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
This topic has been closed for further comments. You can use the search bar to find a similar topic, or create a new one by clicking Create Topic at the top of the page.
Page 5 / 11
Userlevel 7
+17
it seems a bit strange - one one hand he criticizes Spotify for teaming up with a multitude of manufacturers to tie themselves to a single music service but then on the other says they (Sonos) are going to be asking a multitude of music services to tie themselves to a single hardware manufacturer from within their apps ! somewhat hypocritical no ?
anyway, it certainly sounds interesting, I just doubt Spotify will be doing them any favours which is disappointing !
anyway, it certainly sounds interesting, I just doubt Spotify will be doing them any favours which is disappointing !
anyway, it certainly sounds interesting, I just doubt Spotify will be doing them any favours which is disappointing !
I didn't read it as "asking a multitude of music services to tie themselves to a single hardware manufacturer from within their apps", I read it as Sonos hardware is going to be one choice of many for output from the app. I highly doubt that requires the app/device makers to lock out all other hardware. In fact, I know for certain Apple devices are not going to lock out Airplay devices in favor of Sonos, that would be crazy. I believe what he means is the Sonos devices will be one of many (i.e. Airplay, Bluetooth, Miracast, Samsung Share, Spotify Connect, etc.) choices for output from an app.
It is a lot of work to develop a user interface. Since SONOS would like to support multiple services and not be forced to dedicate a programming team for each of a growing number of services, SONOS has defined an API that services can support if they want to be available to SONOS users. This minimizes the work for SONOS as new services become available.
The music services are in a similar boat. Initially, the services use a web browser for their user interface, but there are a growing number of hardware devices and web browsers don't run on hardware devices. The services don't want to support a growing number of hardware players. Therefore, the services will want to specify the interface that must be supported by hardware devices.
In the end, the company with the stronger market position dictates the terms.
A prime example of this is APPLE. There are countless companies following the iShadow -- earning a good living by doing so. But these companies don't innovate much because they spend their development dollars following the shadow of new connectors, new versions, and intellectual property licensing.
SONOS has always been a leader and, as their market position strengthens, more 3rd parties will be coming to SONOS.
The music services are in a similar boat. Initially, the services use a web browser for their user interface, but there are a growing number of hardware devices and web browsers don't run on hardware devices. The services don't want to support a growing number of hardware players. Therefore, the services will want to specify the interface that must be supported by hardware devices.
In the end, the company with the stronger market position dictates the terms.
A prime example of this is APPLE. There are countless companies following the iShadow -- earning a good living by doing so. But these companies don't innovate much because they spend their development dollars following the shadow of new connectors, new versions, and intellectual property licensing.
SONOS has always been a leader and, as their market position strengthens, more 3rd parties will be coming to SONOS.
Userlevel 2
Wow, that article scares me. The CEO does not represent Sonos well, comes across as very pompous and seems to be very confused about both their place in the market and even what Spotify Connect is.
His argument about why music services would add Sonos connections but they won't add Spotify Connect makes no sense at all. And what good is Sonos connections if you leave out the biggest service out there?
The choices they've made have turned out to be good in the past but this feels like a terrible one to me.
His argument about why music services would add Sonos connections but they won't add Spotify Connect makes no sense at all. And what good is Sonos connections if you leave out the biggest service out there?
The choices they've made have turned out to be good in the past but this feels like a terrible one to me.
Userlevel 2
His argument about why music services would add Sonos connections but they won't add Spotify Connect makes no sense at all. And what good is Sonos connections if you leave out the biggest service out there?
The choices they've made have turned out to be good in the past but this feels like a terrible one to me.
Just saw there was a video and watched that. None of these quotes are from the video but the video sounds much better, and certainly not at all pompous.
I still think this is a big mistake Sonos needs Spotify a lot more than vice versa and they should not be thumbing their noses at Spotify Connect or playing chicken on who will implement which system to play from the Spotify app to a Sonos.
Not sure about that. Sonos actually makes a profit, something Spotify has yet to do. Streaming services are the the 2010's version of the .COM bubble of the 90's. Until one finds a way to turn a real profit, ala Amazon and others, I'm afraid we cannot assign any more market power to them than we did Pets.com, Kozmo, or Flooz.
Userlevel 2
Well that's just silly. Profit has nothing to do with this. A significant percentage of Sonos users are Spotify subscribers. Some may be indifferent to Spotify amongst streaming services, some may care deeply about Spotify but regardless, having Spotify work on Sonos matters to a significant percentage of Sonos customers.
