Hi @Alkath
Thanks for your post! I am located in the UK so I am a little more clued-up on this than the average support agent (none of which now live in the UK).
the actual effect of this did not manifest itself until the new app was launched.
In this case, correlation is not strictly causation. With the new app, we now determine geo-availability directly from the station itself (we used to obtain it from the station aggregator, like TuneIn or myTuner) - this is the way it is now “supposed” to be done. And, it explains why some stations are still available though other means, such as Alexa or directly from TuneIn’s website.
Like many Sonos users I’m sure I expressed my annoyance and frustration at this situation however Sonos say they are not willing or able to do anything about it!…as far as I can see Smooth Jazz Florida is only available on the MyTuner radio platform so unless someone out there knows better it looks like we’re stuck with this situation?
We are sorry that you cannot play the station you’d like to play on your Sonos system, but it is not our place to force various non-UK stations to pay additional licence fees to play their station in a country they never intended to be listened to from in the first place. If you want to be able to listen to a non-UK station in the UK, you will need to first convince the station itself to pay extra fees to be permitted to do so.
All this is far from ideal, of course, but “Brexit is Brexit”, as the infuriating saying went.
I did just check to see if I could find and play Smooth Jazz Florida on myTuner on my Sonos system - I could find it, but not play it. If it will not play, it should not show in search results - I will report this behaviour, but unfortunately the test failed so I have not found a workaround for you.
So, the only way I can determine of getting your favoured Floridian station to play on your Sonos system would be to request it of the station themselves (I would not hold my breath) - unless you can use AirPlay, Bluetooth or Line-In from an external source that will still play the station.
It seems the Music Industry really does not like the internet - first it was Napster, then they lost vast shares of sales to Apple iTunes, then Spotify (and others) came along, and now they are cracking down on radio stations now being able to broadcast to the whole planet without needing to pay much extra (for the technical feasibility). I bet they wish they could go back to the days when their biggest concern was tape-to-tape copying!
I hope this helps.
I went to their site, chose the “US Canada UK” player, then extracted this url:
https://streaming.live365.com/a57422
Many thanks for the info, I'm currently listening to Smooth Jazz Florida on my Sonos system using the method I described in my original post, I can also play it on my Android phone using the Smooth Jazz Florida app..I guess I'll quit whilst I'm ahead and hope the current method used to access this station lasts...time will tell?..not being able to see the artist & track info on Sonos is a mild irritation but the get around is to use Google 'search a song' which works fine
Hi @Alkath
Have you tried asking Alexa “what’s playing”? Although it’s not shown in the app, she might tell you when asked - I haven’t tested this, to be clear, but it’s worth trying.
I hope this helps.