Shameless plug: I'm building an alternative to Sonos focused on managing audio streams on your home network. It's a software and a controller webapp to broadcast synchronized audio on any number of Windows / MacOS / Linux / Chromecast / Airplay speakers / Web pages / Philips Hue (light synchronized to the audio). It's available on https://soundsync.app/ and the sources are on Github: https://github.com/geekuillaume/soundsync
This reminds me that I'd really love to find something that can take advantage of the implicit capability of Dolby Atmos to use a nigh-arbitrary arrangement of various speakers as a unified soundscape.
I thought only the big theater version took arbitrary speaker positions, and the home theater version used premixed channels. But now I can't remember where I read that, so I could be wrong.
My Atmos receiver required calibration of the speaker placement from multiple locations within my listening area. I'm running a 7.1.4 setup (7 surrounds, 1 subwoofer, and 4 overhead channels). I've done a lot of reading about Atmos as well; I'm fairly certain it isn't premixed channels. My ears also agree - Atmos feels incredibly immersive.
It doesn't look like that's actually the case, as Dolby's promo page for "Dolby Atmos for the home" calls out having "up to 128 simultaneous independent audio objects in a mix":
I think most home theater systems end up mixing down to Dolby surround channels practice, of course. My receiver supports Atmos, but I still only have five speakers. :)
Is it possible to support Sonos as an output as well?
My ultimate goal is to be able to use Hue Sync for Windows for Hue music beat, but play the audio through Sonos. Haven't found anything to be able to do that yet.
You can use the Airplay output integration of Soundsync to send your music to your Sonos speakers. Soundsync keep track of each output latency and correct for it to keep all output synchronized.
I like the inclusion of synchronising browser playback also, that's something beyond what snapcast offers. And it seems to be based on webRTC, is that right? Any pointers for integration with a gstreamer-based source?
All the communication stack is based on WebRTC. I made this decision to centralize the command and audio communication methods and also to easily support web targets. For Gstreamer, it should be possible to use the same method as for the Librespot (Spotify) and Shairport (Airplay source) intergration: capturing the stdout of a program. I didn't test it yet but there is the `! filesink location=/dev/stdout` option to do just that. I might also add a way to read on a named pipe (which should be easy to do) if its needed.
Not making excuses for this issue, but it seems to me that keeping a company like Sonos (upscale audio hardware) alive & prosperous with the crazy megalithic competitive forces that lurk on all sides must be a nightmare.
On the one hand you have Apple and their half-hearted (for now) entry, and at the low end you have Alexa/"Talk to it" speakers. These alternatives seem destined to encroach on the Sonos turf come hell or high water.
I will say that for their intended purpose--streaming music to a network connected speaker, Sonos speakers just work great! Their app interface, while not a great experience, functions. When I click "Play," stuff immediately comes out of my speakers. NOW. There is never a delay, never a spinning pizza, never, never NEVER! (anecdata, of course)
So I (me, not you) can't blame them for wildly thrashing a bit on the data collection side. I get it. They are terrified they are going to get squeezed eventually.
Do I wish they would reconsider advertising and related marketing shenanigans as business models? Yes, I do. For now they meet my needs and they just work. It's a trade off I'm (me, not you) are willing to make for now.
"the big players are already fuckers, flaunt the law, and will eat competitors' lunches if they don't do same" seems a rather sad outlook. if we can't ask companies not to be horrible because their predecessors are already horrible, and that we should instead just permit everything after to ramp up the horribleness in the name of competition, the endgame seems rather bleak. we can't just demand that companies be better?
given Sonos' track record with the "lol, can't have anyone using an OLD PRODUCT THAT STILL WORKS FINE" thing i'm rather unsure we should really give them the benefit of the doubt here
I've been very critical of Sonos since before these incidents, but TBF, they've properly addressed both. I'm not sure WHY the client depends on the speaker's hardware capabilities, but I'd guess the old client source code was complex enough to warrant a rewrite and it wasn't cost effective maintaining backwards compatibility.
I don't think there was malice involved. Sonos seems like a company that has a very tough time making money, and since they IPO'd two years ago they are "responsible" to shareholders now (their stock opened at 15 and as of Oct 2 it was 15 -- could be worse!). Bricking old products would give a profit boost if everyone said ok and bought new products, but they underestimated the backlash.
It's the same reason their client sucks -- it will cost a lot of money to make native apps that take advantage of the respective eco-systems. The client suffices for most people so why bother?
That said, I'll go back to being pissed if they release new hardware I want and get rid of the 30% discount.
> it wasn't cost effective maintaining backwards compatibility
Open-source the last compatible version of the client and let the community maintain it? Or at the very least publish the API specification and let the community build a new one from scratch?
Yes please to the API bit.
I'm maintaining the "unofficial Sonos controller for Linux" and it'd help a great deal if I didn't have to Wireshark the protocol all the time.
It's a shame this is being downvoted. People paid money for these devices, and it's disgusting that we allow companies to render inoperative perfectly working hardware just because they don't feel like supporting it anymore.
Open sourcing the old version of the software might be too much to ask for various reasons, but publishing API documentation in order to enable third party implementations IMO should be legally required in cases like this.
iirc it wouldn’t have been inoperative - it just couldn’t work with the newer software and therefore couldn’t be meshed with newer devices. I was under the impression that the hardware would work with the now legacy software without issue.
What's odd to me is wireless and self-contained/smart as a selling feature. I know there's some appeal in some of the integration and multi-room features, but there are plenty of platforms offering those features in a wired format with far more flexibility and choice. I feel like even if I had an infinite budget, something like Sonos doesn't feel like a great solution.
