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Massive house makeover on the horizon, Sonos Arc looks like it ticks all of the boxes for the TV room along with the sub and a couple of 1SL’s up the rear, but my kitchen and garden need an audio solution to. Hmm, 4 1SL’s and a Sub should work in a 484 square feet kitchen diner space, right?

I enter into the negotiation with the wife. “You want to spend £4000 on speakers” was her first question. 

Well yeah babes, course I do. She uses her 1SL all the time, moves it from room to room, even the garden in the summer so SONOS seems an obvious choice. Wireless, WiFi, fuss free, you get what you pay for in this day and age, yeah? Well, until I try to play music off my S10+ from YouTube and fail miserably. Why isn’t my 1SL in the list of devices I can cast to? This should be easy right?

OK so I went around the bizarres with the sales team. I’m not speaking to anyone in the US, that’s for sure. I follow their advice about adding YouTube Music to my services, only to be met with the access denied issue, a year after people first started complaining about it. No solution, and functionality looks awful. 

What’s up sales? I’m told in no uncertain terms I need an Apple device to cast to my new, hypothetical solution. But like 50% of the US, and 70% of the rest of the world, I don’t have a bloody Apple device in the house. That’s a choice, and I made it a decade ago. 

So, hang on, am I missing something? What on earth is a high calibre company like Sonos doing making marketing decisions like this? You can have our great products, but you can only get them to work as expected if you buy an Ipad? 

Bit of research later, I dropped the sales team a reply. Fella’s, really? If you expect me to drop 4K on speakers, are you going to buy me the iPad? I got a response, completely ignoring my comments on Chromecast and was promptly redirected to the support team about my less than functional Sonos App. 

 

How do we fix this?

We all have different priorities.  Sonos is designed to play music files  An Android casting solution would be a bonus for me, but I can can live with just being able to play files on my phone,  NAS drive and 50 million tracks on Amazon Music  Not to mention podcasts and Internet radio..

Just because a system costs a lot of money it doesn't mean it has to have any particular feature. If it's not worth the money given your requirements don't buy it.

As it happens I can listen to You Tube using my Arc or Playbar.  I hardly ever do.

I wonder how many sales Sonos lose for lack of Chromecast? I suspect very few, but your guess is as good as mine. 

I don't know John, perhaps the 1023 topics referring to Chromecast on the sonos community forums might be a starting point. And that's just the folk who have most likely invested in sonos only to be disappointed? I like to do my research before big spending. Steaming music has all but replaced conventional means, so your NAS and phone files might as well be parked alongside your CD collection. My point being, why the jump in bed with Apple approach when Apple only represents 30% of global mobile usage. The third party streaming support is pretty awful as far as functionality goes, when in fact just supporting Chromecast, like they do for Apple would negate all of development needed in the 3rd party service support. Just let me cast music from any source using established protocol, don't bother wasting time with APIs and selective support. Not a lot to ask for top end prices? 

I mostly stream.  I own no Apple devices. It is possible to stream directly to Sonos with many service apps, giving full functionality on Spotify, Amazon Music and Tidal,  amongst others. Were you unaware of that? Your comments suggest so. (It was also possible with GPM. Maybe  YTM to come?)

I am indifferent to your sneers about locally stored music BTW.

And your count of threads allegedly 'mentioning Chromecast' is a hilarious example of the misuse of statistics. 

Not sure why you would be so defensive over a poor business model? As an android user, I'm only asking for the same functionality as my apple counterparts. It isn't just about music, I watch a lot of cooking channels on YouTube in my kitchen. I shouldn't have to be told to use one particular service over another, not at top end prices when many other options offer both airplay and chromecast on a budget. I also respect the fact that lossless audio on a NAS is preferable. I have a synology myself, with a bunch of stuff I've previously purchased but then the loss of iTunes would indicate streaming to be favoured to focus marketing no doubt. I guess my question is, what is stopping sonos supporting chromecast? The Internet has its reasons, but what about the CEO, or sonos just coming clean and explaining its decision? 

I can only agree that it would be better, all things being equal, for Sonos to have a means of casting from Android.

So I can only assume that things are not all equal, that there is some technical reason why Sonos has not gone down this route, or that it is not seen as commercially beneficial enough to merit the scarce development resource necessary. 

Sonos rarely explain their rationale for not doing something. They never comment on plans. It's an article of faith - if they were to comment on one thing then people will infer something if they don't comment on tbe next thing. I find that frustrating at times but it has always been that way.

Maybe Sonos dislike the Chromecast tech in the same way they disliked Airplay 1 and never implemented it

We can only guess, I'm afraid,  like it or not.

I still say that Sonos are under no obligation to provide any particular feature whatever the price. If there are cheaper products that do Chromecast you can buy them. And do without the other things that Sonos does, or does better. All competitor comparisons involve a compromise. Your money, your choice. If Sonos have got this wrong then they will pay the commercial price. 

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