Sonos customers are an insignificant percentage of Spotify customers. Won't impact their success significantly if they were to lose some of those, especially when they are replacing them with customers of all these other hardware products which are embracing Spotify Connect. Can't see any way this impact Spotify's customer base.
Beyond that, Sonos needs independent streaming services to succeed and Spotify is currently the best chance. If Spotify fails, it will likely be because some giant like Apple filled the void with a better product. There is certainly no guarantee in that scenario that Sonos even gets access to the service to stream.
There didn't have to be one or the other here. You can adopt Spotify Connect and do Sonos Connect or whatever they call it. Still seems very short sighted to refuse to participate.
No it is not just silly. If Sonos is in the process of deciding that the investment required to partner with Spotify is not worth it, the viability of Spotify as a long term provider is definitely something they need to take into account when making that decision. The fact that Spotify is mimicking the "get lots of users but never make a profit" business plan of the late 90's dot.coms is certainly something that can't be ignored when evaluating their commitment to that service. I have no inside info, but it appears Sonos have decided that the volatility of the provider market means something like the Music Partners program, which puts the onus on the provider to link up with Sonos, makes more sense than to waste valuable develoment on custom tailoring their app to a dozen or more services who may or may not be around in the future. You may or may not agree with that approach, but it is based on some pretty good logic, and to say it is "silly" is . . . well . . . just silly.
I just wanted to share the information that I have collected from conversations with employees over at Spotify, and based on the demo I got of the system in action.
The implementation will be software based, but it seems like they will provide precompiled binaries for the streaming part (think, libspotify). They couldn't share details on what kind of API it ran, or how proprietary it will be. They could however say that they intend for it to become publicly available, either with some sort of SDK, or if they will use some common type of standard (REST or similar).
The whole idea behind it is that when you switch over the music from your client to a speaker, it actually moves the whole queue into a cloud service, which the speaker interacts with. The players will be tightly coupled with your spotify account, and will work "over the internet" as well, meaning that you don't need to be on the same LAN.
It will at least be possible to utilize Spotify Connect in the same manner as AirPlay today, meaning a separate device connected to the line-in. This is of course not optimal, and depending on how flexible the API will be, there might be possible to use a separate device as a "bridge" that will just control the Spotify playback directly on Sonos (which would mean that you would see currently playing item and stuff like that).
Hopefully this will settle a few discussions in this thread :)
Oh, and regarding that last interview with Sonos regarding this. Seems like there has become a battle of "who will integrate with who", where Sonos feels like music partners should integrate support for Sonos in their apps, whereas Spotify thinks that speaker-producers should implement support for their music service into their speakers. They both want the same thing, they just seem to think that the other part should to the work.
As an example, Sonos has implemented support for QQ in China, which shows in the UPnP service descriptors. Basically, they expose new UPnP services for interaction with QQ service, and QQ implement support for this exposed API that Sonos provide.
With Spotify, they have already created an API, which probably is miles away from the UPnP standard that Sonos uses. This becomes a problem for both parties, since Sonos probably doesn't want to develop a proprietary API for a single music service that goes way outside the UPnP stack. Hopefully they will resolve their **** and find some sort of common ground to work on, because I think they will both profit from it in the long run. In the meantime, 3rd party support will probably be possible.
The implementation will be software based, but it seems like they will provide precompiled binaries for the streaming part (think, libspotify). They couldn't share details on what kind of API it ran, or how proprietary it will be. They could however say that they intend for it to become publicly available, either with some sort of SDK, or if they will use some common type of standard (REST or similar).
The whole idea behind it is that when you switch over the music from your client to a speaker, it actually moves the whole queue into a cloud service, which the speaker interacts with. The players will be tightly coupled with your spotify account, and will work "over the internet" as well, meaning that you don't need to be on the same LAN.
It will at least be possible to utilize Spotify Connect in the same manner as AirPlay today, meaning a separate device connected to the line-in. This is of course not optimal, and depending on how flexible the API will be, there might be possible to use a separate device as a "bridge" that will just control the Spotify playback directly on Sonos (which would mean that you would see currently playing item and stuff like that).
Hopefully this will settle a few discussions in this thread :)
Oh, and regarding that last interview with Sonos regarding this. Seems like there has become a battle of "who will integrate with who", where Sonos feels like music partners should integrate support for Sonos in their apps, whereas Spotify thinks that speaker-producers should implement support for their music service into their speakers. They both want the same thing, they just seem to think that the other part should to the work.
As an example, Sonos has implemented support for QQ in China, which shows in the UPnP service descriptors. Basically, they expose new UPnP services for interaction with QQ service, and QQ implement support for this exposed API that Sonos provide.
