Sonos Radio HD-Thoughts?

Overpriced for what it is.  And angry that I can no longer remove the service.  I have Apple Music and Wife has Spotify…  Apple has human curated stations, including a few talking heads for banter and Spotify has excellent recommendation algorithms…  so other than 16/44.1 FLAC on a few stations I don’t know what the service brings compared to AM or Spotify and it doesn't also include on demand access to a giant catalog of music as well for the same price.  

If they spent the time and energy making new HW or upgraded S2 more with features users ask for…  I’d love a fix for the Move battery drain issue,  but I imagine they are pursuing revenue streams and eying their speakers as a HaaS rather than products.

I’ve taken up the free offer today. I like it so far. Great choice, no ads and it sounds incredible on my system.(I think!!😀). I’ll see how much it is used before deciding to carry on the subscription as I feel £8 is a little too much possibly.

What is really pissing me off right now is that I have this ad popping up asking me to try Radio HD. This happens while I’m using the app, trying to play music.

I would have thought that sonos would not want to get in the way of their users actually playing music.

I’m all for advertising, but this is so annoying that I’m very close to returning the entire thing.

Advertising at me, while I’m trying to listen to my music, for a service I may never use seems like overstepping boundaries.

I find it very annoying that Sonos pushed so hard for us to upgrade our older “S1” hardware, at great cost, and within months is pushing a subscription model over that new hardware.  Is this only the start?  Are they going to keep chipping away until we have to pay them monthly for the “privilege” of using our expensive Sonos hardware?  I love my Sonos devices but have no desire to pay the monthly for sub-par content when I already paid them a premium for the hardware. 

The problems you’re referring to are TuneIn radio problems, not problems with the custom stations Sonos created.  While those issues are real, its not accurate to imply that the whole service is broken.  If you are only interested in the overseas/terrestrial radio stations, then absolutely, there is no point in getting Sonos Radio HD, or even using Sonos Radio really, unless you just like the interface better or something like that.  However, people are clearly interesting in the custom radio stations (I am), otherwise they would have proceeded with Sonos Radio HD.

That seems highly unlikely to me,  I don’t think Sonos radio is a way to slowly convert everything over to a subscription model.  I see it as Sonos trying to leverage the customer base they have established for ‘easy’ money.  That sounds worse that it actually is, but I just mean that they did the business analysis and figured that given the volume of customers they have now, Sonos Radio can pay for itself and bring in revenue.  Customers can take it or leave it as they wish.

I do think there is problem in selling devlces that come with free software upgrades and maintenance over it’s lifetime.  The cost of running the software eventually eats whatever profit was made in the sale.  Unless the hardware dies after a certain number of years, but that certainly doesn’t help sell devices. 

I've subscribed to the trial. I can hear a difference and it sounds 👍.  But thats on my two paired fives and sub. On my move and play 1 it's not so obvious👎. Also I'm not totally sold on the content and/or the price. So not sure what I will do when the trial ends

So I subscribed to Sonos Radio HD free trial . Thanks Sonos

Have noticed that I can skip forward but not backwards at first both arrows are lit up but after pressing rewind a few times the option to rewind becomes faded .
 

Sound is what I expect it takes a while on the S2 app to switch to another station IMO it should only be a fiver to listen to Radio  not £7.99 as other streaming music options offer more for the same price but that's just my opinion . 

The plus is I don't realise ALL the Sonos Radio Stations would be HD it just advertised a few new ones would be HD I think that needs to be made clearer to people offered a trial .

Once the rewind button is fixed I might subscribe otherwise I may  cancel 

I just cancelled my trial subscription.  The playlists and content were the main reason.  To me it seemed at best a B-side content play and the mixes were 100% worse than anything I get from Spotify, Pandora or Apple.  

Also, I have a 500Mbit internet service and a very nice dual AP WiFi network and have ZERO issues streaming FLAC locally or through TIDAL and certainly no streaming issues otherwise with standard services.

It would be nice to remove the Sonos Radio from my music services.  That is annoying that it’s not an option to hide or remote.