Sonos has been a leader in wireless modular home speaker systems that can deliver music throughout your home. They have been the leader in this market because it is their singular focus. They have excellent products like the and the , which we reviewed earlier. But there are other excellent wireless systems that have entered this market. Sonos has recognized they need to continue innovating if they want to maintain its lead position, so they overhauled their app that controls their home wireless systems, making some major improvements that you can’t get anywhere else.
If you already have a Sonos system you will be delighted with the new app, and if you don’t here is yet another reason to seriously consider getting one. Sonos home wireless systems are great because they have a range of speakers for every kind of room in your house, and they can work independently or together. With a Sonos system, the app is really central to the experience, and the new app has really improved that experience.
Simplified Interface
The Sonos interface now has a much cleaner look that is very intuitive. Their previous app interface used to be dominantly blue in colour, and is now much brighter with a white backdrop with vibrant colour accents. The interface is modular, with three main sections: the song that is playing, which rooms are active, and how to find more songs to play next. It has icon buttons and controls that you can push but also has swiping capabilities that makes use of the app even simpler.
Their app makes it very easy to control every room in your house and find the next song you want to play. You can stream different music in every room or decide to group rooms to play the same music. It is very flexible in so many ways.
Better Search Capabilities
The app now has a universal search capability that is a step above any other music system that I have seen. The universal search will quickly scan your library plus any service that you use to find a given artist, album, or song. It looks across your entire music library and simultaneously searches all the music services that you subscribe to such as Rdio, Slacker, Songza, or whatever. This is an awesome feature that ensures you will always find what you are looking for.
The app also makes it easy to search for the next song, while a current song is playing. What is even better is that you can create a music queue that combines songs from your own music library and streaming services that you have access to. I don’t know of any other system that will do that. The Sonos app also allows you to save all your favourite playlists from your library or from multiple services and play them in succession, so you can create a very large playlist from multiple sources.
More Choices
Sonos has recognized that we want to get our music from more and more sources, and their app does a good job of supporting that. In addition to your own library, it allows you to stream a huge variety of Internet radio stations (there are over 100,000), plus they have added a lot of music services that you can access or subscribe to, like Rdio, Spotify, Last.fm, etc. Choice is good, and for your favourite services or radio stations you can setup quick access to them. It also has an alarm function so you can setup the Sonos system to be your morning wakeup to your favourite station or playlist.
I give Sonos full marks for upping their game. Just when other manufacturers were playing catch-up with them, they have reinvented their app to make it stand out. It is currently available in beta mode only on the Android platform, but Sonos is promising it on Apple’s IOS platform this Spring, so it is not far away.
The music streaming revolution is here and Sonos has made it a much better reality!
