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Apple Music Available on Sonos Devices Starting December 15

jdag said:
"...biggest fish in a tiny pond...a relatively small market..."

I could not disagree more. This space is poised to EXPLODE over the next couple of years.

Sonos is not bluetooth. It is not a 1:1 relationship between a device and a single speaker. It is not just a bunch of speakers around the house. It is a super well-designed ecosystem that changes how you listen to audio in a home. And it is incredibly flexible in how you set it up, ranging from a single speaker up to 32 zones.

For anyone interested in whole-home audio, or even a single speaker, look into Sonos. Their product reviews on every major retail site are phenomenal for a reason.
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No doubt it's a great product. But even you imply that today it's a small market. You predict it will explode, but it hasn't yet. As soon as it begins to explode, don't doubt for a second that larger competitors will enter this market and do so very quickly and with the sort of scale that Sonos will have a lot of trouble staying ahead of.

Take Bose for example: they have 200 retail stores, a dedicated shelf in most Best Buys, Targets, and other electronics retailers, and a giant sponsorship agreement with the NFL. If the market was large enough, they would be in it and they would probably have more sales than Sonos does today. Quality of product and software aside, Bose simply has a really strong operations capability. That's just one example - many other companies out there with an even stronger position. I have to wonder, why is this market so quiet? The most likely explanation is that it is still small, and nascent.

Another explanation is maybe Sonos has patents which are keeping competitors out. If that is the case, then that is great for them. That also would explain the high prices.

I should add that I wish Sonos will see great success. I only commented on the price earlier to express my opinion that it is priced too high. I'm sure some economist working for the company has already crunched the numbers and can probably prove me wrong, but I suspect it would be best to sell for a lower price today to gain more users who might upgrade or add more speakers in the long run than it would be price all speakers high. They don't have a single lead-generating product for sale. That is a mistake, in my opinion.
 
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mabaker said:
You can have everything with AirTunes or AirPlay - why use Sonos? Some day Sonos will go bankrupt and you will be left with a broken set of overpriced loudspeakers.
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Haha, now you know what it it feels like to be on the other side of the Android/iOS fence ;)

AirPlay is just plain buggy. It drives me nuts. I have an iPhone 5S and I frequently want to AirPlay a YouTube video or show photos to my Apple TV 3 and 4. 70% of the time it works great, but it frequent drops out, has long pauses before things start, the ad before the video plays but the video itself doesn't play, it looks like it will start but then it just quietly decides not to play, etc, etc, etc.

Sonos "just works". Their devices are also very pretty, well-engineered (arguably over-engineered), and expensive. It is the Apple of streaming audio products.
 
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It will take Apple just as long to get Apple music working as it should too :D and luckily i won't be there
 
notjustjay said:
Sonos "just works". Their devices are also very pretty, well-engineered (arguably over-engineered), and expensive. It is the Apple of streaming audio products.
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Agree. Furthermore look (...listen to) what they got out of these small boxes with the new "Trueplay" feature. I am amazed, I never would have expected such a an improvement.
 
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soheilk said:
The only problem I have with Sonos is that no matter how much you talk about its benefits, no one will understand it. ... You won't really appreciate the benefits of Sonos until you have at least two of their speakers. Not many people are willing to spend $400 just to try an ecosystem. Sonos has to do a lot of marketing/branding and educate consumers if they really want people to get on board.
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This. Sonos is, and always has been, a solution for multi-room home audio. But they decided to play in the personal speaker market where there is SOME overlap but fierce competition. Sonos is their own worst enemy sometimes in this regard. So many reviews of their products treat it as though it was just a Bluetooth speaker for streaming audio from your phone, and even criticize Sonos according to those assumptions (why isn't it battery powered? why is it so expensive?)

OK, the difference is this:

Bluetooth and AirPlay speakers are "slave" devices to your playback device. Your device (iPhone for example) does the music playback, whether from MP3/AAC or streaming audio from a website, and then sends an audio stream via Bluetooth or WiFi to a speaker that's standing by on the network ready to play whatever audio stream it receives.