The higher-end you're going on audio, the more static things become. Yeah, you might take your iPhone dock or Bluetooth speaker and move it around, but if you spend $1000 on speakers (or 10k on building a listening room), you're gonna want the speakers in the sweet spot and left there. If I'm working with that constraints, why is having a wireless smart speaker I have to tether to a phone or hub any better than if I had just ran speaker wire to a receiver? Especially since it still has to be wired for power.
At least I know my amplifier isn't spying on me or monetizing my endless appetite for Rise Against. Because it was built in 1980 but still sounds as good as anything in the same price class today.
Sonos packages practicality, ease of use and WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor). They're not the best in pure sound quality, flexibility or, it appears, privacy.
One of the big factors with Sonos that you won't get out of receiver setups is the ability to mix-and-match inputs and outputs over a whole house: having one speaker by itself playing the news in the morning, having everything in the house playing synced music on low in the afternoon, and having the home theater set playing a movie in the evening. Not needing speaker wire adds to that convenience: you can then stick a speaker in the garage or the bathroom in the future without laying more wire, as long as you have an outlet.
Of course, all of this isn't exclusive to Sonos, but from what I understand none of the copycat competitors have matched their ease of use so far.
> keeping a company like Sonos (upscale audio hardware) alive & prosperous with the crazy megalithic competitive forces
Make good hardware and sell it at a profit. Problem solved. Sonos still has an edge on the actual audio hardware (that none of the existing "smart speaker" competition can match, besides maybe the HomePod but the lack of Spotify support is a major dealbreaker for a lot of people).
In any case, I don't see how data collection helps with any of this; selling consumer data alone isn't going to be enough to keep the company afloat, and introducing ads into the audio stream itself will be a major no-no (unless the speakers are given for free, but then the costs of that would outweigh the advertising profits). I don't think speakers are a thing that can be monetized with data, full stop - and that's okay.
Most likely the whole idea behind the data collection & analytics is to justify the salaries of their marketing department and give the engineering department something to do (analytics show that X percent of customers loved this new feature, let's rebuild/expand it) while ultimately all that people want is a speaker that plays their Spotify and gets out of the way (and unlike other hardware, people aren't - and shouldn't be - used to replacing their speakers every year).
It really isn't that simple, and I wish people would stop acting like making ANY profit is enough to keep a business around.
First, making a profit isn't enough... you have to make more profit than the people investing money in the company could make elsewhere. If you make $1 for every $100 invested, and some other company can make $2 for every $100, why would anyone invest in the $1 maker? It isn't just about profit, it is about the opportunity cost of using capital on something that isn't as profitable as other capital uses.
Second, let's say the profit margins are actually pretty good, and you make a nice return on this quality hardware you make. However, if the quality actually is really good, what do you do after everyone who needs your product buys it? You either have to build in obsolescence, which everyone rightly hates, or you have to switch to making another product. That switch is expensive, and cuts into your profit margin... assuming your new product is even successful. This is a lot of risk.
What that risk means is that investors don't want to be left holding the bag when your product reaches market saturation and your pivot fails... which is going to make it harder to get investment.
Really, Sonos is a great example of what happens when you follow your instructions to "make a good product and sell it at a profit"... they did that for many years, and made money.... but now most people who want a speaker like Sonos makes already have them, and their growth has stopped. They can still make money on each speaker sold, but they are selling fewer of them. So they are trying to pivot to make money some other way, and it sounds like it might not be going great.
The only sustainable hardware business is to make and sell a huge amount of commodity hardware at small margins, and simply switch to the next thing once some OTHER company does the expensive research and experimentation to create the next thing people want to buy.
"Really, Sonos is a great example of what happens when you follow your instructions to "make a good product and sell it at a profit"... they did that for many years, and made money.... but now most people who want a speaker like Sonos makes already have them, and their growth has stopped."
No.
Sonos has a very small market penetration and could have continued growing, modestly, with enthusiastic reviews and glowing recommendations forever.
The problem was not that they did not have a business model - the problem was that nobody was going to get filthy rich with that business model. They found that to be unacceptable and did silly things - like an IPO.
Now they're stuck on a path that requires rapid growth. You could have easily predicted, years ago, that any company in this position would do things like drop support for old devices and get pushy with people to adopt their app (although I have to admit, I never would have predicted that they would gut their desktop player and force people to use the app) ... and adopt sleazy and desperate relationships with data brokers, etc.
Fuck them. I wish they knew how much I loved their company, and their product, and how much I hate them now.
All they have to do is survive. They do not need to take over the world.
There are other boutique audio hardware companies that do not take such a data-heavy approach and they are doing fine. As I hinted in my other comment, Sennheiser or Klipsch are examples.
Does Bose demand this much access to you and your data just to sell you a new WaveRadio or whatever? They even have a dedicated retail presence to maintain!
> All they have to do is survive. They do not need to take over the world.
Depends on their finances, and what the investors are looking to get out of it. And they may need to compete with the compensation offered by FAANG companies who can easily do it with perpetually rising market valuations.
Ability to scale almost infinitely at almost zero marginal costs makes consumer tech products involving decent software quite a difficult business to be in.
> you have to make more profit than the people investing money in the company could make elsewhere.
Bingo. That's precisely the reason we need legislation in the US similar to the GDPR. Until all companies are forbidden to collect customer data, companies that don't do so will always be at a profit disadvantage. Once all companies are forbidden from abusing their customers, investors won't have the option of investing in companies that abuse their customers. Which is exactly as it should be.
