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jishi
Headliner II
September 3, 2013

Spotify Connect, serious competition

  • September 3, 2013
  • 249 replies
  • 61983 views
Spotify today announced Spotify Connect, which will be a series of hardware from well-known hardware to seamlessly integrate spotify onto devices where the control is from the regular Spotify application on your phone or similar.

Streaming is still done directly through internet, so the phone isn't in charge of it, just controls it.

I really do hope that Sonos will follow this approach as well, I believe there are a lot more like me that primarily uses Sonos for Spotify, and being able to use the same app as always would be awesome.

Seems like there is already a feature request over at ask.sonos.com https://ask.sonos.com/sonos/topics/support_spotify_connect_to_allow_users_to_use_the_spotify_app_as_the_controller
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      jishiAuthor
      Headliner II
      November 8, 2013
      You are thinking in the concept that "Other clients" will act as Spotify Connect players. I'm not 100% sure that that will be the case? At least, that wasn't mentioned, and I didn't ask about it.

      My best bet would be that you could use something like a raspberry pi and connect it to the line-in of your Sonos. That would also be a much lower investment.
      nicka99
      nicka99
      Local Superstar
      November 8, 2013
      You are thinking in the concept that "Other clients" will act as Spotify Connect players. I'm not 100% sure that that will be the case? At least, that wasn't mentioned, and I didn't ask about it.

      My best bet would be that you could use something like a raspberry pi and connect it to the line-in of your Sonos. That would also be a much lower investment.

      in the video Spotify released it showed not just sending to a spotify connect enabled speaker/amp but also another IOS device. They switched between listening on an iphone then sending that same music instead to the ipad. So one device acts as the receiver and the other just a remote. Im going to use my ipad as the remote and the ipod touch hooked up to the play5/sonos dock as the receiver. Spotify also confirmed to me in the forum that it will work this way - thats once my account is activated that is !
      nicka99
      nicka99
      Local Superstar
      November 8, 2013
      see here:
      https://support.spotify.com/us/learn-more/guides/#!/article/Spotify-Connect
      jishiAuthor
      Headliner II
      November 8, 2013
      Wasn't aware of that, good info. As a side note, most of the devs also used Nexus devices, which means that the Android release shouldn't be far away.
      danc27
      Trending Lyricist I
      November 11, 2013
      The only problem I could see with using an iPod Touch is will the Spotify app continue to run and be "discoverable" while the device is in standby? It would be very annoying to have to go to the iPod Touch and open the Spotify app/wake it up every time you want to listen to music.

      I agree though that the Spotify app itself is so far beyond the functionality that Sonos provides. To be honest though, I think I could live with it as long as Sonos gets the Collection feature when that fully rolls out.
      nicka99
      nicka99
      Local Superstar
      November 13, 2013
      The only problem I could see with using an iPod Touch is will the Spotify app continue to run and be "discoverable" while the device is in standby? It would be very annoying to have to go to the iPod Touch and open the Spotify app/wake it up every time you want to listen to music.

      Im not sure - will have to wait and see if one device can 'wake' the other. Im considering buying one of the Pioneer Compact Wireless speakers (XW-SMA range) just to 'force' Spotify into activating Spotify Connect on my account and then returning it to the store. Lets hope I dont like it more than any of my Sonos devices !
      danc27
      Trending Lyricist I
      November 15, 2013
      Im not sure - will have to wait and see if one device can 'wake' the other. Im considering buying one of the Pioneer Compact Wireless speakers (XW-SMA range) just to 'force' Spotify into activating Spotify Connect on my account and then returning it to the store. Lets hope I dont like it more than any of my Sonos devices !
      I'm curious - why don't you just hook up an AirPort Express since it sounds like you use a lot of iOS devices? You could just AirPlay from the Spotify app now without waiting for Spotify Connect.
      Evohass
      November 16, 2013
      If I were Sonos I would seriously start looking into offering a similar service to Spotify and thus keep everything in-house.
      jgatie
      jgatie
      November 17, 2013
      If I were Sonos I would seriously start looking into offering a similar service to Spotify and thus keep everything in-house.

      And lose millions of dollars a year like Spotify does? Sonos does it right, they provide an easy API for anyone to link into their system, so the "here today, gone tomorrow" music providers can succeed or fail on their own.
      nwh
      Contributor I
      December 10, 2013
      Spotify selected a pretty long list of hardware partners. When I read between the lines of the absence of Sonos, I come up with something like this...

      Spotify is having trouble making money with a great product, a broad subscription base, and a fairly high fee because the investment is huge. While Spotify is not benefitting from it's investment...Sonos really, really has (look at the profit margins in a Connect vs a Play 1). Spotify realizes that Sonos is largely a paperweight without high quality audio....and they have the best quality audio. So Spotify asks for a piece of the action and Sonos tells them to "pound sand" so it can buy fancier cars for the execs. Spotify feels that the stream is more important than the speaker, and decides put that theory to the test...

      Dangerous to read between the lines, so I'd be surprised to find that any of the above is right...but that is what comes to mind as I read all of these posts (and the stuff on the web).

      My hope is that the opposite is true and someone at Spotify just hates someone at Sonos. If the problem is really that Sonos doesn't value the stream, likely under pretty poor management these days.

      If the management isn't the issue, I think Sonos survives this ok. Just needs to get to work on replacing Spotify. And for what it's worth, I'd swap the pricing on the Play1 and the Connect. Let's face it, the tech is the communication protocol...which is the Connect. Get THAT in the door and you'll own the house; as people decide they want a speaker in the kitchen, bedroom, etc they will opt for a clean simple all in one. Getting a Play1 in the door isn't going to convince (many) people to convert an entire home, it's just going to show them that there aren't any good streaming services that play nice with Sonos...
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