I have been listening to KQED, my local NPR radio affiliate, as a radio station via the Apple Music source on Sonos for years. Now, it no longer appears when I look for it on Sonos, and the Apple Music station I had favorited in the Sonos mobile app just errors out. Yes, I can still listen to KQED using Sonos Radio as the source, but I’m not subscribed to the HD service and have no plans to do that, and the bitrate on the free version, anyhow, is lower than what I get from Apple Music, and has noticeable low fidelity digital artifacts. Apple Music’s version, when it was working on Sonos, was much higher quality and sounded great on my various Sonos speakers throughout the house.

My hypothesis is that Sonos is attempting to drive subscription revenue, and has blocked KQED on Apple Music in order to drive listeners to Sonos Radio HD premium subscriptions. If this is true, it’s going to spell the end of my investment in Sonos. (I own 4 stereo pairs, including a Play5 pair - quite an investment).