> companies that don't do so will always be at a profit disadvantage
I would be really curious as to how data collected from a Sonos speaker (without the ability to directly monetize that data themselves for advertising, as nobody would be buying speakers that insert ads) can be worth anything more than a rounding error of their current revenue.
> for their intended purpose--streaming music to a network connected speaker, Sonos speakers just work great!
And that should mean they do not need to play these games with data collection.
> They are terrified they are going to get squeezed eventually.
Squeezed by what? I wish more manufacturers would just make a simple freaking product that works great for its intended purpose, and nothing else. That should be an advantage to Sonos against all the other companies that refuse to just do that.
"Make money" could mean two things. If it means "make more short term profit", then yes, they can do that by selling people's data. But if it means "make long-term sustainable earnings", that's different; I'm not sure Sonos selling people's data does anything to help them vs. the competition in the long term. It might be that they don't care about the long term--that the owners of the company simply want to extract as much short term profit as possible and then get out. If that's true, IMO it's sad.
the core business problem for sonos is that they were a one-trick pony that didn't strategize. they assumed they had cornered their little market segment and focused on feathering their nest, rather than monitoring and adjusting to wider market dynamics. entrenchment is not a (sustainable) business strategy.
when sonos came to market, they were the best repositionable home speaker system, hands down. their primary differentiator was their superb and resilient audio-syncing capabilities (not it's less-defensible content catalog, though that helped as a flanking feature).
they had the chance to become the brand in home audio, and they blew it. phenomenally. likely because they were under-/mis-invested in r&d, and possibly also under-capitalized (often because founders don't want to risk devaluation/dilution).
from that base of home audio, they were perfectly positioned to become the home hub of the future, the nerve center for everything audiovisual (and beyond) in the home. instead, they got distracted by clouds, analytics, big data, and every other tech buzzword floating about. it's business strategy 101, and the perfect business case fodder.
How have they blown it?
I have tried a few systems and none work as well as theirs. I’m not interested in voice activated anything, which may make me an outlier.
This article (and a post yesterday that said similar) have me making some system tweaks and the Pihole is part way their. I think I’ll just block the speakers at the firewall to keep things simple.
You can only sell so many speakers to your customers. They're not disposable commodities that need annual refreshes. I'm not buying any more Sonos equipment. I was done five years ago.
Sonos is trying to deprecate their older models and introduce planned obsolescence. They had a program to brick your old equipment in exchange for rebates on newer models. That was totally wasteful and wanton, and the Internet called them out on it.
They have so many competitors now, including the tech giants which control streaming. Google is in a feud with them and could cut off access.
this kind of negative press does filter out into consumer choices over time. and as @fivre pointed out, they're getting squeezed out by better-capitalized monopolists, losing market- and mind-share to the likes of apple, amazon and google. sonos doesn't have the capital to compete, and lost their first-mover advantage by stagnating rather than leading the market.
(i also block everything but streaming connections for my sonos at the router.)
Sonos have had me curious for a while. I often use in-home small bluetooth speakers and frankly i'm happy enough with them - i just want more of them, with more power.
So for louder, phone connected speakers would you still recommend Sonos? Ie i'm not sure i need the idea of multiple rooms playing the same thing. I'd love it, but my wife wouldn't hah. However i do want (decent) quality speakers in all rooms that i can play music on, and i'm largely satisfied with the bluetooth-phone experience. I'm just not satisfied with my tiny bluetooth speaker quality or sound level.
Any opinion of if i should look into Sonos? Or would cheaper bluetooth speakers fit better?
(edit: Sidenote, the voice assistant option is a downside for me. Otherwise i'd probably own a few Apple HomePods)
Sonos works well and I love it generally, but I’ve been really disappointed with their business practices the last few years. The S1->S2 debacle really shook my confidence and reminded me that I’m tying up a very expensive speaker with cheap digital services that could disappear or be obsoleted at literally any moment with little notice.
Their whole recycling/permanently destroying speakers debacle was also quite annoying.
If you go into expecting the third year and beyond of service to be bonus and that you’re the product not the customer, it’s a great fit for your needs.
I prefer sonos for my own reasons. Bluetooth sucks power from my phone. Sonos connects over wifi and the phone isn’t involved in the streaming. I can remote control sonos from the spotify windows app or webapp on my laptop. Also the multi-speaker functionality is great. I don’t use it often, but if doing work around the house it’s nice to hear the audio stream just continue. Not a gamechanger itself though.
I'm personally happy with Bose Soundlink speakers for Bluetooth. They're not the cheapest, but they have good sound quality.
If I were going to go for a wifi speaker, though, I'd seriously look at Bluesound's product line. They're a Sonos competitor and they're not nearly as well known, but they're part of the same little group that owns NAD Electronics and PSB Speakers and use amplifiers and acoustics from those sister companies. If you're an audio nerd (or even if you're not), that's a pretty good pedigree. AFAIK Bluesound products work with various voice assistants, but don't build them in.
(Edited to add: I don't own a Bluesound device, but I do own a NAD T758 receiver, which uses an earlier version of BluOS for its streaming/wifi capabilities and it's pretty solid.)
I, personally, am moving to Wi-Fi speakers because the audio quality and connection consistency have been considerably better than Bluetooth, both with my Sonos Beam and JBL Link Portable.
If you want the fluidity of Sonos without the voice assistant, check out the Sonos One SL - it's the Sonos One without the microphone and voice assistant, and is $20 cheaper because of it. There's also the IKEA Symfonisk, which is basically a bookshelf speaker variant of the One SL, from what I've read.