Sonos is an independent playback device on your network. You tell it where to look for ALL the music you care about (URLs to multiple streaming services, and/or a location on your network where your MP3/AAC stash exists, such as a NAS, or your phone) and Sonos is smart enough to do the rest. You can turn off your phone and put it away. The Sonos device(s) will keep playing. It will stand up its own wireless mesh network to communicate with other Sonos units in your house to strengthen its own wireless signal and to synchronize with other players in the house so they stay in lock-step perfect sync. Sonos devices can pair together for stereo playback or to become surround sound units for a Playbar. You can set up a single playlist consisting of your own music + Apple Music + Spotify or whatever, and it'll play everything you got.

If your primary use case is playing music from your phone, to one speaker, in one location, then Sonos isn't really the right solution. Where Sonos really shines is when you set it up around the house, point it to a stash of music on your NAS (or subscribe to streaming services) and either let different users play what they want, where they want, or let one thing play all over the house. Can you also do this with a variety of Bluetooth or AirPlay speakers? Yes. Will that be cheaper? Yes. Will it be as seamless or smooth or convenient? No.
 
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macsmurf said:
First example that came to mind: Third-party apps are not allowed to use NFC.
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Apple does this all the time. They introduce a (for them) new functionality and keep it closed for the first generation of the device. Most if not all of these things opened up over time. Example: Siri, Navigation, search, notification center
 
mabaker said:
You can have everything with AirTunes or AirPlay - why use Sonos? Some day Sonos will go bankrupt and you will be left with a broken set of overpriced loudspeakers.
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airplay stinks. It's skips and stalls. There is always some reason why it fails. Sonos just works! you can use their speakers or your own. you choose
 
oneMadRssn said:
No doubt it's a great product. But even you imply that today it's a small market. You predict it will explode, but it hasn't yet. As soon as it begins to explode, don't doubt for a second that larger competitors will enter this market and do so very quickly and with the sort of scale that Sonos will have a lot of trouble staying ahead of.

Take Bose for example: they have 200 retail stores, a dedicated shelf in most Best Buys, Targets, and other electronics retailers, and a giant sponsorship agreement with the NFL. If the market was large enough, they would be in it and they would probably have more sales than Sonos does today. Quality of product and software aside, Bose simply has a really strong operations capability. That's just one example - many other companies out there with an even stronger position. I have to wonder, why is this market so quiet? The most likely explanation is that it is still small, and nascent.

Another explanation is maybe Sonos has patents which are keeping competitors out. If that is the case, then that is great for them. That also would explain the high prices.

I should add that I wish Sonos will see great success. I only commented on the price earlier to express my opinion that it is priced too high. I'm sure some economist working for the company has already crunched the numbers and can probably prove me wrong, but I suspect it would be best to sell for a lower price today to gain more users who might upgrade or add more speakers in the long run than it would be price all speakers high. They don't have a single lead-generating product for sale. That is a mistake, in my opinion.
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Bose do a multi-room system, but haven't been able to take Sonos' crown or market away from them (the fact you apparently didn't know they did one speaks volumes about the relative success of the two systems!). IMO, no-one does multi-room as well as Sonos and they're number one for a reason
 
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codydale said:
Not to mention the fact that Apple is spending their time with Sonos. I am not saying that Apple is the end-all-be-all, but they are not historically ones to waste their time collaborating with companies that are "doomed".
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Ever hear of a company called GT Advanced Technologies?

just sayin :)
 
mabaker said:
You can have everything with AirTunes or AirPlay - why use Sonos? Some day Sonos will go bankrupt and you will be left with a broken set of overpriced loudspeakers.
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If Apple made Airplay Compatible powered speakers then I would agree with you but right now its either sonos(or similar competitor), multiple bluetooth speakers, or an airport express for every set of speakers you have. I would love to see apple compete with Sonos in this space, leveraging airplay. With Beats on board I think it makes total sense.
 
Phil A. said:
Bose do a multi-room system, but haven't been able to take Sonos' crown or market away from them (the fact you apparently didn't know they did one speaks volumes about the relative success of the two systems!). IMO, no-one does multi-room as well as Sonos and they're number one for a reason
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I love the concept of the Bose units and I really wish Sonos would include a little screen and some preset buttons to their players so I can quickly activate a music playlist or streaming audio station without reaching for my pocket to start up the iPhone app and select the music.

The touch panel on the new Play 5 is a step in the right direction.
 
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Me, too - Sonos is awesome. I have airplay connected to my system for rare needs but it's really way, way better than something like airplay on a number counts. Mostly airplay is just way less reliable and flexible and adds another layer of network load.


gforce216 said:
I love my Sonos speakers. It saves a lot on battery on my devices since they aren't constantly streaming to an AirPlay speaker. It's nice to just have music playing without having to worry about battery life.

