, but I don’t want that.  At the very least, tell me that the apps is ‘free with ads’.  

That said, if Sonos radio is supposed to be positioned as a selling point for their speakers, it seems odd that Sonos radio isn’t more heavily mentioned on the Sonos website.   You can see it listened under the ‘Learn’ section, and it’s buried way down under specific product pages, but it doesn’t really seem like Sonos thinks it’s that important for potential customers to know that it exists.  Indeed, if you go to other retailers of Sonos, I doubt you’ll find Sonos radio mentioned at all.  So why then is the big push to use Sonos radio exist effectively after the sale has already been made?  I don’t understand the marketing strategy here.

Then again, I have a fairly high post count, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

I really don’t see how allowing the removal of Sonos Radio would show that Sonos care.

I’d like to see the option to exclude it but there are still features that need reinstating and general stability and performance issues to solve and I think that is better use of Sonos’ development resources.