Chromecast in S2 / Honest timeline for Chromecast

Another question, how would you control playback (skip, stop, changing source, volume level) when the phone is being switched off?

I don't know if the Chromecast Audio works differently, but from the normal Youtube app, I can only cast to video Chromecasts, not to Google Home speakers. I don't see how that would be any different if Sonos were to implement the Cast protocol on their speakers.

Just using the Cast protocol to do what already be achieved natively in the Sonos app, or in Spotify, Pandora et. al. is really not what I would be looking for, and potentially confusing for users, difficult to support for Sonos. The only added value of Cast would be to cast audio directly from your device, which, as mentioned before, would drain your battery. I have never seen any necessity for it.

I either search for something within the Sonos app, or if I find something on a native app that I want to play on Sonos, I will add it to a playlist or favorite, or any other construct from the service that is easily accessible in Sonos and then initiate play through Sonos. Yes, it requires a few more clicks, but generally, streaming natively through Sonos provides me with the smoothest, most reliable way of streaming.

You are not going to get any answers on those here. Like any sensible company, Sonos does not share roadmaps publicly. Any employee or programmer that went on these communities to disclose information, would quickly find themselves no longer working for Sonos, I presume.

A users perspective on the business reason for not having Cast on Sonos:

Google.

“Nest Hub Smart Display with Google Assistant”, or any Google/Nest Home device, can use your Sonos device as its Default Speaker.  No ChromeCast required for this, and, IME, much more reliable than ChromeCast.

With Amazon casting, you can basically do the same thing with less steps.  You won’t have to add to playlist/favorite  then go to the Sonos app to playback.  You can just press the cast button and select the speaker you want it to play on.  I find myself casting at times because I was listening through the phone away from home, and now I want to finish playback on Sonos.  I also want the ability to add a track to Amazon’s ‘My Music’ not just to be able to play it on Sonos more easily, but for all device everywhere.  I can also download tracks to a USB more easily later, for use in my vehicle.

I don’t always use it, even fact I find myself using Sonos Radio often, or voice controlled requests, but it’s nice to have as an option.

I’ve been waiting for the Chromecast support as well but I don’t think it’s going to happen with S2 :(

I hadn’t realized that you can cast from Spotify and Google Play Music, let’s see if they add the option to Youtube Music once Play Music is buried for good.

There’s still a ton of apps and users that would benefit from the Chromecast support. Harman Kardon has Chromecast support…

Moderator edit: Removed profanity

Sonos has already written the API for this, as you noted that others have implemented it. It’s down to the folks at Google to implement what’s already been written. Feel free to be angry with Sonos, but they’ve done their part of the code base. 

@Airgetlam 
Interesting - I never knew that. So out of interest what is it on Google’s side that needs to be implemented?

Also as a general answer to my original post:

Airplay 2 basically solves this whole scenario for me. I wasn’t aware what I fundamentally disliked about Airplay has been solved with Airplay 2 - I can take calls, make videos etc whilst using it, also it doesn't appear to be draining my battery as hard - feel as if its pulling music directly from the internet rather than passing bit by bit through my phone (but haven’t yet fully researched into the technical workings of it).
(I’m yet to test Youtube Music directly from their native app, which has background play, but generally feel that will be ok too).

Of course, Chromecast would be great, but that feels now more of a nice to have (at least under my use case) :)

Turn off your phone - if it still plays it’s working like Chromecast, if it doesn’t it is going through your phone.

They've built a non standard API adding more work for every integration.  Many services don't support it because it's not a standard Chromecast implementation.  Google seems to have no interest in supporting non standard integrations anymore. Google Play Music is official dying this year and the replacement, YouTube Music, which has been out for a while, has no Sonos Casting support. Most of the Sonos "casting" implementations I've used are flakey at best too vs a real Chromecast implementation.