The awe and pain of Apple Music integration

IMHO, the best options among the three major streaming services is Google Play. It's easily the most powerful in the Sonos App.

Taking at face value what Sonos says - that staff reads all the posts - when can we expect either Direct Control for Apple Music, or the integration of the "Like" feature in the existing Sonos controller for Apple Music? An answer from Sonos Staff to this would be appreciated.

Hey guys, great discussion here. We read everything and pass feedback up to the right teams too. I can't shed much light here on either of the requests today. There isn't any official announcements that I can let you in on, though as you saw from the release back in August, we'd love to work with more music service partners in the future.

I know the question of "who do we need to talk to" get's asked a lot and when it comes to music services and Sonos it's always a "both" answer. For every integration we add or develop, there is a lot of work to be done on both ends. There isn't any one side that needs to do all the work, teams on both sides work together to develop new features. That means there's a lot of moving parts and different priorities.

Thanks for keeping the discussion friendly and please let us know if we can answer any questions for you. We're really happy with the work that's being done and where this part of music listening is heading.

Oh, and Happy New Year! (It's only a little over a week in, I can say that still, right?)

please let us know if we can answer any questions for you.
Yes; over a year ago, when Apple Music and Sonos coming together was announced with some fanfare, was the release of Direct Control for Apple Music a la Spotify referred to? When the release of Apple Music integration into the Sonos controller was announced?
Memory fails me, but I seem to remember reading of something to come on these lines in some official talk in the last 12 months, hence the follow up questions.

I don't remember any official announcement around that release either. There's certainly been a lot of rumor around that request but I don't believe there's every been an official statement confirming that it's in the works, or planned.

We were certainly talking about direct control from native apps more than a year ago in regards to music services, but I don't think Apple Music was ever spelled out as one of them. Perhaps you read an article or blog somewhere that may have taken a few liberties and guesses or thought they were connecting the right dots. This last announcement in August was one of the first times (certainly in a while) Sonos pulled back the curtain a bit and let people know what we were working on well in advance of it coming out.

Fair enough, and thanks for that update Ryan.

So if you don't think Apple's integration is complete, why aren't you telling this to Apple? They're the ones who did the majority of the development against Sonos' published API, just like all the other service providers. I'll never understand Apple fanboyz...

I'm admittedly an Apple Fanboy, but must agree that this is on Apple not Sonos. Apple has a really bad habit of not playing well with others. Looks at Spotify, it works with Sonos, Alexa, etc. You can use the Spotify app to now control Sonos directly. Why hasn't Apple done the same? I'm trying Deezer right now and it offers almost complete integration with the Sonos app and lossless music.

Even inside it's own app, Apple Music is lacking so many things. For a company claiming music is in their DNA, Apple really needs to step up. The Apple Music app can't even indicate duplicate music additions to a playlist.

Chalk this poor integration up to Apple.

This is a great thread—while I think rather than disagreeing, we should create a campaign... #AppleSonosJustMakeItWork (or something). 😃

I appreciate the engineering y'all @Sonos do everyday, so though I may sound demanding, it's with the belief that with enough resources and attention from both companies, this is definitely solvable. With Apple selling Sonos in their stores, it's a clear victory for both companies to make it work beautifully, not half-way (as is currently the case).

I wonder if both Apple and Sonos are aware of how many users this integration would positively impact. I'm sure they are. They can only guess at how much more demand it would create.

I really want to create playlists based on tracks I've "loved" in Apple Music, but I never listen via the native app, only through Sonos, so I have hardly any "loves." I bet right now, there are thousands of Apple / Sonos users who would up-vote Kumar's question, "When can we expect either Direct Control for Apple Music, or the integration of the "Like" feature in the existing Sonos controller for Apple Music?" but they're simply not searching forums and looking for this thread.

If anyone on this thread hasn't nagged Apple about this, please do it now:
https://www.apple.com/feedback/apple-music.html

My comments for Apple below: (Thanks Kumar for the language of part 1)

Feature Improvement:
When can we expect either Direct Control for Apple Music, or the integration of the "Like" feature in the existing Sonos controller for Apple Music? See this thread on Sonos forums: https://en.community.sonos.com/music-culture-the-industry-228997/the-awe-and-pain-apple-music-integration-6763544/index1.html

Playlists:
I'd really like to be able to either "love" tracks within Sonos controller, or better yet, use Apple Music to directly control my Sonos system, via their generic API, (that Spotify has smartly already taken advantage of!) I'm pretty loyal to Apple Music for economic reasons (family plan isn't offered by Spotify, I moved here from Spotify, from Rhapsody originally). This would be a major upgrade for me, as I want to create playlists based on my "loves" as I discover music. Otherwise, it's very cumbersome. I have to search for each song in iTunes while listening to Sonos to add it to a playlist—terribly inefficient. Thanks for taking my concerns to heart, and imagining that I definitely speak for thousands who just didn't find the right place to voice their request. 😛