I have three of their little speakers and a sound bar and I’m pretty happy. No connecting/disconnecting bluetooth, no walking out of range and the sound getting choppy, I can select which speaker I want to play directly from spotify or open the app and play multiple rooms at once. Not sure how well it works (or if it even can) as a direct bluetooth speaker. I think it’s more like a little music server and your phone is just the remote.
I had wanted the 5, but it turns out the One is vastly more powerful than I need. The volume has never been above 1/3rd. They are really good.
The creepiness factor is a significant problem but I hope to beat it with network changes and send them some feedback. It certainly makes me reconsider further purchases.
I know in iOS a bunch of non-obvious APIs are attached to location permissions. Including access to your current WiFi network name, which would be used by Sonos to configure your speaker during setup.
Yep. This is a key factor. To discover new devices, Sonos uses a wireless scan. That requires location permission, because knowing the MAC of a nearby AP can be easily turned into location. (Yes, in theory Sonos could do device discovery through some other method, but this is the one they chose.)
Not quite. But if you know the MAC address of nearby access points, there are multiple location services that can turn that into a lat/Lon location (e.g. Skyhook [1]). Indeed iOS/Android does this to estimate phone location without GPS.
Of course this requires someone to have already uploaded the estimated location of the access point. But loads of apps and OSs do that all the time.
One thing non-Sonos owners might not realize about their business model is that it is the opposite of subscriptions. Because the software is so cool (creating an infinite jukebox out of all your music sources and subscriptions, both local and online), you are inclined to buy their boxes.
Sonos doesn't charge anyone for using the software and there are no ads introduced into your listening experience by Sonos. Their idea (and I think it's a great one) is to make the listening experience so great and so unique on their hardware that you are simply compelled to buy more of it and to recommend it.
I started out with a Play:5 and upgraded a year later to a second one to make a stereo pair. I've also used these units in business with 5-7 Play:3s and multiple employees controlling them from their phones. There is simply nothing like this in the Bluetooth or other "smart speaker" worlds.
My house could support two Play:5s in four rooms + outside. Sonos setups offer "Disney-like" sound control where you decide what music plays in what room(s) and at what volume. Were they to convince me to part with that much money, they could sell me $5K worth of speakers just based on the software experience (and the great sound quality, which no one disputes).
How about having their business model as selling solid wireless speakers without all this extra value-added smart crap
Their current business model is not worth defending. There is no reason a smart speaker needs location access, network access, an account, or even a privacy policy. I wish someone would bring these folks to heel
Sure it does — because it’s thru your network that the device works, thru your account they see each other and registers/links with various services, and location access (which I don’t believe I’ve ever had requested) could easily be for available stations etc.
I’m not seeing the big deal here. When the title said it’s spying on me, I thought it was listening with its microphone. This is making a big deal about nothing AFAIK.
The article is garbage. It’s by someone who either doesn’t understand how networked devices function, or does but wants to write a slanderous hatchet job.
Of course it needs your bloody Spotify username, it streams
Spotify for you, and the control protocol runs through a cloud service so that you can control it universally. Complaining about that seems like idiocy, frankly.
It isn’t a piece of hardware. This is the false conceit underlying not just the article, but also the obscene pile-on of uninformed ranting in these comments.
I can buy an Arylic board for 1/10th the price of a Sonos speaker. It functions in exactly the same way and doesn't collect my data. The information Sonos collects is not necessary.
> soon to realize that I need to register with my email just to set up the device on my network
If they want to do stupid value-added convenience crap then fine. But does the speaker work without the account? (No.)
There are many possible paths they could take for allowing the device to connect to various services and other devices, and Sonos happened to choose the cheap way. These smart devices should not require a cloud connection just to operate when there are plenty of ways of interfacing with them that are completely local.
My Windows computer does not require a Microsoft account to be able to use Spotify or Netflix or whatever. These things can all run independently and be setup through a local connection or a digital display. Why should a speaker?
The OP writes that Sonos speakers can function without an internet connection which is entirely untrue and what differentiates the product from others in the market. Sonos speakers access the net and your streaming music accounts by themselves without using your phone and you can demonstrate this by turning off the phone while they're playing. Logically, therefore, the cloud service on which this relies must keep that personal info about you. Location is used to find the speakers around you when you're using the phone app.
I'm very against unnecessary data collection and even more opposed to companies selling my data, but I'm very happy with my Sonos and I don't see any evidence that they're doing either of those things.
> The OP writes that Sonos speakers can function without an internet connection which is entirety untrue
Afraid you’ve got this a little wrong. It depends entirely on what music services you use.
It’s quite possible to use Sonos speakers without an internet connection if you use something like AirPlay, a local NAS, or an audio in (e.g. TV or Record Player).
If you wanna use a streaming music service like Spotify, then obviously they need an internet connection. Unless of course you stream via your phone using AirPlay, but your phone will probably still need an internet connection.
"It’s quite possible to use Sonos speakers without an internet connection if you use something like AirPlay, a local NAS, or an audio in (e.g. TV or Record Player)."
Yes, this is technically true (and is my primary use-case for Sonos). However, in the 15 years that I have been in their ecosystem, the ability to play while Internet-disconnected has ranged between completely non-functional to sort-of functional to only-functions-when-Internet-perfect.[1]
The fact is, they don't care about this use-case anymore and don't devote resources to testing and bug-fixing it.
[1] There was a long period of time when Sonos worked fine with no Internet, and also with perfect Internet, but if you had laggy or lossy Internet they would just puke.
I don’t disagree with you that a typical or primary use case is to have an Internet connection. I just use it wity Airplay however and it works fine. Due to the excessive tracking I don’t trust it to connect to the internet.
