Ads before streaming from radio station

You could perhaps go onto add your own link to the internet radio station via the Sonos App, if you can establish the streaming URL (if applicable) from the station provider. Here’s a link briefly explaining how to do that:

https://support.sonos.com/s/article/260

Is there any alternative for TuneIn to listening to radio through Sonos? 

Listening to ads to listen to radio on a premium system like Sonos is just wrong. When I get in my car and turn on the radio I don’t have to listen to an ad in order to start the radio station.

Mytuner radio, radio net

YMMV

I found this exact same thing is now happening every single time I swap stations throughout the day. I listen to a lot of Soma FM and other stations which are specifically use are supported and add free. Simply changing a station after an hour or two means I am now getting a pre-roll TuneIn ad. Every time that this happens

I am stuck listening to 15 to 30 seconds worth of commercials.

This is specific to playing a station in the Sonos app, as if I use Alexa to start a station, there’s no tunein bumper jingle or pre-roll ad. 
 

It never used to be a pre-roll ad before every single streaming station would play.

Why does it work with no ad if I ask for the same station verbally through Alexa? Alexa plays the same tunein station with no pre-roll ad and no advertising. When using the Sonos app on my iPad or iPhone, I always get stuck with a pre-roll add. Even if I swap stations within seconds it is still playing me a pre-roll at this seems specific to the latest Sonos app update.
 

It never used to be  this bad.

What’s worse is I contribute directly to Soma FM to keep them add free. Instead tunein is now monetising the free stream from Soma FM where they deliberately avoid having ads to not annoy their listeners.
 

There must be something going on with the way this is working with my Sonos app and tuning.
 

tl;dr:

If you ask Alexa to play a SomaFM station on the Sonos speakers Alexa will do so with no pre-roll ad.
Using the Sonos app to play a SomaFM station guarantees a tunein bumper and pre-roll ad now, every station, every time.

it’s the way the Sonos app is accessing the SomaFM station - because using Alexa to start the station = no tunein ad or pre-roll, or bumper.

Simply grab the direct URLs from https://somafm.com/listen/ and add them to TuneIn/My Radio Stations in Sonos. See https://support.sonos.com/s/article/260

No pre-roll ads, and you can typically obtain a better quality stream. 

(FYI the URLs are stored in the Sonos system, and don’t actually go through TuneIn. The ‘My Radio Stations’ container is parked in the TuneIn menu for historical reasons.)

Thanks @ratty - It’s kinda annoying to have to consider manually adding at least 10-15 stations like that, especially when on my Sonos app, that means not having the cover art of the station, which really helps with identification of what station you are aiming to play.

So to make it work as it used to for SomaFM, I will end up with 10-15 generic grey icons in my favourites/stations? No way to get the cover art? I guess that’s still better than ads every time you start a stream using TuneIn.

Are others not maddened by the idea that just to stream an ad-free radio station easily we have TuneIn now inserting commercials into commercial free stations? SomaFM would surely also be appalled at that. Having a tunein pro account that can’t be added to sonos (why I don’t know) and being a financial supporter of SomaFM myself I find that so intrusive.

Simply swapping from one SomaFM station to another means a bumper tunein ID, followed by an ad. To do that to a commercial free station makes me irate.

And why is it if I ask Alexa to play Groove Salad Classic from SomaFM on my sonos speakers, it works instantly and flawlessly with no pre-roll?

This behaviour is present on the OSX app on my desktop, and on my iOS devices when streaming stations from TuneIn within sonos.

Asking Alexa to play a station gets you straight to the commercial free music from SomaFM. Anyone know why that is?

Alexa = ad free from TuneIn

Sono app = bumper ad+pre roll ad every single station every time

I actually have the tunein app on my iPhone, so I thought I’d check this. Playing a SomaFM station from the tunein app streams immediately, no pre-roll ad, no ‘tune in’ station id jingle.

This tunein ad/bumper/pre-roll behaviour playing before every tunein station is unique to using the Sonos app to play via tunein only.

Play SomaFM on Sonos by asking Alexa to play station = no ads ✅

Play SomaFM on Sonos through Apple Music via Airplay = no ads ✅

Play SomaFM on Sonos through the stand alone tunein app = no ads✅ (Even tunein’s own app doesn’t insert ads into SomaFM’s streams)

Play SomaFM on Sonos through the Sonos app via tunein =  ADS ❌

Sonos still doesn’t host any of that content, including any pre-roll ads, nor do they get any of the revenue generated. See Sonos’ financial statements.

All Sonos does is point to the server that TuneIn has specified. If there’s a pre-roll ad, then it’s TuneIn that’s put that in the stream, Sonos doesn’t do it. 

Sounds like the server that Sonos has been told to point at is a different one than the TuneIn app, and Alexa use. You should be letting TuneIn know.