Spotify Connect, serious competition

unfortunately my early eagerness over Rdio has come to an abrupt end :-(
I spend approx 2 hours a day commuting by car. I have an unlimited data contract on my iphone so have Spotify playing continuously via bluetooth during that time, normally with Spotify Radio so I can find new music or old music Ive not heard in a while.

Sadly the Rdio app falls well short of Spotify's when 'on the go'. Even on the lowest quality setting, songs take ages to buffer but I have no issues, even at high quality, on Spotify. I am therefore left with pauses during playback either at the end of a song or worse still during it. Secondly the bluetooth output is very unreliable - sometimes, and for no apparent reason, the sound just drops out though the song continues to play as shown on the progress bar. Switching from blutooth to iphone and its still silence. only way to get it going again is to kill the app and restart it. Obviously this is not what you want to be doing whilst trying to drive ! Again, no such issues with Spotify's Iphone app.

So despite the improved features on Sonos I cant continue with Rdio due to its poor mobile app compared to Spotify.

Any other music service suggestions in the UK or do I have to stick with Spotify and hope for the best ?

Sounds like you had the same experience I did a while back when I tried out Rdio for a few months (didn't have Sonos at the time). I was hoping the mobile streaming improved, but it doesn't sound like it. Spotify never buffers for me - I think their streaming tech is significantly more robust. Also, I think it helps that the Spotify mobile apps cache songs.

Honestly I would just stick with Spotify for now and see how it goes. The nice thing about these services are we pay month-to-month, so it is very easy to get out.

ok, so its in Italian but here is the first commercially available implementation of Spotify Connect:

http://www.dday.it/redazione/10483/Spotify-Connect-arriva-su-Philips-Fidelio-.html

Philips announced yesterday that he was the first partner of Spotify to implement the new technology and it did not on new products but with firmware update existing range of products

I think its a real shame that what would be clearly possible in Sonos (via firmware) is not being permitted.

Although Phillips wireless speakers used to use something called 'AirStudio' - makes me wonder if Spotify bought the technology and relabelled it 'Spotify Connect' which is why they were able to make this work via a firmware update since the appropriate chip is already inside ? if so, this wouldnt help with Sonos.

If Sonos get more competition in the entry level / low end of the market from Spotify this may force them to become even more competitive? Reducing prices and adding functionality.... i.e. a drop in their entry level product (play3) and maybe reducing their value priced products (i..e the Connect, which should cost less than a play3 to manufacture). Or maybe even consider moving into the music service territory to take on Spotify directly? I know they have had competition before but it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Does anyone know how many customers Sonos has? I think read that Spotify has about 30M subscribers, of which 8M are paying for the premium experience.

If Sonos get more competition in the entry level / low end of the market from Spotify this may force them to become even more competitive? Reducing prices and adding functionality.... i.e. a drop in their entry level product (play3) and maybe reducing their value priced products (i..e the Connect, which should cost less than a play3 to manufacture).

You mean reduce their profit to almost nothing (it's unlikely they're making much more than 10% now).

Or maybe even consider moving into the music service territory to take on Spotify directly?

Are you nuts? Spotify have been doing this for nearly 5 years and have yet to make a profit (lost more money in the last 12 months than the previous year and we're talking >$50M losses every year I think), and they're the most successful of these services, how do you think Sonos could ever compete with that starting from scratch? They'd have to be insane to even contemplate it.

I just quit my spotify subscription a couple of days ago, so am not worried about this.

I might just be lucky to live in Denmark, but my internet provider also has a streaming service, as do most here. And it has full integration to Sonos! Have been waiting for ages for the spotify radio to be available for sonos, but since that it was already available with yousee it was bye bye spotify!

Not sure if all countries internet providers provide streaming like they do here, but if they do I'd suggest that sonos focus on these instead of worrying about spotify.

To be honest, if i wasn't already a Sonos owner i would no longer buy Sonos gear due to these developements. The one thing that Sonos isn't very good at is creating a decent user interface, the rest i have no complaints about. Any company can stream music, but in today's market the added functions / apps / radiostations just make the difference. And Sonos can't seem to integrate these, at least not in a user friendly way.

