Contributor I

BBC Radio 4 rights restrictions

27 replies
2084 views

This morning I’ve had repeated interruption of BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme, “due to rights restrictions this part of the programme cannot be played”. Once was during a feature about the Euros, the next was in the middle of an interview with a government minister. So no music or anything particularly sensitive.
Anyone had this before or know how to prevent it? The first instance lasted about 10 minutes.

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Pinned Reply By James L.

Hey everyone,

This message is not specific to Sonos and is not something that we’re injecting into the radio feed. Any questions around this would need to be directed to the BBC, as it’s ultimately their decision as to where their programmes are broadcast. We do not have any further insight as to why you may be hearing this message over specific programmes, nor do we have the ability to remove it. Please get in touch with the BBC with any further questions around this.

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A

Acer99

Avid Contributor I

I had this issue this morning and a few weeks ago. I think it would be professional and helpful of Sonos to contact the BBC on behalf of their customers. The BBC would surely take the issue more seriously from Sonos representing several thousand customers. If I bought an item from a retailer and ended up with an empty box I would not expect the retailer to shrug and refer me to the manufacturer or distributer.

Appreciate that it probably isn’t Sonos that is at fault.

controlav

Lead Maestro

Why are BBC listeners so entitled? Is it an English thing? (I am English, for reference). Their precious stream gets messed with by the BBC and they demand Sonos fix it. Laughable.

Last week I tried to get my elderly Mum’s new UK Echo Show to play BBC stations, but it refused. Why? Its a UK model, in the UK. But I use my US Amazon account, so the BBC block it. Do I complain to Amazon? No. Its the damn BBC.

Author of the leading independent Sonos apps for Android, MacOS, iOS, Windows and Xbox.

106rallye

I must say I do not completely agree with you, though as always “c'est le ton qui fait la musique”, and some of the remarks seem a bit harsh. For a long time Sonos was just a conduit for sounds others played through it. But when you invent something called Sonos Radio, you take on a responsibility. The least you can do is try to find out why this happens on Sonos - as I’ve read it does not happen on a Naim in the same household.

Airgetlam

I’d suggest it’s different if and when Sonos hosts/stores the stream on their own servers. But if they’re acting (like TuneIn, myRadio, and others) as just an aggregator, pointing the “player/speaker” to a server designated by the company streaming the data, there’s just not much Sonos can do.

In the case of the BBC, as with many streaming stations, they are the ones responsible. The stream comes from their servers, any interruption comes from their servers. Given that Sonos and other companies merely point to a BBC server leaves there little that Sonos can do about the situation, other than contact the BBC. And given that there’s no financial relationship between Sonos and the BBC, their complaints would likely carry less weight than a complaint from someone who pays the necessary tax in the UK. Which leaves us Yanks with basically no voice at all, other than as an outsider.

Bruce

Airgetlam

For what it’s worth, Sonos Radio does muddy what was previously a fairly clear division. But even Sonos Radio isn’t all just Sonos content, some of it is just further aggregation of other people’s servers/data streams. Not all of it, though.

Bruce

M

master_grunthos

Lyricist III

If you create a radio station with a direct link to the BBC stream i think it fixes it for UK listeners as it bypasses Tunein. So far no rights issue notices. So far, I can’t be held responsible as it’s not my stream...

for radio 4 i use: http://a.files.bbci.co.uk/media/live/manifesto/audio/simulcast/hls/uk/sbr_high/ak/bbc_radio_fourfm.m3u8

for radio 6 music i use: http://a.files.bbci.co.uk/media/live/manifesto/audio/simulcast/hls/uk/sbr_high/ak/bbc_6music.m3u8

As far as i can tell these are the same quality, you can also stream these on VLC media player while out and about. Why? well if you use VLC you can set a much larger buffer than the BBC Sounds app and therefore get a more stable stream in the event of variable phone signal like in the car or on a train.

It’s tempting to blame the BBC for the rights issue. If they simply don’t have broadcast rights then they can’t let the data stream. If they only have rights in UK and the stream goes to multiple countries then they have to block it or breach the agreements they have for using the media. It’s more a factor of the complexity of how media rights are set up and sold. On TV/radio broadcast locally it’d just not come up. The nature of streaming reveals the prevously hidden issue.

R

Ralpfocus

Prodigy III

For those who live in the UK using Radioplayer as opposed to Tunein for your source for BBC may well solve problems of this nature. For example we had a problem this week with the rights message whilst we were listening via Tunein (an old an alarm setting had initiated the stream) but we we started another speaker going using Radioplayer there was no issue.

Radio player is licensed for use in a few other countries so the problem maybe resolved for those countries although since this is about rights management maybe not

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