With Spotify, they have already created an API, which probably is miles away from the UPnP standard that Sonos uses. This becomes a problem for both parties, since Sonos probably doesn't want to develop a proprietary API for a single music service that goes way outside the UPnP stack. Hopefully they will resolve their **** and find some sort of common ground to work on, because I think they will both profit from it in the long run. In the meantime, 3rd party support will probably be possible.
Userlevel 7
+17
jishi - thanks for the detailed insight !
From what Ive gleaned on the Spotify forums: Although Spotify Connect is now officially released it is only available for a small number of Spotify premium users (about 10% so far). Basically if you have a 'spotify connect' enabled hardware device such as amp or speaker then once you connect it to your IOS device (android not yet supported) then your premium account will be 'activated' for spotify connect and other IOS devices using the same account will also be able to act as receivers too.
If you dont have such a piece of hardware then they are slowly activating premium accounts to allow them to use Spotify Connect between IOS devices without an amp/speaker. I guess its a bit more 'beta' than they are letting on.
Once its working for me (Im still waiting) then I am hoping to use the line-in on my Play 5 (or buy a Sonos iphone dock) with an ipod touch then use my Ipad/Iphone to send music from the Spotify app to the rest of the Sonos components via the Ipod touch.
Its not an ideal solution, and the sound quality will suffer compared to streaming direct, but the functionality of the Spotify app is so far ahead of the Sonos/Spotify integration that its a price Im willing to pay. Maybe someone will have the sense to bring out a 'digital only' Spotify Connect box (like the Sonos Connect but cheaper!) that I can feed straight into my playbar (or other hifi setup for those without Sonos) so minimise the amount of d-a-d-a... conversions.
As you say, hopefully they can sort out their differences because in the meantime its us, the consumer, that loses. Id love to be able to 'send' music direct from Spotify to Sonos without a half baked intermediate solution.
From what Ive gleaned on the Spotify forums: Although Spotify Connect is now officially released it is only available for a small number of Spotify premium users (about 10% so far). Basically if you have a 'spotify connect' enabled hardware device such as amp or speaker then once you connect it to your IOS device (android not yet supported) then your premium account will be 'activated' for spotify connect and other IOS devices using the same account will also be able to act as receivers too.
If you dont have such a piece of hardware then they are slowly activating premium accounts to allow them to use Spotify Connect between IOS devices without an amp/speaker. I guess its a bit more 'beta' than they are letting on.
Once its working for me (Im still waiting) then I am hoping to use the line-in on my Play 5 (or buy a Sonos iphone dock) with an ipod touch then use my Ipad/Iphone to send music from the Spotify app to the rest of the Sonos components via the Ipod touch.
Its not an ideal solution, and the sound quality will suffer compared to streaming direct, but the functionality of the Spotify app is so far ahead of the Sonos/Spotify integration that its a price Im willing to pay. Maybe someone will have the sense to bring out a 'digital only' Spotify Connect box (like the Sonos Connect but cheaper!) that I can feed straight into my playbar (or other hifi setup for those without Sonos) so minimise the amount of d-a-d-a... conversions.
As you say, hopefully they can sort out their differences because in the meantime its us, the consumer, that loses. Id love to be able to 'send' music direct from Spotify to Sonos without a half baked intermediate solution.
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.
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.
Userlevel 7
+17
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 !
Userlevel 7
+17
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.
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.
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.
Userlevel 7
+17
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.
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.
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...
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...
Userlevel 1
And for what it's worth, I'd swap the pricing on the Play1 and the Connect.
This is why you're not in management, the Play:1 is already the fastest selling Sonos hardware they've ever released. The slowest selling? The Connect (according to my national distributor). Sonos will be making far more money off of the Play:1 than they will the Connect, simply because they're selling a lot more of them.
Let's face it, the tech is the communication protocol...which is the Connect.
Now what are you talking about? The Connect is just another zoneplayer, same as the Connect:Amp, the Play:5, the Play:3 and the Play:1, they all contain the same communication protocol.
it's just going to show them that there aren't any good streaming services that play nice with Sonos...
Leaving aside that there are plenty of good streaming services that work with Sonos (and Spotify still works btw, just not Spotify Connect), what difference would putting a Connect in someone's house make compared to a Play:1, they both play EXACTLY the same streaming services, there's no difference in what's on offer.
It is not practical for hardware manufacturers to custom code for each service. It is not practical for services to custom code for each hardware player.
SONOS developed an API for services and SPOTIFY has developed an API for hardware players.
