Radio-Canada's Ici Musique?

It’s not hard, but also not super apparent.

The method and terminology (My Sonos, or Sonos Favorites) may depend on which app are you using - Windows, Mac, iPhone. etc.  But the method appears, at least on my Windows Sonos controller app, to be the same whether you used TuneIn or Sonos Radio to get to the radio station.  Next to the name of the station is a button for a drop-down menu (the button only appears when you hover your mouse over the station name), and one option on the menu is “Add to Sonos Favorites.”

More at this discussion

Good luck.

I got the same boilerplate answer to my post about CBC Listen Streams. This lazy, pass-the-buck attitude is not good enough. Sonos customers have paid a premium to buy into this ecosystem and we expect to be super-served on issues like this. Ignoring your customers is a recipe for failure.

There are usually legal ramifications around using other people’s content without express permission, but I can understand your perspective. It just isn’t the way Sonos has ever done business. You could get more information at the Sonos partners page.

To Winter S, Airgetiam is right, in that the content available in a CBC service on your Sonos is up to the CBC, not up to Sonos. 

As with the question in this topic, though, there are almost certainly practical ways to do what you want to do - listen to certain CBC streams on your Sonos.  But you may have to do it through other apps such as TuneIn or Sonos Radio or podcast apps, or finding the streaming URL and adding it yourself.  I can’t try to help you with those though, because the CBC seems to make the services you want unavailable to people outside of Canada.

“That’s the way we’ve always done it” is such a classic cop-out.  

When I say we expect Sonos to super-serve its customers, what I mean is when there is a request to add what is, frankly, a major national broadcaster, we expect Sonos to proactively reach out to that broadcaster on our behalf and do what it takes to get them onto the platform.

That’s a big difference from putting up a webpage that essentially says, “Hey broadcasters, sign up if you want to.”

I would also expect Sonos to respond to its customers who have been asking for this with a status update, even if it’s only to say, “We tried and they refused, here’s why.” That’s what I expect from a company to which we have paid a high cost for for a premium service. 

In my business, the kind of silence and excuses I’m seeing on an issue like this would be completely unacceptable.  

That’s fine.

Perhaps you may want to pay for the lawyers and fees the CBC will need to garner international broadcast rights for all of their content. Having dealt with the periphery of that issue in my life producing games, I can assure you it’s a knotty, and not inexpensive issue when using content you haven’t created. It is much easier to deal with when you create the content, something most radio stations don’t do.

Feel free to blame lawyers and politicians for making international licensing a complex issue. And one of the reasons TuneIn is in such hot water now, having not respected international rights for so long, in my perception, and most certainly the reason why they are being sued, and have stopped streaming other country’s radio station, at least in the UK. There is a long thread about this issue here, and perhaps some Googling might help bring greater understanding of the issues involved.

Thanks.  When you are attributing “silence and excuses” to Sonos are you talking about what Bruce (aka Airgetiam) and I wrote, or have you actually asked Sonos to do something through some channel directed to Sonos?  I’m just a customer, like you, albeit a generally happy one, trying to help another one.  I can’t speak for Bruce but I would guess that he is likely in the same position.  You are welcome to criticize me as an individual for what I say, but it’s kind of unfair to Sonos, if this is what you are doing, to attribute my statements to them and criticize them for that. 

To get back to your question, which I think is about the CBC service on Sonos.  I am outside of Canada,  I have available the “CBC Radio & Music” service on my Sonos, and i just installed it and it offers me two listening options, CBC Radio One and CBC Music On Air.  I think your complaint is that there aren’t more options on this service.

When I try to listen to several other CBC music streams and podcasts on my computer, I get an error message saying they are unavailable outside of Canada.  But in the USA I CAN get, including on my Sonos, through TuneIn, CBC Radio One channels from Yellowknife and about 30 other places ranging from Toronto to Thunder Bay.  I can also get ICI Musique channels from about a dozen Canadian locations.  My TuneIn favorite stations include CBC Radio Three, so that was once available to Sonos users outside of Canada, though it does not seem to work for me anymore.

That CBC has made a “service” available on Sonos is more than what other public “major national broadcasters” have done - I don’t see NPR, BBC, or the A(ustralian) or S(outh)A(frican) BCs, for example, listed among Sonos services, only the CBC.  It’s almost entirely private, for-profit companies that make the music services that are available on Sonos, and they do it for commercial reasons, to get more customers and revenue.  So kudos to the CBC for spending the time and money to make a music service that is available on Sonos as a “customer service” benefit to their listeners even though the CBC doesn’t get added revenue from it.  Go Canada.

But then why is that CBC music service kinda lousy?  Why doesn’t it include more than two CBC streams?  It could be that the CBC didn’t want to put THAT much work into building their Sonos music service, or that they wanted to keep it simple to limit their future customer-service and maintenance work on it.  But I am guessing that whatever reasons, quite possibly legal restrictions, the CBC does not let me in the United States listen to their podcasts and other music-streaming channels are the same reasons the CBC does not offer those choices in their Sonos music service.  That’s just a longwinded guess, though, as to why the CBC decided to do as it did, to try to help you answer your question.  I hope it is some use.

Thanks. I use my iPhone, iPads and rarely my Mac for Sonos. But I will try to follow your trail of breadcrumbs. Thanks.