I’ve always loved my Sonosmulti-room speaker system. It’s a near perfect combo of size, fidelity and wireless convenience. My single beef has been that using Sonos speakers meant using the Sonos app as a controller. And it works well, I missed some features that I enjoyed on Spotify, Pandora and other music apps.
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Sonos is opening control of its popular wireless speakers to Spotify, Amazon’s Echo, Pandora and likely other streaming services.
Spotify
Sonos today announced an integration that will allow Spotify Premium users to control their Sonos sound systems directly from the Spotify app, including play controls and grouping of rooms. This free software update will be available in October as part of the Sonos public beta program.
“We’re excited to partner with Sonos and enhance the at home listening experience,” said Gustav Söderström, chief product officer at Spotify. “Spotify listeners can now seamlessly transition their listening throughout the day from their headphones, to the car, to their computers, to their Sonos system at home with complete control of all their favorite Spotify features directly from the Spotify app.”
Amazon Echo
Sonos is also opening its system to the Amazon Echo Alexa voice driven assistant. Echo will accept limited commands later this year. But when it rolls out in full in 2017, commands will include “Alexa, play me music,” “Alexa, skip,” and “Alexa, what’s playing,” and more
Pandora, China, Airbnb & More
Pandora also announced that its app would also control Sonos systems directly. Details on functionality were slim, but the integration should happen before the end of the year. There’s no word yet on when other music apps will connect to Sono, but in an increasingly competitive market for both wireless speakers and music services, we;’ll like see more matchups.
Sonos also announced they they would be pushing into China via a partnership with QQ Music, the streaming music service owned by Tencent, that country’s largest tech company. A partnership offering Sonos system to Airbnb hosts was also announced..