Happy to see Apple Music is coming though! Just cancelled my Rdio subscription (RIP), so this is perfect timing.
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I've been using Sonos for 2 years and anyone that has used both Sonos and Airplay will have to agree that Airplay is laggy/and buggy. Sonos is very solid. Airplay is possible via sonos and I do it via an apple TV to get apple music, it is always cutting out, delayed, etc. Can't wait for this.

There's no downside to this. Don't understand the debate here.
 
Phil A. said:
Bose do a multi-room system, but haven't been able to take Sonos' crown or market away from them (the fact you apparently didn't know they did one speaks volumes about the relative success of the two systems!). IMO, no-one does multi-room as well as Sonos and they're number one for a reason
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Fair! I stand corrected!

I wonder what that reason is. Does Sonos have some secret sauce that Bose cannot copy?
 
peterdevries said:
Apple does this all the time. They introduce a (for them) new functionality and keep it closed for the first generation of the device. Most if not all of these things opened up over time. Example: Siri, Navigation, search, notification center
Click to expand...

So? By the way, NFC is now in its second hardware generation and second major iOS version without a public API in sight.
 
mabaker said:
You can have everything with AirTunes or AirPlay - why use Sonos? Some day Sonos will go bankrupt and you will be left with a broken set of overpriced loudspeakers.
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Why will they go bankrupt? Because they are too expensive for you to afford?
 
69Mustang said:
Not sure if this is still applicable, but Sonos wants (wanted) it's competitors to take advantage of it's technology. They want the market to grow.
http://www.technobuffalo.com/2014/03/10/sonos-releases-patents-for-competitors-to-use/

If this is still true, go on them. Letting their products stand on it's merits and letting the market decide.
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Not quite as generous as what the headline says. Sonos is publishing the text of their patents earlier than they would otherwise be made available. They aren't letting anyone use their technology for free though. Sonos is likely doing this for two reasons: (1) to promote licensing, make it more appealing for others to license their patent portfolio by making it publicly viewable earlier which also makes it seems larger; and (2) to create prior art, make it more difficult for competitors to get patents in this area if examiners can cite Sono's applications that would otherwise be private until the patent issues or the application publishes.
 
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BrentD said:
99% of the people who complain about or attempt to discredit Sonos have never used or lived with Sonos products.
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I'm part of the 1%. I bought a PLAY:3 after hearing great things about SONOS. The system requires you to either have bought music or be a subscriber to a monthly service. You can only use their speakers and system. The UI is good, but not great. But most importantly the speaker is terrible, especially at volume. The distortion is horrible. It sounds like some cheap audio system a teenager dropped in a used Kia. I have Phillips and Vizio sound bars hooks up to ATV4s and they sound better, access all of my music, and cost less for both then the one PLAY:3.

Maybe I got a bad speaker, I don't know, but I'm an owner and definitely not a fan.
 
zubikov said:
Sonos has decent sound quality, but I really don't like the idea of being locked into one brand of speakers for the sake of convenience. They're also really, really overpriced. Many here confuse "overpriced" with "unaffordable". They're overpriced because you can spend $100 on a really nice plugin speaker and $25 on an Airplay adapter (eBay). Or you can spend $100 - $300 on dozens of AirPlay speakers of varying size and quality....Or you can drop $300 and get locked into one brand, Sonos, for your whole house. This makes no sense. How about Apple focuses on making AirPlay perfect instead?

I have 5 AirPlay devices throughout the house, all different brands and setups (ATV, DLNA adapter, old AirPort Express and built into iHome speaker). It's very convenient and I'd really like to see Apple build on its own infrastructure). Only caveat, it currently requires really strong WiFi.
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Price, beyond a straight calculation of reimbursement of input costs, is an indistinct concept. In the end, the price is what the market will bear, and at the moment the market bears what Sonos is asking. You are on an Apple related forum, so surely you must understand that, because many complain that Apple devices are overpriced, but billions seem to think that is OK.
 
BrentD said:
99% of the people who complain about or attempt to discredit Sonos have never used or lived with Sonos products.
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Or simply can't afford them, so are stamping their feet about it...while forking out a far greater premium over similar products to by an iPhone: go figure?
 
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