Sonos Tunin Adverts (ads)

  • 9 November 2020
  • 17 replies
  • 1807 views

Userlevel 2

I have been struggling with Sonos for a while now.

  1. First they stop supporting some of my old gear. Ok, we’ve moved on.
  2. Then Tunin stops  relaying foreign radio stations. That is pretty bad, I hear sonos say “It’s not our fault”; well sonos, my contract is with you, not tunein
  3. Then came sonos radio, it doesn’t give me anything I didn’t have before - I was hoping it would fix above, but no, it doesn’t :(
  4. Alight, so I add my radio stations manually. and there is the cherry on the cake:
  • I have to spend time finding the URL(s), putting them into Sonos - This is irritating: my cousin call me from France last week: “in 5 minutes, list to “France Info” - “No can do (not on sonos anyway), it’ll take me more that 5 minutes to find that url”
  • When you manually add a station, it goes into “Tunin stations” - no idea why, this is beyond me, but I can just about live with this and add them to my sonos - An extra stop, ok.
  • And then, I get adverts. what would appear to be Tunein adverts, on manually added stations that are ad free, also the tunin jingle: the “boom” chord!!!

Now, I have been a customer for over 10 years, spent 1,000’s on sonos products, have loved it pretty much all the way, but what has gone wrong at Sonos lately? Have they lost control?
This is not even funny.
@Sonos, I think you ought to fix this. I am not a happy bunny.


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17 replies

You won’t be a happy bunny either, if your favorite station dies tomorrow. Do you think running a radio station does not cost money? That is what the ads are for, covering the costs.

Userlevel 2

Smilja,

Thanks for your reply.

I forgot to highlight a very crucial point: if I listen to the stream outside of sonos, there aren’t any ads, weather using the station’s app, or the url stream in a web browser.
I understand that it costs to run a radio station, but this argument is out of scope in this thread.
Thanks.

Userlevel 7
Badge +23

If you are using a direct stream from the radio station’s web site, I don’t see how TuneIn could possibly have injected ads into it. As you haven’t listed the URL it is not possible to diagnose that further.

Totally agree with Sonos-Used_to_rock.  How to ruin a great product.

I switch on my government funded radio in NL and listen to adverts every half-hour from the radio station and then on top of that, when I turn on the radio station, I have to listen to an advert first!! Am I the product?

I compare it to a conventional radio station, I switch it on and that’s it. Because you can monetize Sonos, it doesn’t mean it is good. Why did this start?

I switch on the radio multiple times a day and sometimes multiple times per hour.  Even writing this down, makes me annoyed. Sonos, stop this!

Same experience here. New user though, I had to “install” a system at the neighbors, liked it a lot so bought myself 2 One SL speakers. But very disappointed to hear advertisement at the beginning of listening to a radio station. I ABSOLUTELY know it is not done by the radio station, because 80s80s radio is a German radio station and I get advertisements in Dutch or French, because I live in Belgium. And I am dutch by motherlanguage and it is very, very, VERY annoying to hear ads in French.

This makes sure I will not buy another Sonos product, even if I do like the quality of the sound and even though I’m also a Spotify customer in which, fortunately, there are no ads injected. I’ve gone looking for a solution and there’s a hint to getting a subscription to the premium TuneIn offer, but that’s not even available in my country….

So if anyone has an idea how to stream without modification by Sonos, please let me know.

So if anyone has an idea how to stream without modification by Sonos, please let me know.

 

The posts above you stated that the ads were added by TuneIn, not Sonos. 

Allright, allright, djeezes. 

Can someone tell me how to stream internet radios without using TuneIn?????

For the silly beginner, TuneIn == Sonos. All you can find when looking for HOW to stream internet radio streams to Sonos devices, is that you have to use TuneIn. So is there technically no other way? Is there another brand of speakers that CAN do this without using some ad-injecting 3rd party?

Userlevel 1

Sounds like my issue, too...

I have several radio stations set up in the app under My Sonos. The stations all come via TuneInl. Some stations, but not all, play annoying intro ads when I select the station from the app. The ads only play once,at the beginning of a listening session; they do not repeat during the session. These are not ads from the actual radio station, all of which are public radio; they are the kind of cheesy ads that you’d hear on commercial AM radio stations. While listening to a station, I of course hear the (tasteful public radio) ads broadcast by that station, which is fine.

