Sonos Integrates With Rdio for More On Demand Streaming

      
Sonos' wireless Web-centric music players were my most favorite hardware gadget in 2010, bringing instant access to practically all music and other radio to any room in my home with fantastic quality. Forgoing physical media, Sonos has instead tapped into the world of streaming content, including Last.fm, Spotify, and Sirius integration, to name a few. Now, the company has embraced another increasingly popular up and coming music streaming service with social elements, Rdio - which is gaining visibility at a time when Spotify has seen delays in being opened up to full US use, open to only an elite few domestically.

Sonos Adds Rdio Support for Their Players

Sonos says their mission is "to connect you with all of the music on the planet", and adding Rdio, which delivers songs and artists on demand through integrated search and taps friends music collections and playlists to bring you more from the community, extends that reach significantly.

Rdio Displays Friends' Collections Next to Other Music Sources

Sonos has matched their great hardware offerings with simple and intuitive software for the desktop, iPhone and iPad. Adding Rdio as a service to my existing set up was very easy - simply requiring a single visit to the "More Music" menu on my Sonos Controller, adding my Rdio credentials and proceeding. After connection, Rdio slid in next to Spotify, Sirius and Last.fm, giving me yet another major source for streaming music.

Streaming Underworld on Sonos via Rdio

Integration with Rdio on Sonos is not available for free Rdio accounts, but instead requires a $9.99 a month Rdio Unlimited subscription (which I paid for - no freebies here). Rdio Unlimited promises unlimited Web access, mobile access and the option to sync to your mobile phone as well, so it's possible I'll be taking Rdio with me outside of Sonos if I'm on the go.

The Sonos announcement also comes with a 7-day free trial, so check that out here: http://www.rdio.com/Sonos/

Rdio Tracks My Music History via Sonos

Sonos is the best music hardware out there today - no hesitation in saying so - and their tie-ins with more sources like Rdio and Spotify are very smart. As for comparing Rdio and Spotify? That's no doubt another post. But if you've already got Sonos and you want to give Rdio a spin... the doors are open.

Quality Music by Cloud, Managed by iPhone, at Home

The new musical centerpiece in our home doesn't have an LCD display to tell me the music playing. It doesn't have preset stations, or an antenna. It doesn't have a slot for one or more CDs, and it doesn't even have a dock to hold my iPhone. It just looks like a fashionable speaker , and the only buttons it has are small and simple. Volume up and down or Mute. Why? Because this new device, the Sonos S5, pulls all of its music from the Web, and is fully controlled by my iPhone or desktop application, without suffering any of the tinny, lower quality audio I've come to accept through computer speakers and other devices. And if I had a bigger house, I could play the same music throughout the house simply by getting another unit. Someday...


The Sonos S5 Unit Has No Face, But Lots of Good Sound

On Saturday, the doorbell rang with a somewhat surprising delivery package. Sonos' PR team, which contacted me late last year, which I hadn't been thinking about, had sent me the stereo, and a hub to connect to my home network to try. Within 15 minutes, I had the hub connected to my Airport network, the stereo sitting in our living room, and was tapping in to my Last.fm account, Sirius Radio account and could even get local radio stations of all sorts.

The stereo's arrival couldn't have come at a better time for two reasons. The first reason is that the Bose soundsystem with iPhone dock I got a little over a year ago recently stopped working, for who knows what reason, and we have had to take it out of commission for repair. Second, the Sonos extends my continued efforts to be less reliant on local media, and more reliant on data stored elsewhere - best exemplified by my purchase of the MacBook Air and recent avoidance of iTunes, iPhoto, PhotoShop and other "heavy apps".




Sonos' iPhone App Controls the Stereo's MusicAnd Where It Is Played In the House

I am no audiophile, but I do listen to music a ton, and enjoy having good songs on when I am at home - especially as the twins both enjoy dancing to tunes with any kind of rhythm. With the Sonos, I've played with getting one of the kids to be dancing in front of the unit, only to pause it remotely with my iPhone, which stops them in mid-shake, only to look back at me with curiosity and disdain.

Managing the Sonos via iPhone has been a huge plus to a home already covered in a fine layer of remote controls. Instead of yet another remote to chase down when lost, or moved by a toddler, I just use the Sonos Desktop controller or the free iPhone app. From the iPhone app, I can navigate between different music sources, and see which song is currently playing. If I had multiple units, I could see what song is playing on each unit, and possibly even play different songs in different places. The absence of setup is also a solid benefit to the Sonos. The first step was to configure a small hub, to sit atop my Airport Extreme, looking like its younger brother, and the second step was to connect the Sonos to power. It pulls down the music wirelessly from the hub, and no other wires had to be configured - as it should be.




