I have always been a huge fan of the concept behind Sonos. Wirelessly streaming music all over your house and being able to play different music in different rooms. I have a friend who has be raving about it for years, however he had to have a media server, essentially a crappy old PC, running in his loft to serve the music content. Although loving the concept I never really wanted to leave a PC permanently on in amongst the loft insulation to play music.
This is where Spotify, for me, turns the Sonos into a killer music combination. Spotify basically rocks. A streaming music service that allows you to create playlists of you favourite music and chair dance you day away while at work. With access to something like 10 million songs, you are pretty much well guaranteed to find what you are looking for, although dissapointingly, when in a fit of nostalgia the other night, I was unable to find any tunes by Cold Chisel! Sure there is heaps of Jimmy Barnes stuff, but come on! No Cold Chisel! Dissapointing! Do you really want to listen to Jimmy Barnes? ;-)
Spotify has a free and premium service with the free service interrupted by ads. Think of it as radio where annoyingly ads interrupt the chat and music. I seriously hate radio advertising, although in the UK if you a BBC junky you don't really hear any! Tidy! Oh it should be noted that the free service is actually being limited further now, to encourage you to to become a premium subscriber, however I never felt the need to upgrade my account and pay for Spotify. I listened to Spotify at work but really that was it. Most of the time, dependant on what I am working on at home, I don't sit in front of a PC at home. Also I don't have a PC sat in the corner of my living room that is permanently turned on allowing me access to Spotify. As Spotify it is an internet based product it firmly lived, for me, in an at work stuck at my desk and stuck on the internet kind of way!
With the Sonos S5 though the game changes. As mentioned above the Sonos streams music from whatever source it has access to. This might be that PC you leave turned on in the loft, but not for me! It does however also stream music from the Internet. Very tidy. So you have access to pretty much well every Internet Radio station and also Spotify.
Access to Spotify, for me is the game changer. Now I have access to the 10 million odd tracks that Spotify has access to through a very cool and non intrusive Sonos S5 that sits tidily in the corner. It's trivial to use and set up, and although you might have to buy a remote control, handily there is a free iPhone and Android app that lets you control the system through your phone. A screenshot of the iPhone app is included above.
You do have to have a premium Spotify account, which costs you £10 a month, but with access to the volume of music that you have, this is peanuts. Since having access to Spotify through the Sonos S5 I have deleted every album on my Amazon wish list that is available on Spotify. that has saved me about £100 right there.
i find now, I want to turn on music and listen to that before turning on the TV and becoming a vegetable as well. There is something just right about having music on instead of the TV and the Sonos S5 sound, although I am not the greatest Audiophile in the world, is fantastic. To me, at least, it sounds great!
Also in terms of music discoverability it simply rocks! I love watching something on TV, or listening to the radio on the drive home, and hearing a track from ages ago and being able to search for it on Spotify, add it to a playlist and listen away. It has been a great deal of fun trying to figure out the names of artists and tracks that I used to listen to as a kid and see if they are available on Spotify. There is a lot that isn't as the afore mentioned Cold Chisel example highlights, but the sheer volume and choice that is available gets you past the slight dissapointment experienced when you cannot find Khe Sanh ;-)
Seriously love it!
There is a potential flaw in the whole concept though. Once you have one Sonos you want more! For some reason you start to think about all of the other rooms in your house and how you could stream music there! Also you then want to set up a NAS so, without having to leave your PC running permanently, you can have access to all of your own music as well that you have patiently been collecting for the past few decades! This is when the Danger alarms start ringing!
Cheers
m
Addition: Classic. As I was writing this and mentioning about hearing something on the radio or TV and then trying to find it on Spotify, I was thinking that a Shazam/Spotify integration would greatly help this discoverability use case! Well low and behold the good folks at Spotify and Shazam have been thinking the same thing! Information about that here.
Oh and for those of you who want to know what all the fuss SHOULD be about Cold Chisel ... enjoy!
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