Sonos' Exciting New Product Category Is Commercial Audio (theverge.com) 39
Today, Sonos is introducing Sonos Pro, a new service targeted at businesses -- restaurants, bars, and retail stores -- that makes it easy to play music across numerous locations without breaking any licensing rules. Sonos Pro works with all S2-compatible hardware including the Ikea Symfonisk line and, if you're into retrofitting existing speakers, the Amp and Port. The Verge reports: Pro customers will gain access to a web portal that lets them remotely control what's playing in each of their locations (divided into different zones) and perform troubleshooting from afar. If you're a normal consumer and want to reset your Sonos system at home, you've got to unplug the products, but Pro customers will be able to do it with software. They'll also have the ability to schedule particular genres for different times of the day to lock in the right atmosphere for their business. Want to keep the volume low in the mornings when you've got less foot traffic and automatically raise it during peak hours? Sonos Pro can do that.
The monthly Sonos Pro subscription, priced at $35 per business location, will include "Sonos Backgrounds." This is a commercially licensed music service featuring a range of royalty-free music from independent artists that's all legally compliant for streaming at business establishments. If you're wondering why that's necessary, businesses technically aren't allowed to just start playing Spotify, Apple Music, or other mainstream music apps over their speakers. Spotify says so right here. Those services are only licensed for personal use; playing them in a public setting counts as a live performance, and that's a no-no unless you've paid for the necessary licenses from ASCAP, BMI, and other organizations. That can get extremely complicated in and of itself.
The service will provide deep, granular control over the entire system in a commercial space. You can set maximum volume limits for each speaker or enable / disable features like AirPlay, line-in playback, and more. If you want to give your staff access to Spotify after hours, that's doable with an "allow direct control" setting. Speaking of which, business owners can grant their employees access to Sonos Pro and set different permission tiers for each person. And again, this can all be done remotely. Try adjusting settings (or even switching your Wi-Fi network) for Sonos devices on a regular account, and it can get messy fast. If you're away from the devices, forget about it.
The monthly Sonos Pro subscription, priced at $35 per business location, will include "Sonos Backgrounds." This is a commercially licensed music service featuring a range of royalty-free music from independent artists that's all legally compliant for streaming at business establishments. If you're wondering why that's necessary, businesses technically aren't allowed to just start playing Spotify, Apple Music, or other mainstream music apps over their speakers. Spotify says so right here. Those services are only licensed for personal use; playing them in a public setting counts as a live performance, and that's a no-no unless you've paid for the necessary licenses from ASCAP, BMI, and other organizations. That can get extremely complicated in and of itself.
The service will provide deep, granular control over the entire system in a commercial space. You can set maximum volume limits for each speaker or enable / disable features like AirPlay, line-in playback, and more. If you want to give your staff access to Spotify after hours, that's doable with an "allow direct control" setting. Speaking of which, business owners can grant their employees access to Sonos Pro and set different permission tiers for each person. And again, this can all be done remotely. Try adjusting settings (or even switching your Wi-Fi network) for Sonos devices on a regular account, and it can get messy fast. If you're away from the devices, forget about it.
This is going to hard on ASCAP and BMI! (Score:2, Redundant)
Not that I care. I'm more worried that $35 is an awfully small amount of money for a commercial license, and I wonder how much of that goes to the artists.
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Royalty-free != Copyright-free (Score:2)
Royalty-free and copyright-free are two different things entirely.
The field of "royalty-free music" - commonly termed "library music" - is a vast one, and encompasses everything from documentaries to old-fashioned elevator/mall muzak. It's not strictly background music, either - a lot of TV shows use pop/rock library music for "plot-critical" music cues (think a detective hearing a song on the radio that goes "you're flinging me in mud, you're flinging me in mud" and having the eureka moment involving muddy
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Not that I care. I'm more worried that $35 is an awfully small amount of money for a commercial license, and I wonder how much of that goes to the artists.
I wouldn't be too worried about that to be honest.
"that's a no-no unless you've paid for the necessary licenses from ASCAP, BMI, and other organizations. That can get extremely complicated in and of itself."
The $35 is the usual bullshit "teaser" rate to help you forget how you're going to get screwed in the future. The above "complicated" statement is a reminder that there's no way in hell you'll continue to pay only $35/month. Not that Sonos is going to admit that outside of perhaps a financial obligation buried on page 342 of the EULA they know you'll never read anyway.
Quite frankly, recording industry greed can't wait until it's paying AI instead of humans
does that cover the right to have pinballs & a (Score:2)
does that cover the right to have pinball's & arcade games with licensed music in your bar as well?
Shit music then (Score:1, Troll)
All those great, original, groundbreaking songs that definitely aren't boring low-effort dirges with nothing to distinguish them musically or lyrically from the other billion RnB songs.
Re: Shit music then (Score:3)
Rhythm n Blues?
Nope. Rap n Bullshit
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RnB is lazy boring music for lazy boring people.
