Time for Sonos to move away from trying to be a fee for streaming company, and license their technology to others

Interesting. Did you read yesterday’s article and paraphrase it into your own idea?

https://www.zdnet.com/article/sonos-is-failing-and-millions-of-devices-could-go-with-it-why-open-source-audio-is-our-only-hope/

Sonos offers an API for folks that want to build on the Sonos offering but they can’t open-source a lot of stuff, think firmware and the API to access it, without opening a can of worms that will will never end.

I’ve been using third party controllers on my desktops for several years now with excellent results. Today I’m running noson and the new web controller side by side. The difference in responsiveness really shows up when adjusting volume or trying to pause to answer the phone.

Sonos App on Android is so slow for me that I’ve put a speaker on my end table that I group into what is playing just to have a quickly responding pause button. Neither spouse or phone have the patience to wait for the Android controller to wake up and let me pause.

I’m not sure what technology you are wanting them to license for a fee to others that they don’t already.

As Stanley say they already publish APIs, which allow integration of control products, whether hardware or software and content providers.

https://docs.sonos.com/

They could do with finalising the lan based control api, which does exist on the devices but the docs still say isn’t for wide availability yet.

The partnership they have with Ikea shows that they are willing to work with other companies who want to put Sonos inside their own products.

Somebody still needs to run the cloud services, which is where I see being a hardware device slinger doesn’t fit the financial models.

The can’t just give away the player device software. If you want the open source parts you can email them have they have to provide them, but that won’t give you working Sonos device.

The player contains 3rd party licensed technology as well as Sonos patented technology.

Dolby, Spotify, Tidal, Control 4, the hardware chipset suppliers are unlikely to be too happy if Sonos just give their software away which is licensed for Sonos to use.

Sonos aren’t going to suddenly open up the 3000+ patents they aggressively try to protect in court.

With Android, Google followed the same playbook as Microsoft and Spotify. Get the software on as much hardware as possible, but they all had something to charge for.

Sonos took more of an Apple approach of end to end control. Over the years they opened up with the cloud API because it would be impossible and expensive to go around every content provider trying to integrate them.

With Google, as ever, it was to move useful Google services out of Android open source and into the Google Play Apps which require device manufacturers to sign license agreements and give Google control over what Google apps they must install on devices and how they are presented. Google’s usual bait and switch. Shutdown the free service once enough people are hooked and move it to charged.

Sonos do not have the size or penetration of market Google had to do that. Apple, Amazon, Linkplay would gain more out of it than Sonos.

Sonos don’t really have any content to sell. Sonos Radio has hardly been a roaring success. Outside of China, there are only really 4 streaming providers that matter if you want mass market sales.

Q3 2023: Spotify, Amazon, Apple had a roughly equal split of paying subscribers at ~14%, then Youtube at ~9% Everyone else is way behind, Deezer ~1.5%
Qobuz & Tidal, the hires darlings, don’t even register individually above Deezer and end up lumped into in the other category. If you include free subscriptions Spotify are way ahead and double the size of Amazon & Apple at ~30%. 

So I’m at a bit of a loss as to what technology you think they could white label and license to others and who would actually buy it?