I found your comment about devoting resources etc a bit weird. Does rsync work locally to sync files? Would it make sense not to devote resources for local sync and only support remote transfer? ;-) this is slightly in jest but I hope you see my point.
> Sonos speakers access the net and your streaming music accounts by themselves without using your phone and you can demonstrate this by turning off the phone while they're playing. Logically, therefore, the cloud service on which this relies must keep that personal info about you.
This is definitely one model, there’s also the chromecast model which allows you to turn off the phone. I guess it might not as fully featured as Sonos though? Chromecast appears to work by the service issuing a token of some kind to the chromecast after you start playing from your phone.
But the sonos speakers themselves are little controllers, in theory they can perform all necessary actions, store the needed data and talk to any streaming services. Why is there a technical need for a cloud service?
> Why is there a technical need for a cloud service?
oAuth? I suspect a primary need for a cloud service is to just handle authentication with music services.
In theory you could do it entirely locally, but then you would run into super weird and dangerous (from a security perspective) situation where the redirect leg of the oAuth would need to point to a local IP address or similar.
I imagine it is possible to work around these issues, but it would be a huge faff, and would be very hard to make it as slick as a cloud based system.
Ultimately most consumers just don’t mind signing up for things. So why make your engineering 50% more complicated for a tiny minority of your target market.
On the contrary, it's really quite easy to run a NAS and do all your music locally, and it's very easy to make it "as slick" as a cloud system. Millions of people are doing this already with products like Plex.
I’m not saying that running a NAS is hard. I’m saying that most of Sonos customers don’t run a NAS, they use something like Spotify.
The number of Sonos customers that are really interested is a local only setup in the music streaming age is vanishingly small.
I run a NAS, Plex, and even had a local music collection. But I’ve ditched it for Spotify. I simply can’t be bothered to deal with the faff. When I want music, I want it to work first time every time, not a 1% chance that something brakes that require 30mins of my time to fix.
>Millions of people are doing this already with products like Plex.
That's fair up to a point. Plex doesn't require network access, but if you want to use it, even with just local media, you still need to register an account with them, and usage data for local media is sent to them.
Which is why I don't use Plex.
Any device/app that requires you register/give access to usage information in order to utilize local resources is an intrusion of my privacy.
Please note the word requires above before replying to my comment.
i own an old play:1 for the bathroom, which hasn't been updated since sonos started requiring accounts a few years ago. it happily chugs along without any of my personal info (though i only listen to free stations, not subscription-based ones).
I don't even own a Sonos (the whole forced obsolescence thing), but there's a whole range of reasons they'd need location; at least on Android it's basically a proxy for Bluetooth access (don't know if that's the case on iOS), but there's also other legitimate reasons for it like determining correct WiFi channels for the region, detecting nearby speakers, etc etc. The account has obvious legitimate uses for features the speakers provide.
The only thing that's questionable to me is the Activity Information. Which you can opt-out of. So, if you don't like it, opt-out.
If you're one of the many people on thread complaining about the account requirement, I suggest you buy one of the many speakers that doesn't require an account. It'll probably be cheaper, too.
I haven't tried Sonos, but if a product, which you'd assume is more or less just a speaker, requires you to "sign up" or to some extend expects you to manage it via a smart phone, you should generally be sceptical.
What annoys me is that Sonos shouldn't even need to do this crap. The people I know who own Sonos products love them and already pay a premium for the product. How much can they honestly be making of this data?
We know from a few years back, that the experts in violating your privacy, Facebook, will make around $60 per year, for an American, somewhat less for Europeans and nothing from everyone else. I doubt that Sonos is able to make ANY meaningful profit from the data they collect, so why bother?
It's the same with Samsung, how much does it cost to develop and maintain the infrastructure for collecting data, compared to how much money is to be made?
>I haven't tried Sonos, but if a product, which you'd assume is more or less just a speaker, requires you to "sign up" or to some extend expects you to manage it via a smart phone, you should generally be sceptical.
It's worse than that. Not only do you need to have an account to use these speakers, but there's no way to run them without using the built in app, and there's no way to avoid getting on the upgrade treadmill with the app.
I had a sonos setup I was very happy with, until I was forced to upgrade my laptop app because it wouldn't let me play any music without upgrading. And then guess what? My laptop was too old (circa 2010 17" macbook pro) for tne new app, and when I complained on their forums, was told to upgrade my laptop because the os was no longer supported and it was a "security risk to run old operating systems".
Goodwill was very happy to receive those speakers that week, and sonos is now on my list of companies I will never buy from, and on the list of companies I will take time out of my day to make sure my friends (irl and internet strangers) hear about their practices.
Sonos speakers are DLNA sinks. Once they are set up you can stream music using something like https://github.com/masmu/pulseaudio-dlna, without using the Sonos app on your phone or computer.
What would be really cool (to me) is if the speakers were exposed as Bluetooth audio devices. I don't want to have to think about how to setup DLNA or what's compatible with it.
I used the Sonos app to set my speakers up once. Since then I just use whatever device (usually phone or TV) is nearby to control them via spotify. Works excellently.
They also had dedicated controllers which were deprecated, but a phone app isn't as versatile. You can't lend your phone to a guest at your house, or to a kid, etc.
> How much can they honestly be making of this data?
There's no actual evidence that they make any money from this data, how did you come to this conclusion? This article is a very opinionated translation of a privacy policy that tells the narrative the writer wants to tell and assumes bad faith from the get-go. It's a very big stretch to go from "I don't think it fits with legitimate interest" to "Sonos is 100% selling my data".
