Apple doesn’t play nicely with Sonos… and that could be bad news next month
Sonos has the WiFi speaker
locked up. Will Apple play nice with it?
As Apple prepares a new streaming music service to compete with
Spotify, it might find itself competing on other platforms too.
For example, Sonos speakers are
a great way to listen to music in your home from streaming
The speakers connect to your home’s WiFi network, and you use an
app on your phone, tablet or computer to control what you hear.
If you have multiple speakers in your home, you can listen to
different music in different rooms. Sonos works with all the
major music services like Pandora, Spotify, SoundCloud, and many
But one service is missing: iTunes Radio, Apple’s internet radio
service that was announced to much fanfare . You can listen to
your iTunes library — songs you’ve downloaded from the iTunes
store or files you’ve imported from CDs — through your Sonos app,
but iTunes Radio doesn’t connect to Sonos speakers through the
Sonos app. And it will likely be the same story
for Apple's new on-demand streaming music service, which could
launch as early as this June.
Eric Nielsen, a Sonos spokesperson, told Business Insider that
it's Apple's choice whether or not it wants to integrate iTunes
Radio into the speaker company's app, and Sonos
is "not sure the exact reasons why" Apple doesn't do
it already. However, you
can listen to Beats, which Apple bought last year for $3 billion,
through the Sonos app.
As iMore’s Allyson
Kazmucha writes, it’s technically
it requires you to have either an Apple TV or an AirPlay Express,
Apple’s mini WiFi base station.
Right now, this is probably not a big deal for most Sonos
customers. Despite proclamations that iTunes Radio,
which, like other Internet radio services, allows you to create
stations based on artists, genres and music you listen to, was
going to be a Pandora-killer, the service has not caught on.
Among the major music streaming services, iTunes Radio accounted
for only 4% of streaming listening hours among those 13 and older
during the second half of last year, according
to , a music
industry market research group.
The free, ad-based version of Pandora, by contrast, was the
most popular among the major streaming services — it accounted
for 32% of streaming listening hours among those 13 and
Apple bought Beats Music
for $3 billion so it could launch its own streaming
Apple did not respond to a
request for comment about why iTunes Radio isn't available in the
Sonos app, but it seems like the company is hesitant to allow a
third party direct access to its streaming platform. Meanwhile,
the Beats acquisition also means Apple now has a sizeable speaker
business to play around with.
Beats makes its own line of connected
speakers, but they're Bluetooth, not smart WiFi speakers like
Sonos' products.
Also, Apple has made no secret
of its desire to get into the so-called smart home. The first
products that will be controlled by Apple's Home Kit
platform, according to a recent report in the Wall
Street Journal, and the next version of the Apple TV is everyday appliances
like lights and door locks through the internet, BuzzFeed
reported in March.
Sonos, for its part, is
confident that Apple will make whatever the company ends up
launching available on Sonos.
"We assume that when they focus
on the home and appear on Sonos that their complete service
offerings will be available on Sonos," Nielsen told Business
Apple's forthcoming on-demand streaming service is by no means a
guaranteed success, even though it will have the power of the
Apple brand behind it. The iPhone is the bestselling smartphone
in the world, and ,
but other streaming music services have a huge lead on Apple.
Pandora has
in the US, Australia, and New
Zealand, and
60 million subscribers around the world.
Even though major consumer electronics companies like Samsung
make WiFi-connected speakers, Sonos pretty much owns the market,
, a senior analyst at the research firm IHS, told
Business Insider. He estimates that the Santa Barbara,
Calif.-based company has between 90% and 93% of the global
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International Editions:Apple has always limited users to a certain number of devices for authorization with a specific Apple ID. The rules and terms of multiple device syncing with an Apple ID have always been a little confusing, with the introduction of iCloud posing an even bigger problem for how purchased content can be distributed and synced across multiple devices.
Apparently, the system of Apple ID authorization isn’t as smooth as we all thought it was. You’re actually limited to 10 total devices for one Apple ID…
In addition to that, a device cannot have a reassigned Apple ID take effect for 90 days. Some light has been shed on how Apple manages Apple ID limits, and a post from
shares some real-world insight.
“While testing the new TV re-download feature with iCloud, I stumbled upon a new iTunes policy change. Previously, you could associate five computers with a single iTunes store account, and there was no limit on the number of iOS devices. Apple has now changed the policy so that you can only have five devices associated with your iTunes account. I’m not exactly sure when this policy went into place, though just a week or two back I agreed to a new 53 page iTunes store policy that seems to pop-up every now and then.”
Previously, you could add your Apple ID to as many iDevices as you wanted. Now, you’re limited to a total of 10 devices — and that includes desktop machines and the Apple TV.
points out an Apple
that details how you can deauthorize iDevices from a certain Apple ID, but the process is a lengthy one that is still subject to Apple’s 90 day timer.
It’s obvious that Apple needs to reconsider its method for authenticating multiple devices, and with iCloud entering the foray, it’s only bound to get more confusing.
Apple’s limit on devices tied to one Apple ID can pose a problem for family members that share devices, or to whoever needs to share an Apple ID in a group setting.
There’s no doubt that Apple’s current system of handling purchased content is severely affected by rights management and content providers. The legal system will have to play catch-up as well if Apple wants to have a totally seamless cloud experience for its users.
My proposal: An Apple ID can be registered on as many devices as you want, and purchased content can be synced/played on all registered devices once the device has been authenticated. iCloud also syncs all authenticated devices with the same Apple ID.
That doesn’t sound too difficult, does it Apple?
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