Contributor I

Support Spotify Connect to allow users to use the Spotify app as the controller.

Forum|Forum|13 years ago
September 3, 2013
366 replies
42658 views

Spotify Connect was just announced and I was surprised that I didn't see Sonos in the list of companies that would provide support. Many Spotify users have been asking for a long time to be able to use the Spotify app as the controller for selecting songs, as it provides a superior experience (you still can't even see the Top 5 songs in the Spotify view within the Sonos app, and it is difficult to look through an artist's collection to find a specific song unless you know which album it was in). Please support spotify connect. Additional details on Spotify Connect are here: http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/3/4688166/spotify-connect-launches-to-stream-music-to-compatible-speakers If you look at the post on theverge, even the first comment was one asking for Sonos support for the feature.

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bcdilts

Lyricist I

Hi folks, There's not much to say at the moment but we'd like everyone to understand where we're coming regarding the announcement from Spotify. Sonos is a platform for music lovers and we want Sonos customers to enjoy all the music on earth from whatever source they choose. We have an excellent partnership with Spotify which is, and will continue to be, an important part of many of our customers music listening experience on Sonos. Thanks for your continued support.

All I want is to play spotify with all of its features, especially radio, with my new Sonos play-1. Apparently this is impossible. From what I have read, I have to buy a Play-5 ($400), plus an airport express ($40) to do this... This speaker system just went from $200-->$640 for it to do what I want. Very disappointed that Sonos and/or Spotify can not figure something so simple out. Sonos, drop this app that does nothing but make your "valued customers" take extra, tedious, steps to listen to music. I want to play my music from my actual itunes library as well as my spotify app, not through your app... Airplay for all speakers please!! You have a lot of disappointed customers that are returning your speakers, I am one of them.

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vernon

Lyricist I

Keep Calm and Carry On. Like other Sonos users, I have been watching this post for a few months to see the outcome. This is a very long post and my apologies upfront. A quick background:

1)    I originally purchased 4 Sonos zones for a prior home seven years ago and grew that to seven zones. I migrated all the hardware without a hitch – granted I went into new construction on the next home so installing built-in speakers was nominal in cost but have already paid for themselves given the use case of a turnkey 7 home zone setup. I do not own any of the speaker products (Play, Playbar, etc.).

2)    I am in the hardware/electronics technology community and talk to multiple industry participants, mostly on the supply chain and components end of companies like Sonos, but also have contacts in the recording industry. I have spent a fair deal of time over the last several years trying to understand where this industry is heading. Especially since Sonos was the first bona fide example of “the Internet of Things” and it a useful template for where other industries/companies might be heading that offer IoT products.

3)    Though I have met folks at Sonos at trade shows and similar circumstances in the past, I have no strong ties to the company nor am I some blog plant for them. Candidly, I dislike these cyber threads because it brings out the shameless narcissism of the loud minority, but nonetheless I wanted to share my opinions on this matter to offer some balance to this thread.

4)    Like many of you I made the switch to Spotify about a year ago as it was the most feature rich service on the market. I even ported all of my Rhapsody playlists (an arduous task) to Spotify. I also was using Pandora for streaming so I thought I could centralize everything. Much like you, I found out this was not going to be the case for streaming on Sonos (no Radio is my gripe) and I only have myself to blame for not doing more research ahead of time. I ultimately reactivated my Rhaposdy account and am now in somewhat of a limbo, waiting for clarity.

5)    Per Spotify, I have to say that I am not a big fan of the interface and since I am not a “social” web 2.0 kind of user, (no Farcebook account here) those features are useless to me and if anything, I would probably find them distracting. However, I will note that other services have great interfaces but are lacking other features. Rdio, for instance, would be an example of this.

After outlining all of this, so that all of you know where I am coming from before I get skewered online here, I really don’t view lacking support for Spotify connect as a game changing situation for me and probably for most of you. Here’s why:

1)    Spotify is an outcast in music services game. Granted, they got the social aspects of the product down but the recording industry treats them with indifference at best but more or less isn’t happy with them because of compensation issues (not good). Culturally they are an odd company to deal with being from Sweden (i.e. not the US, I love Sweden fwiw) and there is an arrogance here that, at least in my view, will be their demise. I truly believe in a few years the term “Spotify followers” will be next to “AOL keyword” in the history books.

