You’ll soon be able to have full control over your Sonos speaker via the Spotify app on either desktop or mobile, making it easier to manage any number of Sonos devices while you’re kicking back on the couch.
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Sonos’ integration with Amazon’s cloud-based Alexa service should be a big win for Sonos fans, but isn’t a huge surprise. But most people simply stick to a single service, and what they really want to do is use the familiar interface of the service/app they prefer, and just “cast” the music to their speakers. Sonos’s vice president of software, Antoine Leblond, said that more than 50 percent of Sonos owners stream Spotify content, so expanding the six-year partnership between the streaming music service and the hardware company makes ideal sense. You’ll be able to control playback via voice and you can even ask Alexa about what’s playing. Although there won’t be any Alexa ears built right into Sonos’s speaker-which would be an integration worth some genuine excitement-you can now control them via the Amazon Echo, Echo Dot, and Amazon Tap.
According to Sonos president Patrick Spence, the company is catering to what it sees as two huge trends: the rise of streaming music, and the growth of the connected home. “We don’t care what you listen to, how you get to it, or in what room – we just want it to be effortless, quick and epic. Alexa on Sonos will be all that, and fun too”.
Now the only way to control Sonos is using their proprietary app. Look for that free software update to be available as part of the Sonos public beta program this October.
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Additional features are expected in the near future as well. This is a huge change from the way that Sonos has operated to date by pushing all music management through its own controller app. Sonos calls themselves the “sound platform for the connected home” and that means Sonos is still the foundation to which all of these new controls connect. Spotify’s integration goes even deeper, allowing you to start playing something on your iPhone, perhaps in your vehicle, and then simply hand that off to Sonos when you get into the house.