Ah, I've been thinking about this, what we need to ban is this:
* The creation of products or services derived from the collection of users private information.
I don't expect Garmin to not track their users, that's basically the feature we bought when we buy their watches. Sonos/Samsung/Facebook/Google, who-ever, should be allowed to collect data on their users, BUT they should NOT be allowed to turn that data into a product that is resold to third parties.
For most companies that would mean the end of data collection, while not preventing those companies who use the data for creating meaningful services to do so.
Yes, data brokers should not be allowed to exist [1].
But I also think that any collection of data for advertising purposes (e.g. by Google) is unjustified, simply because if the user is looking for a product they can enter the data that they think is relevant in a search (which is immediately forgotten), and this could provide similar accuracy to following the user without the downsides. (In case of such a "product search", Google could extend the search procedure by adding some questions and/or checkboxes, as long as they forget the data immediately.)
You mean like governments whose "authorities" salivate when someone has a "smart device" (aka something in your house with a camera and/or speaker) that records every word you say 24/7? The same government/authorities that solve crimes based on your fitbit tracker tracking your heartrate? (It was in the news a couple of years ago - also discussed in HN)
Most "eyes" governments do their best to increase tracking, reduce encryption, reduce the cost of policing (and information collection and processing).
I hope that in the future we will get some insight on how sonos became the company it now is. When they started there were no mandatory accounts, no spying, dedicated remotes (i.e. no analytics). I really wish we could get back to this time.
It’s really not hard to see why all tech companies are going this way. Data collection is the new gold rush and any company not trying to get into it will lose to ones that do. It not really much of a mystery.
I dont really see why this is a big deal. The majority of the data mentioned in this article have a clear application in improving user experience and customer support.
Sonos is an ever evolving ecosystem which works with a huge variety of services and devices, which are also constantly evolving. I was just at my parents house with sonos speakers and I could be play to them instantly from the Spotify app without any configuration or delay. It’s basically magic.
They are essentially operating a massive edge network for many thousands of customers to support all of these magic features and add new ones to stay competitive. When you are operating a network, you are gonna want telemetry and metrics so you know what’s working and how to improve. That’s what I believe this data is used for, which seems pretty legitimate to me. I don’t think it is some conspiracy to gather a database of WiFi network data for nefarious purposes.
If you don’t want the telemetry, setup you own speaker network with a rpi or something which you can operate yourself in your free time. However, most people don’t want to do that so they buy Sonos.
It's worth mention what this doesn't include - namely, audio recordings. Sonos should at least get credit for offering a microphone-free version of their products for users who don't want to an Amazon/Google/Apple listening device into their home. Definitely helped sway me into choosing Sonos when I was shopping for wireless speakers.
I bought one too, and when it forced me to provide my location during activation I just laughed and promptly returned the speaker.
First, nobody needs to know my location for me to listen to music.
Second, when Sonos goes out of business in the future, they want their speakers to become landfill?
Nobody should support a company like that. There are too many great dumb speakers out there.
I ended up getting a Xeo2 speaker from Dynaudio. So much better quality anyway.
Sonos uses location data because it allows you to control nearby speakers.
The only thing that really bothers me about the mandatory sign-in thing (which is new ... there was no reason to sign in for the first 15 years of the product) is that their password flow sucks and I end up having to look up the password in my password manager and type it in. Would be much better if I could simply authorize new clients using my web browser, they way you do it with Amazon Prime Video on a new TV.
Stuff like this is why I keep cobbling together my own systems out of open source components. It’s less slick than a turnkey solution like Sonos, but it makes me feel less like a resource that’s being exploited by another big company.
Plus it just keeps working, while the commercial solutions frequently change the entire experience (usually not an improvement) or stop supporting products in a destructive way (where they prevent you from using most/all the features of the product instead of just saying they no longer support it).
Audio isn’t something that I’ve had the opportunity to work on yet, given that I currently rent and don’t own. But I have my eye on Monoprice’s line of audio gear for when I eventually get a chance to buy a house.
My smart home setup, which I’ve spent more time on, is to use home assistant with zigbee2mqtt to control a lot of cheap Zigbee hardware. This lets me buy otherwise untrusted smart home items from places like Ikea and Xiaomi without having to give them full access to my wifi network.
For "offline" speakers, just buy some (used) Bang & Olufsen speakers (with built-in amplifiers) and a Bluetooth receiver to connect your mobile device. Done.
Excellent write-up! If one is looking for a better alternative, just buy a modern receiver with airplay 2 built in and pair it with some decent speakers. Not only will that sound better by an order of magnitude, you'll have the option of upgrading your system over time.
I admit that Sonos has the high ground when it comes to convenience, but after reading this and being burned by their bricking policy on older devices, one is far better off with a traditional 2.1 set up (at least for a living area).
Not to mention the fact that their app is constantly bugging me to turn on the "recently played" feature, which will store my listening history on their servers.
There is a "Hide" button which dismisses it for a few days, but then it just comes back. I keep denying it every single time, but the app doesn't care how often I have denied it already.
No idea if stil true, the following happened 4-6 years ago. I had a Sonos connected to my Mac and I started digging around to figure out how it works. I eventually found a simple open URL on the IP of the Sonos where I could see in plain text the output of a `top` command running on my mac.
Those devices collect way more data than what is described in the article.
This is why I love the Airport Express. It plays audio over Airplay, synchronizes multiple streams, and oh by the way, you get a wifi repeater out of the deal. All you need is dumb, simple speakers to connect. Works with all the major streaming services as long as you have an Apple device. For better or worse, this is not a problem for me.