WHAT MAKES ME WONDER IF “MY SONOS” IS THE CULPRIT: If I request the station via Alexa on one of my Sonos1’s, the stations show up as being from TuneIn, but the intro ads do not play.

So, how can I eliminate ads on TuneIn radio stations from My Sonos?

WHAT MAKES ME WONDER IF “MY SONOS” IS THE CULPRIT: If I request the station via Alexa on one of my Sonos1’s, the stations show up as being from TuneIn, but the intro ads do not play.

Interesting, maybe I should venture into speech assistants just for this purpose. Good to know that it works this way using Alexa. I found an article on how to use Alexa on android, so next weekend I’m going to try to get that setup working! Thanks!

Sounds like my issue, too...

I have several radio stations set up in the app under My Sonos. The stations all come via TuneInl. Some stations, but not all, play annoying intro ads when I select the station from the app. The ads only play once,at the beginning of a listening session; they do not repeat during the session. These are not ads from the actual radio station, all of which are public radio; they are the kind of cheesy ads that you’d hear on commercial AM radio stations. While listening to a station, I of course hear the (tasteful public radio) ads broadcast by that station, which is fine.

WHAT MAKES ME WONDER IF “MY SONOS” IS THE CULPRIT: If I request the station via Alexa on one of my Sonos1’s, the stations show up as being from TuneIn, but the intro ads do not play.

So, how can I eliminate ads on TuneIn radio stations from My Sonos?

I’ve had a ridiculous number of ads on TuneIn the past month. Sometimes even playing constantly and never going to the station. And  even cutting off a song to play an ad. And they are all public radio stations in the USA. I’ve never had any ads at all before that, just usually the station letting 

I switched to all Sonos Radio stations (even though most pull from TuneIn anyway) and, this morning, Sonos Radio won’t play any station. Went back to TuneIn and the stations played. Although the same one had non-stop commercials again. 

Something is definitely going on. I have another conversation on here and Sonos was helpful but I’ve given up as it’s so random when it happens. I even called the station and they said they have no other reports of non-stop commercials. 

Disappointing for sure. 

 

“Sometimes even playing constantly and never going to the station”

I contacted the station a couple weeks ago and they did not know what was going on. After putting in a support ticket with TuneIn, they noticed the issue also and had me contact the station again. They found an equipment problem and restarting it fixed it (and they are going to replace it). Just an FYI if anyone ever has this happen. 

“Sometimes even playing constantly and never going to the station”

They found an equipment problem and restarting it fixed it (and they are going to replace it). Just an FYI if anyone ever has this happen. 

→ Which ‘they’ is this, the radiostation?? So these ads are a seperate feed from each radio station? That does not agree with me hearing dutch & french language ads when listening to a german radio station. Also the ads were always for some local (although international) grocery store & DIY store.

Userlevel 1

WHAT MAKES ME WONDER IF “MY SONOS” IS THE CULPRIT: If I request the station via Alexa on one of my Sonos1’s, the stations show up as being from TuneIn, but the intro ads do not play.

So, how can I eliminate ads on TuneIn radio stations from My Sonos?

I brought this up with Sonos support and they opened a ticket. After nudging them, I received a response from a support rep. It was not very satisfying. He advised me to “make sure that the account used for TuneIn on Sonos it's the same as the one used on Alexa,” which is not clear to me. He stated that Sonos had no control over radio station ads. He pointed out that I could edit stations in My Sonos. I did not feel that my report was understood or directly addressed.

As an experiment, though, I took a cue from his last point and deleted all the stations in My Sonos, then re-searched for them and added them back to My Sonos. It’s been a week now, and the ads from TuneIn have disappeared. Knd of clumsy, but maybe it’s a solution. If the ads return in future, I’ll try deleting/reinstalling only the “infected” stations on My Sonos.

Userlevel 7
Badge +16

I must have had 7+ minutes of adverts trying to listen to a show on CENTREFORCE 883 via Tunein last week.

Just about to turn it off and the show came on, very odd!. 

You won’t be a happy bunny either, if your favorite station dies tomorrow. Do you think running a radio station does not cost money? That is what the ads are for, covering the costs.

It is even with state funded radio stations for which I pay already through tax

Userlevel 7
Badge +17

From what I read on this forum the ads pay for TuneIn, that adds a service so you can hear so many stations. The funding of these stations is a different matter.

To skip TuneIn ads, find out the URL of the station in question and add it to TuneIn/My Radio Stations.