Shame more control isn't standard (Score:5, Interesting)
I hate Sonos. We have over 16 speakers, and after every power outage we need to do a dance where all get unplugged a bd powered back up in a specific sequence so their WiFi network only requires one hop to a wired device. It takes about a half hour, because you need to make sure they are fully booted up and added before moving on to the next one.
The need (and have needed for well over a decade) better control than their stupid app.
Re: Shame more control isn't standard (Score:2)
Granted, their setup process sucks. It looks to me like they are trying too hard to prevent interoperability, but whatever. It's why I never bought any more of their products after the initial Sonos One (or whatever the absolute first speaker was called).
The real question is why you threw bad mine after good, and have *sixteen* Sonos products?!
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We had some speakers in a second home and I had two in my office... and now everything is in the same house. It wasn't until moving into the new house and the whole S2 stuff that it became really bad.
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I'm also done with Sonos - a much smaller customer than you, but that whole S1/S2 thing really boils my piss. They still continually say "time to upgrade!" only to say "sorry, not compatible". Also, the constant badgering to sign into your Sonos account is getting tedious too.
It's clear that they haven't been about "the consumer" for a while, and this move, probably good for their share price just goes to amplify that perception. Hey ho, the IPO made some people rich, so there's that, I suppose.
Oh, and whil
I can hardly contain myself (Score:2)
I'm giddy with excitement! OMG, what am I gonna do?
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I too am extraordinarily excited.
The Germans call it 'Fahrstuhlmusik' (Score:2)
Elevator music, people hate it thought and through.
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Elevator music, people hate it thought and through.
Worked in a manufacturing plant for almost two decades. They still pay for music to be streamed through the entire workplace day and night, with genres changed every quarter based on employee feedback.
The most telling employee feedback, was when that system went offline. General overall irritation and even illness rates went up when it happened. Managers hated when it happened, and couldn't wait until it was back online. Music can be a powerful business tool.
And quite frankly, if you thought "elevator"
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Stuck in a dentist office where I took a relative. Streaming music, no commercials, a range of styles though most old fogey stuff (ie, 25 years old :-) I assume this is the type of music. Ho hum, no exciting. But it's what businesses want. "Royalty free" I hope doesn't mean artists aren't paid, probably means flat-fee, maybe that differentiates it from some old style radio services in the past?
Not sure why it's on slashdot. Or who Sonos is. I am predicting slow nerd news day.
I want to build a constellation of satellites (Score:2, Funny)
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Capitalism collapsed in 1983. The shock wave it created destroyed the universe which was immediately replaced with a nearly identical parallel universe with no one the wiser except for some odd deja vu experiences that down down after a week. Nature abhors a vacuum, just like cats.
Never buy Sonos equipment. (Score:2)
Ever. For any reason.
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Exactly. No bar or restaurant with half a clue will change out all their audio equipment to be entirely Sonos proprietary. Talk about major vendor lockin, and all for no good reason.
My speakers and amps will not be locked into any one platform. I'll install stuff that works with any source, and then change out only the source as needed.
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Nobody wants to equip their business with subscription-based hardware that can be bricked remotely. Imagine trying to sell your old equipment for an upgrade only to find out that they only way you can get rid of it is to send it back to Sonos for a minor discount on more Sonos equipment.
Seen this before (Score:3)
Did we not see some issues with an audio hardware product that was dependent on some website to function and then the company decided to kill the website and all your hardware was bricked? Are we doing this again now?
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Sonos isn't dependent on a website to function - it's dependent on an local app to function. There's no subscription. I could be using a three year old copy of the app with a three year old copy of the speaker firmware and my only issues would be A) is the three year old copy of the app compatible with my phone and B) is the three year old version of the firmware compatible with the streaming services I use.
But DLNA isn't going to break over time. Nor AirPlay.. Connection to Plex servers probably won't
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Some people are slow learners.
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Mod this down again, coward...This kind of insanity won't stop until capitalism finally collapses in the 2040s, at which point I can turn off the copyrighted content broadcast satellite constellation, and we can finally start moving forward as a species. It is hard to be patient.
Yes, because solving for corrupt capitalism in the MAFIAA is going to eradicate the Disease of Greed that has infected mankind for thousands of years. Forget endless warmongering brought on by the Military Industrial Complex or the rise of geopolitical threats goose-stepping a planet into a World War for the third fucking time. It's those damn greedy music execs preventing us from moving forward as a species, right? /s
You were modded down because of your unbelievable ignorance on how to tackle the actual p
This is an ad right? (Score:3, Insightful)
Having run multiple brick and mortars... (Score:1)
ASCAP and BMI will still do their shakedown (Score:1)
Doesn't matter if its licensed already, ASCAP/BMI is still going to do a shakedown on the establishment.
The only market Sonos deserves (Score:2)
The commercial space is the only market Sonos deserves.
Thankfully I was able to steer another potential customer away from Sonos this week!