Sonos is just a speaker. IMO that is it’s main allure. They don’t need to know who I am and they don’t offer me services or expect recurring revenue from me. At least that’s what one would think. Looks like they went into the data harvesting business too. Too bad.
Someone at every company has clearly done the math and decided the security conscious customers they alienate/lose will be massively offset by the amount of revenue they can generate by harvesting data. I'm no longer surprised to find [random simple device] is sending any data it can find off to third parties anymore.
Reading between the lines in Wikipedia, it seems like they were forced into a pretty hard pivot in recent years. I think people were pressuring the founder/CEO to switch to a different revenue model, and then he stepped down shortly thereafter.
It's hard to compete in this area for sure. I want a no-cloud, LAN not WAN speaker, but I think economics forces them to do the "Big Tech" thing ... That business model works :-/
It does seem like another instance where the markets are "broken" (or maybe not, I guess most people just like giving up their data, and they don't have subscription fatigue)
Looking at the last data point, I feel like they'll be incentivized to do more of this kind of stuff to improve the business.
In March 2016, CEO John MacFarlane announced the company's shift to streaming music services and voice control instead of local playback, and laid off some employees.[25]
In July 2016, the company opened its first Sonos Store in SoHo.[26]
In September 2016, the company announced that its products would become available at the Apple Store.[27]
In January 2017, MacFarlane announced via the company's blog that he would be stepping down from his role as CEO, and that he would be succeeded in this position by former COO Patrick Spence.[28]
...
In August 2018, Sonos went public, trading on the NASDAQ under the symbol SONO.[30]
In November 2019, Sonos acquires Snips SAS, a privacy-focused AI voice platform for connected devices with the goal to bring a music-specific assistant to its devices.[3]
In June 2020, Sonos announced plans to lay off 12% of its workforce, close its New York store and six of its offices, and cut its top executives' pay by 20% for three to six months, in response to the economic disruptions caused by the COVID pandemic.[32]
"John MacFarlane announced the company's shift to streaming music services and voice control instead of local playback"
That's all fine and best of luck with the pivot. Businesses change focus all the time.
What is has made me despise the Sonos company and culture is that they effectively forced pre-pivot customers who bought Sonos products (which were designed and sold primarily for local playback) to make that pivot also or else have their devices bricked.
Location data may be necessary for the simple reason of following the local laws for WiFi channels. Different countries allow different channels to be used at different strengths. If that’s the case, Sonos should make that more clear.
I really need an open alternative -- sonos speakers run linux under the hood (AFAIK), and I would be surprised if there is not a RPi powered project somewhere. The speaker hardware is perhaps the hard part.
I agree there should be a compute platform somewhere to do this, but having listened to (and owning one) a few Sonos products, I think the technology is the less interesting part of the deal. Their speakers sound really good, and seem to make my sources sound really good in a really easy to use package. I have their AirPlay 2 compatible soundbar, and it works so well when hooked up to my TV as the input, and seamlessly can then receive AirPlay from my devices and fill a room. If there is an open source equivalent, or plans to make one, I would love to see it paired with really amazing sound producing hardware.
It's a bit annoying that Logitech killed the squeezebox, which made it somewhat more accessible, but I believe that thanks to that the code is open source now, so there's that.
I run Snapcast across my house connected to MPD running on a local Linux box, and have been pretty happy with it. I've had to do very little maintenance to keep things running.
The main thing I haven't been able to figure out is how to have multiple Snapcast streams and control which room listens to what. I don't actually think it's possible to do.. (though I could be wrong?)
Input streams are configured once on the server. You can group clients together and assign a stream to a group.
This can be done either with Snapdroid https://github.com/badaix/snapdroid or with Snapweb (is shipped with the Snapcast server since version 0.21) https://github.com/badaix/snapweb or with any other control client from the community
Do you have any backings for that? I was curious about it and the only claims I found is some random GitHub report and comment made by you from the last year or so.
I recently got the outdoor Polk audio speakers. And have them hard-wired to a fairly high-end receiver. The sound quality is so much better. I listen to a lot of vinyl, so that makes it an easier choice too. We use the smaller WonderBoom speaker when we do need it for the beach or something, but when at home, I will always chose to get the hard-wired path. Regardless how quickly the Sonos speakers connect to your source, hard-wired is better quality and is always connected.
I have a fully hardwired multi-room and outdoor setup (Klipsch speakers) using the Sonos Connect AMPs. They support this path pretty well. You can use Sonos Port with your existing amp as well, but it's a little overpriced.
It shouldn't surprise anyone that sonos does malicious shit with their software given that you can't set up these speakers without A) giving them an internet connection (local wifi is not sufficient) and B) creating a sonos account.
There is zero legitimate reason that speakers need to phone home or be associated with your identity to function.
Any device that has mandatory account registration should be looked upon with extreme suspicion.
it’s surprising this is still surprising. IOT is inherently invasive. Anyone who gets an Alexa speaker or Google one or a Roku and is surprised they are spy devices is just telling on themselves at this point.
Sonos speaker owner for more than 10 years, and also privacy engineer.
This article is largely wrong, on substance, on inference, and on intent.
There are a LOT of businesses that create privacy problems in the world. My experience with and read of both Sonos' business and their privacy policy- what they are doing is not problematic.
To the specific points in the piece:
1. why does Sonos need location
To provide music service choices that are appropriate for the region the owner is listening from. This is necessary from an IP- Intellectual Property- perspective. Not debatable. Please share naive takes on the legitimacy of IP in other fora.