Sonos Shows Local Radio Stations
And Lets Me "Love" Last.fm Tracks

If there is anything to complain about with the Sonos, it's that it doesn't feature Spotify support right away. But considering that Spotify is not truly out in the US yet, I can't make too much of a fuss. If the music is available on a hard drive from your network, Sonos can find it, and Sonos also supports Pandora and Rhapsody in addition to Last.fm and Sirius, which I use.



Cranking Tunes from Sirius and Last.fmBrings Paul van Dyk to the Home Stereo

If you were curious, and in the interest of full disclosure, as always, yes, the device was initially shipped to me free of cost, but in the interest of being fair, and not seeming biased, I have already contacted the Sonos PR rep to make sure I can purchase the unit. As for that old broken Bose, if we ever do get it fixed, maybe we can let it be handed off to someone else in the family who needs one, because it looks like we have a real replacement.

For another review of the Sonos S5, which is making its way around many tech blogs this month, see Rick Klau's extensive writeup. He has been a loyal customer for three years.

iTunes, Sirius Seem Antiquated After Spotify iPhone Trial

After an initial test of Spotify back in August, I said the product was the best streaming music service I had ever tried. While I still listen to much of my music through the dozens of gigabytes I have in my iTunes library, Spotify makes searching for practically anything or finding new tracks I haven't yet purchased very simple. After meeting with Shak of Spotify last week at LeWeb, I was given early access to Spotify's iPhone application - still not yet approved here in the United States - and my experience with it has me rethinking my traditional marriage to purchased and downloaded music. While there has been a lot of recent talk about Apple's purchase of LaLa and their future plans with the service, Spotify has me seriously thinking if I even need a stored music library at all.


Search and Find Artists, Tracks on Spotify for iPhone
As I told you back in June, I subscribed to Sirius XM satellite radio after the company debuted its iPhone application. Combined with my iTunes library, I have a solid archive of music I've purchased, and access to new music through Sirius' stations. Now that I have Spotify on both the desktop and the iPhone, I haven't found a need for Sirius, and I have even avoided opening iTunes, which has become far too bloated for me, slowing down my computer as it loads my ever-growing database.


Some of the Great Tracks (and art) on Spotify for iPhone
As you might expect, the iPhone version of Spotify mirrors that of its desktop sibling. Its two core sections are Playlists, both those you have made and friends' who you are following, and Search, which will find you Tracks, Albums and Artists that match your search criteria.

Click on any song in the search results, and it will start playing, streamed onto the iPhone. Hooking it up via my audio cable to the car stereo gave me excellent sound, as good, if not better, than Sirius has. Selecting an artist displays their albums on Spotify. You can choose an album and have it shuffle the songs, or start from the top.


Spotify Playlists Are Available and Sync to the iPhone
As one needs to log in to their Spotify account to gain access to music, the application synchronizes the playlists you have made or follow on the iPhone as well. This means that if you have selected any number of tracks and made them part of your personal playlist on the desktop application, the iPhone knows about it. And most interestingly, you can set up the application to use one or more of these playlists in an "Offline" mode, which will store the tracks to disk instead of streaming them over the air and hogging your bandwidth. While you are streaming, the app displays in green. If you are "offline", the background is blue, reminding you of your current state.

One of the selling points of the iTunes/iPhone phenomenon is that you can take all of your music with you anywhere you go. But as my own personal music library has expanded, now reaching 6,500 songs, comprising 41 Gigabytes and 26 days worth of tunes, Apple doesn't even make an iPhone large enough to do so, forcing me to synchronize a subset of my content. Even if it could, it's not as if the iPhone battery could last long enough to play every song once. That leaves only convenience as a benefit to having all of one's music with them when they are on the go, as well as possibly the feeling of self-satisfaction from knowing you paid for the individual tracks. Also beneficial to iTunes? Your own manufactured playlists, of course. But Spotify does that too. And with the speed at which you can search for tracks and find them anytime, it's close to that proverbial "any song on demand at any time" panacea we have always wanted.

My laptop, which I have been using for more than two years, after I bought it in September of 2007, often feels like it is getting a little long in the tooth. Apps don't boot up as quickly as they once did. The spinning wheel of death is a frequent visitor. Launching iTunes and its 40 gigabyte library isn't exactly something I am as fond of as I once was. With more and more applications moving to the cloud, Spotify seems well positioned to replace iTunes for me, if I ever were to take the plunge. The sheer geek pleasure of driving around town while streaming Spotify's hand-made playlists through the car stereo has been great, and the sound quality is excellent. The world of music has changed, and I am thinking differently about the value of music ownership and music access in general.