2)    Spotify Connect is an inferior product. Anyone that has fiddled with Airplay knows this is not a substitute for Sonos (that that was Apple!) and despite more centralized features akin to Sonos, it simply won’t work as well. Why? Because every manufacturer is different. Open standards only take this so far in consumer electronics. Take remote controls. Standards have been around for years for all these guys yet all of them are just “not right” with interoperability. Enough so that there is a major industry at work integrating them (eg Logitech) and doing a better job as a middleman. This analogy isn’t a great one, but the point here is that any incremental cost to a product (in this case a $0.25 chip) that has a 15% gross margin (if they are lucky) is going to be met with resistance. And spending incremental R&D $s to have it work seamlessly and tested across others? No way. Plug in the chip, put the “connect” logo on the box and move on. In the end, the consumer will be disappointed.

3)    The cost argument doesn’t hold water. Granted, Sonos is expensive. But can any of you with a straight face actually expect a budget minded customer to by a B&O A9 sound discus/tripod for their studio apartment (at a mere $2700)? Or get excited about a Pioneer receiver to stream your music? Seriously, these are partners to get excited about? The best part about Sonos is that you are free to purchase your own speakers, receivers, etc. And Sonos is already moving downstream on the price point. The Play:1 was a brilliant counter attack by Sonos on all these smaller connected technologies. For the price of a Jambox (a great, albeit limited product that I own as well), Sonos can get a beachhead with newbie users (they threw in the Bridge for free for a while). Soon I expect a rechargeable Play speaker (like a Jambox) will be offered. Many in the industry saw the Playbar product introduction as the first legitimate mainstream beachhead into the home. It has been very successful for Sonos and there is a lot of momentum here.

4)    Spotify is in a crowded market. I won’t get into all the music services that exist out there but I will grant Spotify a first mover advantage on the social media front. However, the recording industry is absolutely jacked about the upcoming Beats streaming service that will be coming out later this month and you are kidding yourself if you don’t think that will gain critical mass overnight. Anyone that can sell an inferior $50 headphone for $200 because of branding should be taken seriously. Oh, and they “get” the record labels. My prediction isn't that Beats will be the winner. Rather, there will be many, many legitimate threats to Spotify. To assume it will be the clear winner a year from today is shortsighted and presumptuous.

5)    Watch Qualcomm. The only legitimate substitution threat to Sonos hardware in my view (not the firmware end ecosystem, mind you) is the technology that Qualcomm has unveiled (AllPlay, on the AllJoyn protocol) which will get wide support in the consumer electronics industry later this year. That being said, I still think it will be an uphill climb given point #2, above though Qualcomm has infinite resources relative to Spotify, and begs the question why any CE manufacturer would waste their time with Spotify Connect with this technology coming down the pike in less than a year.

In summary, I personally don’t think either company needs each other to be successful, but I will say that Sonos has a much less to lose than Spotify. To think these companies are mutually inclusive for their survival is to be blind to the realities of the streaming music industry.

My final point is as a user for seven years I have never had to scrap a single dollar invested in Sonos. I even have two original remotes that still work, though the internal batteries have finally started to falter. But I only use one as a backup to the smartphone remotes that are easier to use (this was also a brilliant foresight by Sonos – creating an app for their remote). All of the zones are updated, have durable firmware and were built to last. I honestly can’t say how much upgrading (and disposal) of consumer electronics I have burned through (CD players, DVD player, video “component” cables/receivers, video game consoles, etc.) over the last 10 years and there is my Sonos equipment, standing the test of time, even through a move. If you want quality hardware to stream your music that works seamlessly and gives you the flexibility to make changes (upgrade speakers, interoperability, etc.) I can’t say enough good things about my investment in Sonos.

Update here - I am tooling around with Beats Music right now. I will give it a few weeks but already I can see this being a service that will give Spotify (and others) a run for their money. In three years Spotify won't be able to give away their Connect API layer.

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Russ_2

Lyricist I

Hi folks, There's not much to say at the moment but we'd like everyone to understand where we're coming regarding the announcement from Spotify. Sonos is a platform for music lovers and we want Sonos customers to enjoy all the music on earth from whatever source they choose. We have an excellent partnership with Spotify which is, and will continue to be, an important part of many of our customers music listening experience on Sonos. Thanks for your continued support.

I don't particularly care if you bring your own app up to the level of Spotify's or implement Spotify Connect so I can use theirs, I just want to have a way out of using your currently abysmally tedious app.