2. additional usage data
First, some context- as a business, you absolutely NEED to KNOW YOUR CUSTOMERS.
The most expensive sales are to new customers. The cheapest are to satisfied existing customers. The differences in these costs are often in the orders of magnitude. They are the difference between profitability and bankruptcy. There is no debate about this. It is the nature of business: of sales, of marketing, of user education. If you want to run a business, you have to know whether your products are working for your customers.
Now, how do you know whether your products are working for your customers? Here's a secret- THEY WILL NOT TELL YOU. Yes, some vanishingly small fraction will complain when something doesn't work, or credit you with their joy. But the vast (VAST) majority- between 99% and 99.99%, depending on product and scale and so forth- you will hear NOTHING from.
In that context, how do you know whether your product is working, whether they are using it- and presumably enjoying its use?
The implicit exchange here- as a user- is between communicating with the vendor, or, permitting the product to provide usage data to the vendor.
On this question, people fall on a bimodal distribution. There is a tiny (TINY) fraction who prefers to communicate and not have usage data collected. This fraction can be very helpful, but also completely unhelpful, because they are a vanishingly small fraction, and not representative, of the market.
Therefore, in order to run a business, and to know your customers, you have to get the usage data from the product itself.
Of course, what usage data do you collect? Here's where we get to legitimate interest, probably the most misconstrued part of the article.
3. legitimate interest
The author of the piece makes a big todo about this, but then bails at the last minute with:
> If you read their privacy policy further, you could spot the real incentives and potential uses of the data, but I won’t dive into it here. I do recommend reading it though.
Yes- go read the privacy policy. It's very well written, describes exactly what and why, in very clear terms. The incentives are- being able to stay in business selling speakers that people like and use without building a surveillance infrastructure.
The author also says-
> In my mind, most of this collection is unnecessary.
Let me be blunt- your mind does not know what is involved in keeping a business alive.
Also:
> Do they need to collect all this personal data about me to determine what feature improvements would please their customers most? I don’t think so.
I'm sorry. You're wrong.
Sonos is in fact a great case study. The business did run entirely without any customer accounts or other usage monitoring for the first several years of its existence. Guess what? They were unprofitable, and running out of cash, headed to failure.
New leadership, changes in these practices to pay more attention to metrics and usage, and to the market, has enabled them to survive, even when facing increased competition from the tools that are cheaper surveillance vehicles.
Sonos is clear that their business is not dependent on advertising or other data harvesting-based business models. One can decide not to believe them, but one should take that step from a position of knowledge and awareness, both of what is involved in running a business- with a vested interest in having happy, engaged users- and also in the distinctions between surveillance businesses and non-surveillance businesses. The author does not understand these things.
The author concludes with some ridiculous recommendations, like
> Don’t connect your Sonos to 3rd party services: Sonos would encourage you to give it access to your Spotify account, Amazon, Apple or any other 3rd party music service. You don’t actually need it in most cases. You can use the music service directly, and just play it on your Sonos speaker as a destination (e.g. using Airplay)
Not only is this a distinction without a difference- any privacy violation is going to be happening at the 3rd party music service- this is an example of a user being ignorantly hostile to a business they bought a product from.
> This is necessary from an IP- Intellectual Property- perspective. Not debatable. Please share naive takes on the legitimacy of IP in other fora.
If I use the Sonos radio, then they might need to check the location. Until I do, there's zero need for location. I don't use their Radio.
> Therefore, in order to run a business, and to know your customers, you have to get the usage data from the product itself.
Anonymous usage data works just as well to know your customers, make product decisions, etc. This is a false dichotomy. Sonos does not need to know that much about its customers to gain those insights. And in fact, I'm pretty sure what they're doing is illegal, at least in the EU.
> The incentives are- being able to stay in business selling speakers that people like and use without building a surveillance infrastructure.
Unfortunately, they are building a surveillance infrastructure. And that's not cool. Also most likely illegal.
> Let me be blunt- your mind does not know what is involved in keeping a business alive.
I run a B2C bootstrapped business (single digit $million in ARR, profitable). You don't know me, and I don't think this kind of personal attack adds to this discussion. This is uncalled for.
> Sonos is in fact a great case study. The business did run entirely without any customer accounts or other usage monitoring for the first several years of its existence. Guess what? They were unprofitable, and running out of cash, headed to failure.
This is a weak and dangerous argument. So the mafia was having problem running a legit business, but as soon as they turned to extortion and murder, the business thrived. Guess what? there are laws and regulations in place. And there are ethics. If Sonos wants to track, learn, measure, they can use anonymised data, they can also ask for permission. Instead they choose to spy on people and hide behind "legitimate interest". No. It's not legitimate.
thought this would be useless griping of sonos that has existed for years now. no, this is new and valuable information. glad i got rid of sonos long ago.
I just went to disable data collection in the Sonos app. It was the only part of their app hidden behind a password - seems like it’s trying to dissuade people from accessing that particular setting...
I just got a few smart speakers as well and avoided Sonos. Decided to go all in on AirPlay 2.
JBL Link Music devices are about $70 right now and support AirPlay 2 only operation with no need for another app, just the built-in Home app. I picked up 3 locally from Home Depot and I’m happy with ‘em. They also have 5 GHz Wi-Fi and the connection a bit better than the 2.4 GHz AirPort Express when far away from my AP.
And if you already use Google Home, these work with it too with Chromecast built-in, but it’s optional. I just kept them AirPlay 2 only.
I also use hard wired Ethernet on AirPort Express devices as AirPlay 2 receivers. They all mix together nicely. Planning to add wired outdoor speakers with a spare one.
