Apple doesn't play nicely with Sonos… and that could be bad news next month
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For example, Sonos speakers are a great way to listen to music in your home from streaming services
The speakers connect to your home's WiFi network, and you use an app on your phone, tablet or computer to control what you hear. If you have multiple speakers in your home, you can listen to different music in different rooms. Sonos works with all the major music services like Pandora, Spotify, SoundCloud, and many others.
But one service is missing: iTunes Radio, Apple's internet radio service that was announced to much fanfare at the company's annual developers' conference nearly two years ago. You can listen to your iTunes library - songs you've downloaded from the iTunes store or files you've imported from CDs - through your Sonos app, but iTunes Radio doesn't connect to Sonos speakers through the Sonos app. And it will likely be the same story for Apple's new on-demand streaming music service, which could launch as early as this June.
Eric Nielsen, a Sonos spokesperson, told Business Insider that it's Apple's choice whether or not it wants to integrate iTunes Radio into the speaker company's app, and Sonos is "not sure the exact reasons why" Apple doesn't do it already. However, you can listen to Beats, which Apple bought last year for $3 billion, through the Sonos app.
As iMore's Allyson Kazmucha writes, it's technically possible to listen to iTunes Radio using a workaround, but the it requires you to have either an Apple TV or an AirPlay Express, Apple's mini WiFi base station.
Right now, this is probably not a big deal for most Sonos customers. Despite proclamations that iTunes Radio, which, like other Internet radio services, allows you to create stations based on artists, genres and music you listen to, was going to be a Pandora-killer, the service has not caught on. Among the major music streaming services, iTunes Radio accounted for only 4% of streaming listening hours among those 13 and older during the second half of last year, according to MusicWatch, a music industry market research group.
The free, ad-based version of Pandora, by contrast, was the most popular among the major streaming services - it accounted for 32% of streaming listening hours among those 13 and older.
Apple
Also, Apple has made no secret of its desire to get into the so-called smart home. The first products that will be controlled by Apple's Home Kit platform will be released this summer, according to a recent report in the Wall Street Journal, and the next version of the Apple TV is rumored to be a hub for controlling everyday appliances like lights and door locks through the internet, BuzzFeed reported in March.
Sonos, for its part, is confident that Apple will make whatever the company ends up launching available on Sonos.
"We assume that when they focus on the home and appear on Sonos that their complete service offerings will be available on Sonos," Nielsen told Business Insider.
Apple's forthcoming on-demand streaming service is by no means a guaranteed success, even though it will have the power of the Apple brand behind it. The iPhone is the bestselling smartphone in the world, and it's likely that Apple Music will also be available on Android, but other streaming music services have a huge lead on Apple. Pandora has 79.2 million active users in the US, Australia, and New Zealand, and Spotify has over 60 million subscribers around the world.
Even though major consumer electronics companies like Samsung make WiFi-connected speakers, Sonos pretty much owns the market, Paul Erickson, a senior analyst at the research firm IHS, told Business Insider. He estimates that the Santa Barbara, Calif.-based company has between 90 and 93 percent of the global market.
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