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Paul_117

Lyricist III

Hi folks, There's not much to say at the moment but we'd like everyone to understand where we're coming regarding the announcement from Spotify. Sonos is a platform for music lovers and we want Sonos customers to enjoy all the music on earth from whatever source they choose. We have an excellent partnership with Spotify which is, and will continue to be, an important part of many of our customers music listening experience on Sonos. Thanks for your continued support.

I too bought into the Sonos ecosystem: Bridge + Play 5 + Play 1.

I was seriously considering buying the (overpriced) Connect Amp, but I am not going to do it until I see that Sonos gets more responsive towards customers and more offensive regarding innovation & feature upgrades.

Get your act together, Sonos. I don't think you realize how damaging these complaints are for your reputation and image.

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Paul_117

Lyricist III

Hi folks, There's not much to say at the moment but we'd like everyone to understand where we're coming regarding the announcement from Spotify. Sonos is a platform for music lovers and we want Sonos customers to enjoy all the music on earth from whatever source they choose. We have an excellent partnership with Spotify which is, and will continue to be, an important part of many of our customers music listening experience on Sonos. Thanks for your continued support.

And I totally agree with one of the commenters who complained about official rep John writing a meaningless reply that has no substance whatsoever.
.
Start taking your involved customers seriously.

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Rich_14

Lyricist II

Hi folks, There's not much to say at the moment but we'd like everyone to understand where we're coming regarding the announcement from Spotify. Sonos is a platform for music lovers and we want Sonos customers to enjoy all the music on earth from whatever source they choose. We have an excellent partnership with Spotify which is, and will continue to be, an important part of many of our customers music listening experience on Sonos. Thanks for your continued support.

It's been 6 months since the official response... I bought my first Sonos system today (Play 5), on the basis I could use Spotify with it, I asumed it would support Spotify Connect as Bose does, feeling pretty cheated if i'm honest.

What is the current status of this? is it even planned to be supported? I can wait for it if it's coming soon but if it's not even planned I think that says a lot about the attitude towards customer satisfaction and recognising your customers needs, so i'd be returning the product and buying the Bose instead.

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Anna

Contributor I

Hi folks, There's not much to say at the moment but we'd like everyone to understand where we're coming regarding the announcement from Spotify. Sonos is a platform for music lovers and we want Sonos customers to enjoy all the music on earth from whatever source they choose. We have an excellent partnership with Spotify which is, and will continue to be, an important part of many of our customers music listening experience on Sonos. Thanks for your continued support.

Sonos is in bed with Beats Music and I don't think they care a whit what happens with Spotify. I am furious that I spent so much money on a system that does NOT do what it promised. I did try Beats Music and it is AWFUL. I actually like Google Play All Access, and there is an app you can download that lets you use Sonos with that. So for those of us stuck with a Sonos system, Google Play with Macronos Cast is the best solution.

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Paul_117

Lyricist III

Hi folks, There's not much to say at the moment but we'd like everyone to understand where we're coming regarding the announcement from Spotify. Sonos is a platform for music lovers and we want Sonos customers to enjoy all the music on earth from whatever source they choose. We have an excellent partnership with Spotify which is, and will continue to be, an important part of many of our customers music listening experience on Sonos. Thanks for your continued support.

*knock, knock*
Is John home?

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Paul_117

Lyricist III

Hi folks, There's not much to say at the moment but we'd like everyone to understand where we're coming regarding the announcement from Spotify. Sonos is a platform for music lovers and we want Sonos customers to enjoy all the music on earth from whatever source they choose. We have an excellent partnership with Spotify which is, and will continue to be, an important part of many of our customers music listening experience on Sonos. Thanks for your continued support.

I really would like to see a serious answer from Sonos.
One that contains substance and addresses the issue.
.
Hey Sonos, I am ready to spend some hard earned money on expanding my Sonos system, but only if you can come up with some proper answers.
.
Until that time, I will keep that money in my pocket or, worse, may sell the Sonos system I just bought and buy into Bose.

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Paul_117

Lyricist III

Hi folks, There's not much to say at the moment but we'd like everyone to understand where we're coming regarding the announcement from Spotify. Sonos is a platform for music lovers and we want Sonos customers to enjoy all the music on earth from whatever source they choose. We have an excellent partnership with Spotify which is, and will continue to be, an important part of many of our customers music listening experience on Sonos. Thanks for your continued support.

Nick, is it just this thread or are customers turning their backs on Sonos?
Judging from this topic, Sonos seems to make an arrogant, slow impression to me.

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