If Sonos has its way, the speaker company will become the ultimate sound provider for your smart home. At a special press event in New York, Sonos unveiled a slew of new hardware and software features meant to make jamming out to music in your high-tech abode as intuitive and enjoyable as possible, including some neat integration with Spotify and Amazon’s Alexa.
Amazon’s voice assistant is arriving publicly in early 2017, and is the biggest of many new upgrades coming to Sonos customers soon. Alexa will let you control your music with your voice much like it does on Amazon’s own Echo and Tap speakers, meaning that pausing, playing and skipping tracks will be just a quick shout away.
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Sonos is also working on tighter integration with Spotify. You’ll soon be able to have full control over your Sonos speaker via the Spotify app on either desktop or mobile, making it easier to manage any number of Sonos devices while you’re kicking back on the couch. The Spotify app will also provide a shortcut to the Sonos app that will simplify the process of controlling music in the various rooms of your home.
Speaking of the Sonos app, the company is making some welcome upgrades to its first-party software. When you’re digging an artist that came up on your radio, you can tap a button that will search for more of their songs across every music service on your mobile device. You can also look forward to some new user interface improvements (including new album pages) meant to get you to your music quicker and keep you listening. These changes will arrive on Sept. 7 as part of a free update to the Sonos app.
According to Sonos president Patrick Spence, the company is catering to what it sees as two huge trends: the rise of streaming music, and the growth of the connected home. Considering the fact that you’ll soon be able to control Sonos speakers with your voice and have more interactivity than ever between your speaker and Spotify, Sonos seems well on its way to its goal.