Both hope that the other side will adopt "our" API.
Without an industry standard API, a company could easily spend most of its development time simply reacting to changes that others make to private API's, rather than innovating its own product. I see this with smaller companies constantly reacting to Apple and Microsoft, rather than innovating their own products. Market leaders can use this as a strategy to "manage" potential competitors.
I'm not a SPOTIFY user, but from my remote view, it seems that there is still some "dorm room" mentality in SPOTIFY's approach to software and server management.
Personally, the services are more or less interchangeable. Sure, there might be a great feature or exclusive artist here and there, but if I'm annoyed at a service, I'll fix that issue at the end of the current billing cycle by jumping to another service.
SONOS developed an API for services and SPOTIFY has developed an API for hardware players.
Both hope that the other side will adopt "our" API.
Without an industry standard API, a company could easily spend most of its development time simply reacting to changes that others make to private API's, rather than innovating its own product. I see this with smaller companies constantly reacting to Apple and Microsoft, rather than innovating their own products. Market leaders can use this as a strategy to "manage" potential competitors.
I'm not a SPOTIFY user, but from my remote view, it seems that there is still some "dorm room" mentality in SPOTIFY's approach to software and server management.
Personally, the services are more or less interchangeable. Sure, there might be a great feature or exclusive artist here and there, but if I'm annoyed at a service, I'll fix that issue at the end of the current billing cycle by jumping to another service.
That sounds nice, but the problem is, once you've really bought into a service like Spotify, it is difficult to switch. You have put a lot of effort into playlists, songs, etc., building a "library" that you don't really own. You can't just "move" that over to a new service. Below was an interesting article on the subject. I like Spotify, and hope it continues on Sonos, at least well enough, because switching would be a real pain.
http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/why-i-have-to-quit-spotify/
JDCJ,
I understand your point. Why would the services want to be interchangeable? "Lock-in" would seem to be the best business model -- at least for the biggest companies. Smaller companies could create a niche by being "universal". One reason that I don't commit deeply to services is because the "cloud" is so transient -- after a short storm the cloud dissipates.
I'm surprised that we don't have a pack of 3rd party utilities that could "scrape" a playlist and re-create it on another service. Conceptually, this is not very hard, but it would be messy because there will be spelling issues and some tracks might be exclusive to one service.
I understand your point. Why would the services want to be interchangeable? "Lock-in" would seem to be the best business model -- at least for the biggest companies. Smaller companies could create a niche by being "universal". One reason that I don't commit deeply to services is because the "cloud" is so transient -- after a short storm the cloud dissipates.
I'm surprised that we don't have a pack of 3rd party utilities that could "scrape" a playlist and re-create it on another service. Conceptually, this is not very hard, but it would be messy because there will be spelling issues and some tracks might be exclusive to one service.
Userlevel 7
+17
there are services that do just that.
for example, I used http://spotizr.com/, to copy all my spotify playlists to Deezer. That part went well, the Sonos integration worked but then I tried the mobile app on my iphone and it was total rubbish. Spotify will stream non-stop during my 1 hour commute in the car over 3G. Deezer stuttered, dropped out, regularly disconnected from bluetooth and was altogether hopeless. I went back to Spotify in the end.
With these music services the whole package has to work - the music content/quality, their own app, integration with sonos, and the other features that stand them out from the rest such as how good their recommendations are or how accurate the 'radio' is in playing similar music etc.
for me, Spotify ticks the most boxes which is why Im so disappointed the relationship between Sonos and spotify has soured so much that we wont likely ever have improvements in the sonos UI with Spotify (e.g. Radio) OR Spotify Connect built into Sonos.
for example, I used http://spotizr.com/, to copy all my spotify playlists to Deezer. That part went well, the Sonos integration worked but then I tried the mobile app on my iphone and it was total rubbish. Spotify will stream non-stop during my 1 hour commute in the car over 3G. Deezer stuttered, dropped out, regularly disconnected from bluetooth and was altogether hopeless. I went back to Spotify in the end.
With these music services the whole package has to work - the music content/quality, their own app, integration with sonos, and the other features that stand them out from the rest such as how good their recommendations are or how accurate the 'radio' is in playing similar music etc.
for me, Spotify ticks the most boxes which is why Im so disappointed the relationship between Sonos and spotify has soured so much that we wont likely ever have improvements in the sonos UI with Spotify (e.g. Radio) OR Spotify Connect built into Sonos.
Page 5 / 11
Enter your username or e-mail address. We'll send you an e-mail with instructions to reset your password.