Due to the absence of radio i also ended my Spotify account and switched to Deezer. The integration of Deezer is just slightly better, so it annoys the hell out of me that i can't use all the nice features Deezer has to offeron my Sonos system. Lately i see myself more often picking up a decent pair of headphones in stead of my Sonos system to listen some music, simply to use these features from the deezer web app.

Sonos really needs to convince users that they are able to integrate music services (web 2.0 style) in the near future. If not i think Sonos is going to lose this battle, at least for me.

To be honest, if i wasn't already a Sonos owner i would no longer buy Sonos gear due to these developements. The one thing that Sonos isn't very good at is creating a decent user interface, the rest i have no complaints about. Any company can stream music, but in today's market the added functions / apps / radiostations just make the difference. And Sonos can't seem to integrate these, at least not in a user friendly way.

Due to the absence of radio i also ended my Spotify account and switched to Deezer. The integration of Deezer is just slightly better, so it annoys the hell out of me that i can't use all the nice features Deezer has to offeron my Sonos system. Lately i see myself more often picking up a decent pair of headphones in stead of my Sonos system to listen some music, simply to use these features from the deezer web app.

Sonos really needs to convince users that they are able to integrate music services (web 2.0 style) in the near future. If not i think Sonos is going to lose this battle, at least for me.

I mostly agree with this. In fact, after years of evangelizing Sonos to anyone who would listen I would now advise them to wait and see how Spotify connect shakes out. I can use the much superior app for Spotify and others through AirPlay but that is spotty and inconsistent. If Sonos would implement Spotify Connect, they would have something much better than these standalone speakers.

If they can't or won't, they should hope Spotify Connect doesn't take off like it seems it should.

To be honest, if i wasn't already a Sonos owner i would no longer buy Sonos gear due to these developements.

Interesting. As a very recent owner (last weekend I purchased my first Connect and Bridge) Spotify, did not feature at all in my decision making process, having 10k songs in FLAC on a Synology NAS and a desire to simultaneously stream to multiple rooms, ruling out most other solutions.

That said, a weekend of teh Spotify trial has opened my mind...wow. And led to the inevitable question as to how I could get Spotify app functionality through Sonos app...and then led me to this thread to be disappointed! Even after a weekend, life without Sonos+Spotify would not be good.

So, I'm not sure I agree with you on this, as I think Spotify is just one aspect of a very good product.

Am I right in saying though that it is probably the case that Spotify would continue to be offered in the Sonos app, just that Spotify Connect/Radio etc would not integrate with Sonos? i.e we will retain what we have but no more?

I don't know what all the fuss is about. I have not tried spotify since its not available here in Canada but everything I gave read comparison wise, indicate RDIO blows spotify and and ALL the others away when it comes to the interface features and usability. And, the actual app itself has many more fearures than going thru the Sonos app. Many on the RDIO help site are continuously stating how they switched over from spotify because of the first rate interface and features. Not sure about the bitrate comparison or size of songs catalogue but most claim that cannot tell a difference.
As for the buffering mentioned, I haven't experienced this. Maybe that was a temporary bug in the app which gas been fixed as they do continuously update the app almost monthly.

thedarkone,

First post! Welcome to the forums.

SONOS integration is a cooperative effort between the services and SONOS. As far as we know, SONOS does charge or receive any fees for the integration. Early on, SONOS was hand coding each service, but with dozens of potential services this effort would ultimately bury SONOS in details. SONOS turned this around and now offers a free API (Application Programing Interface) to services. Any service supporting this API can be included in SONOS in a blink.

If the music services choose not to support a feature of the SONOS API or withdraw support completely, SONOS does not have any leverage. The service would make the decision based on its business model.

Also, there is another agent -- the copyright holder. Each track is separately licensed for play in specific geographic areas, and for play on each device. Things can become strange because some tracks are authorized for play on radio like services where the listener cannot call up a given track, but the tracks are not authorized for track by track play. This means, for example, that one can listen to occasional Beatles tracks on a rock radio service, but the listener cannot call up a particular track. Whole artist libraries can appear or disappear overnight. Or, a given album might include eleven tracks, but only ten are licensed for online play.

For me, the services are more or less the interchangeable. If one service becomes a problem, I'll fix that problem at the end of the current billing cycle.

Bottom line: as users we can vote with our credit cards, but we don't have any real control. I don't recommend purchasing SONOS or any other player predicated on the availability of a particular service or feature.