As mentioned in my last post on Spotify, the service, very popular in Europe, is looking to make its way to the US for more than just the select few using it now, in early 2010. The iPhone application is already being used outside of the US, and should arrive here around the same time. It has already changed the game for me, and I bet it will for many others once it debuts officially.

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FTC Disclosure: I have gained free access to Spotify premium, as well as access to the iPhone app prior to its US debut, without cost.

Spotify: The Best On Demand Music Library I've Ever Experienced

You might have read some of the recent coverage around Spotify's potential inclusion (or lack thereof) into the iTunes store. You might also have seen the company's term sheets floated about the Web, as the music streaming startup gears up from its limited release to one that could take the globe by storm. But if you live in the US, there is a fairly good chance you haven't actually gotten to try the application, unless you cheated and used a proxy, because to date, it has been limited to European audiences. Well, despite my years-long allegiance to iTunes, and recent signup to Sirius XM satellite radio, I got my hands on a press beta for the US version of Spotify, and it is amazing.


Spotify's Promise: Legal, Free and Instant. All 100% Valid.
Using Spotify is like having hundreds of thousands of crystal-clear music tracks on demand. After downloading the application tonight, I've closed my iTunes and have been powering through Spotify, finding hundreds of tracks from all my favorite bands, including Depeche Mode, Underworld, and Daft Punk, but I was also able to dial back a few decades, uncovering Jesus Jones, INXS, and The B-52s. You name the song, I found it, including rare remixes. And cheating by looking at songs I really liked on Sirius Radio, I even found more obscure artists, including Deadmau5, Kaskade, Kaz James and Kristinia Debarge.


724 Tracks from Armin Van Buuren In Spotify


Drilling in on The B-52s In Spotify
The promise of instant access to seemingly any song on the planet is apparently here. It's jaw dropping.

Like iTunes, Spotify displays the track that is being played, its length, the album name, and artist, and clicking on any of those items displays information about the track, or the artist, including biographical history. Like iTunes, you can hit shuffle and repeat. And like iTunes, the search capability is very good. But unlike iTunes, you don't have to download the music and you don't have to pay for the music - making it more like the subscription services, including Rhapsody and Napster, that have been slaughtered by Apple's iTunes colossus.


Information Society on Display In Spotify


Jesus Jones In Spotify. (Remember them?)
Spotify's service is not "free" per se. The "free" version displays advertising between songs, and to get an ad-free experience, you would need to pay (at least in the UK) a British pound for a 24-hour day pass, or 10 British pounds for a month. I haven't seen what the US rates will be, but the version I'm using (no doubt the 'press' version) hasn't encountered an ad yet - just pure, clear, music.

If I'm Apple, and I see the Spotify application heading for me like a freight train, I would try to say the application competes with existing features of iTunes. You don't want to let a huge potential competitor in the front door. But if you look at Spotify like they did Sirius XM Radio, which was approved, it's essentially the same story, only instead of dedicated radio stations, you've got individual songs and artists by the bucketload.

I wish, similarly, that I had a "bucketload" of invites to hand out to get you into a theoretical Spotify beta, but I don't. All I have is my copy - and it's fantastic. When it lands here in the US, it's got the potential to be an amazing hit. I just hope people aren't so cheap as to not pay if presented the opportunity. I'm always willing to pay for quality, and that's exactly what we've got here.

Ignoring Rationality, I Subscribed to Sirius Radio Yesterday

Last week, I told you that the new iPhone application from Sirius Radio solved a problem I didn't have, namely gaining access to good music - which I can get from numerous sources, including my bulging iTunes library, Last.fm, Pandora, or even streaming radio sources built into iTunes itself, like those from Digitally Imported. But despite my protests, I gave in yesterday and paid up, making Sirius' foray into iPhone applications already responsible for at least one net new customer.

As I mentioned last week, I always had hoped to have streaming high quality satellite radio in my next car, but missed the boat when I bought a used 2006 model and didn't get the chance to configure it myself.

After initial struggles getting the app to work in the car, the application has worked beautifully for the remainder of the seven day free trial that came alongside the iPhone app. I have made turning on Sirius Radio (and primarily the station Area) part of the process of my turning the car on. And if you're a diehard electronic music and techno fan, I can tell you there is just no substitute for Sirius' set of stations on any network I have ever tried.


The Sirius Lineup on Pulsar
But if I were only using Sirius in the car, I still would have passed. Instead, I have also been playing my Sirius stations on my laptop, using an application called Pulsar, from Rogue Amoeba, that makes getting the music on my desktop very easy indeed. Now, I can listen to Area, and get shows from Robbie Rivera, Bennie Benasi, Paul Van Dyk, John Digweed, Carl Cox and Paul Oakenfold any time I am near the computer or the iPhone (which as you can assume is darn near all the time).


