Ads before streaming from radio station

I tried several different ways of contacting TuneIn detailing the behaviours above (no TuneIn ads via Alexa to Sonos, no ads via the actual TuneIn app to Sonos speakers via airplay), and have no idea if I will ever hear back. I was kinda hoping as a major client/big business Sonos might have more luck, or even some understanding of what’s going on here.

As I support these radio stations directly to be ad-free, having TuneIn think that this is OK to force an ad on you before the station plays, and to interrupt an ad-free station by inserting their own ads is pretty outrageous, and I had certainly hoped that Sonos had some sway or influence. It makes me question what the point is of 99% of Sonos Radio is, as that’s almost all TuneIn stations that also play the bumper ad/pre-roll as well. It’s the same as streaming it from TuneIn. What value is streaming a TuneIn station from within the Sonos Radio feature if you are still locked into 3rd party ads I wonder?

There seems to be no way to add a pro or premium version of TuneIn (ie your TuneIn account) to Sonos. Why is that? Anyone understand why you can’t just sign in to your TuneIn account within Sonos? That seems crazy also.

The TuneIn experience is now so bad within all versions of the Sonos app I have had to give up.

I have resorted to two work arounds:

1. Direct Stream URL where it’s easily accessible (which means no ‘cover art’)
2. Using myTuner Radio (which doesn’t carry every streaming station)

To say this is frustrating would be an understatement. 

Given the state of the world, I have to say the phrase “first world problem” hardly begins to do this issue justice.

What you seem to be overlooking is the demarcation between the SomaFM and TuneIn services. SomaFM is funded by listener support. The basic TuneIn is a free directory service funded by … what exactly? It’s certainly not the consumer, and I very much doubt that Sonos pays on our behalf. So how does TuneIn manage to pay for its staff and operations, unless it’s by ad revenue, cross-subsidy or perhaps a benevolent sponsor?

Apart from the loss of station art -- which one only glances at fleetingly -- what exactly is the problem with using direct stream URLs for SomaFM? The streams start more quickly and, as I noted, actually deliver better quality. For example, Groove Salad is available directly at 256kbps, yet when I measured it the stream via myTuner was 128kbps. As for TuneIn, for legal reasons I can no longer access SomaFM through it in my country, but when that station was still available through Sonos Radio (backed up by TuneIn) it was apparently only at 64kbps.

At the end of the day TuneIn can't run for free so you either put up with the adverts or don't use it imho.

Never really been an issue for me.

Perhaps the complaint that would be actually actionable by Sonos would be that there is no way to link a TuneIn premium subscription. I am not necessarily against TuneIn inserting ads when they are hosting/distributing the actual radio station audio (which incurs high bandwidth costs).

The problem is TuneIn (as far as I know) does not distribute the audio. They are basically a directory and we have had free and open source directories available on the internet for some time. TuneIn also makes money through the sports stations and such that they license and run further ads within.

To be honest though, I don’t really care about the behind the scenes business dealings. The appearance is that Sonos is injecting ads into local and independent radio stations without their permission. If you call up a station via Sonos Radio, it plays via TuneIn too and injects an ad. It looks like Sonos is injecting the ads and that looks bad.

I’ve tried for years to get Sonos to implement a TuneIn premium subscription. I’ve since killed my TuneIn subscription (baseball is available elsewhere), so it’s no longer an important aspect to me, but I’d certainly support the concept.

To my knowledge, Sonos does not insert any ads into TuneIn streams. I agree that it’s a bad look, but I’m not sure beyond adding the “premium” version of TuneIn, there’s much they can do. Much like every other streaming company, all Sonos does is point at the server that they’re told to. 

Last I checked, which has been a while, there’s no member of Sonos on the TuneIn board, or vice versa, so complaining here will not likely do a lot. TuneIn does not maintain a presence in these forums. 

The artists expect to be paid for their work. They cannot afford to invest thousands in equipment and years of training, then give their work away for free. And, someone needs to pay for the streaming server time. This can be done with commercials or subscriptions.

I too am very frustrated with the Ads being inserted in the Sonos implementation of TuneIn as of late.  It is really annoying - especially considering I am already paying for a TuneIn Premium subscription, in part to have an ad-free experience. I couldn’t agree more with those that have already stated that Sonos should implement the ability to add your TuneIn premium subscription on the Sonos platform.

Sono doesn't implement a service.  They supply an API and the service has to implement itself.  So the responsibility for a TuneIn premium implementation is with TuneIn.

This has frustrated me as well, especially because I am an A/V integrator and install Sonos on a regular basis.  I have been listening to Groove Salad since the early 2000’s, before there was a Groove Salad Classic station.

Groove salad is my regular go-to test station for audio system installations because a) there are no ads, b) it’s so chill and non-offensive no client could possibly be upset by it, c) there’s usually a little of bit of bass so I can test subwoofer performance, and d) I can test it right after installation, without signing in to any music service.

There were NEVER pre-roll ads for any streaming radio stations until Sonos switched to using Tune In for it’s internet radio services.  Why on earth did Sonos switch from their previous ad free internet radio to Tune in with pre-roll ads!!!???

If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it!

Sonos has always used TuneIn, even before it was TuneIn.