My Favorite Sirius Stations on Pulsar
And it's not just the unmatched content on the channel that had me convert. It's also the complete lack of commercials on Sirius, and of course, elimination of static. Pure satellite sound pumping through my BMW speakers on 280 is just amazing, as you can probably imagine.

Last week, when I was first talking about possibly buying Sirius Radio, Thomas Hawk repeatedly said "music wants to be free". But I will always pay for quality - and Sirius Radio has it. I cannot wait until the next long trip when I can charge up the iPhone, hook up to the dash and hit the gas, with perfect music flowing alongside. So don't tell me it was an irrational move, one that was a waste of money, or that I had better alternatives elsewhere. Music, like art, is emotional, and I have no qualms about reversing my position.

Sirius for iPhone Solves a Problem I Don't Have

Ever since I rented an Audi in 2007 while traveling that came with satellite radio preinstalled, I have been smitten with the idea of Sirius Radio, and specifically, the station Area, a great Dance and Electronic station featuring some of my favorite DJs, including Paul van Dyk and Paul Oakenfold. As my last car started to die, I always imagined my next upgrade would include Sirius Radio, letting me get crystal-clear music no matter where I drove.

As you already know, I got my next car after all, and it didn't come with Sirius Radio. So I've been holding out for the company's iPhone application to debut. I now had this fantasy of using the line-in feature to my car, streaming satellite radio through the iPhone and essentially reproducing the experience. That I already have thousands and thousands of songs in my iTunes library was really not an issue - for the geek in me wanted it anyway.


Browsing Sirius Radio on my iPhone
Last night, following the release of the iPhone's 3.0 software, I picked up the Sirius Radio application, registered for a seven day trial, and practically ever since, I've been hooked into the station Area. No commercials and outstanding music. I've had my headphones cranked up when at home, and I even hooked up Area when I have been at the office, preferring good music to being on the phone or engaging with co-workers.

But, surprisingly, I couldn't get Sirius to connect when I was driving, as I toggled back from Edge or 3G on AT&T's network. The one place I thought I could really use Sirius radio, so far, has been a complete zero, saying it was unable to connect.


If Only I Could Pay for Just This Station...
Given I already have days and days and days of music to catch up on, which is already at my fingertips at home or at the office, with my laptop, and also given that I can play this music in the car whenever I want, Sirius' offer fits a very small niche that I would have to work very hard to justify. And while others are complaining that Sirius has not preloaded the app with shock jock Howard Stern or some of its sports coverage, I don't care for Stern, and can get all my MLB games, in audio, using the MLB application for the iPhone.

I admit I love the station Area. Part of me wants to close my eyes and hand over the credit card, paying $12 or so a month to get that station alone - and just maybe I will, if I can get it to connect to the car consistently. But realistically, the debut of Sirius radio for a platform that already has formidable competitors in Last.fm and Pandora, not to mention my own bloated music library, is a tough one. Only if I feel a nagging itch to throw away more money on my music will this happen, and if I ever get too loopy, there's always the option provided to me by Apple of updating my entire library to iTunes Plus for about $400.

So for the next 6 or so days, I will crank up Area. And when that free trial ends, something dramatic will have to have happened to get me to do more than just uninstall. (See Also: Sirius Radio Now Looks Like an Outer Space WebVan)

Sirius Radio Now Looks Like an Outer Space WebVan

WebVan's debut in the 1990s as a way to order groceries online and have them shipped to your home or business sounded like a fantastic way to leverage the power of the Web. But as we all know now, the costs of deploying expensive, expansive warehouses in many metropolitan areas, not to mention the costs of delivery and promotion, were way beyond what was sustainable. Hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital, not to mention stock holders after the firm went public, went up in smoke, as the company spiraled into bankruptcy.

The idea may have been ahead of its time or just poorly implemented, but it stands as a tragic example of where hope came ahead of logic. And now we're seeing it again - with all the news around Sirius XM Radio's potentially filing for bankruptcy, after the struggling satellite radio company found that slowed growth in the face of lower native car installations, competition from iPod/iTunes/iPhone, and the inability to pay massive accumulated debt, have combined to make the current plan unsustainable.

And again we have what looked like a very cool idea, costing billions of dollars to deploy, on the brink of failure. And again, we see shareholders who believed in the idea, ahead of the reality, getting wiped out. In what's already been a horrific last year for the stock market, Sirius' freefall has been notable - especially considering it's not involved in banking or real estate.

A few months ago, in a podcast with Wayne Sutton and Kipp Bodnar, I said we "knew" Sirius would pull through because it had a compelling offering, and that threats to its business were overblown. Boy, was I wrong. I may have been looking forward to getting Sirius Radio with my next car, whenever that happened, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen any sooner than my dialing up WebVan for some eggs and milk.