The IT Nerd

There are a lot of things you wouldn’t have just one of: socks, friends, potato chips. They’re always better when you have more than one. This is true of Sonos speakers too. The real magic happens when you live with it in more than one room. But there are still a lot of people who are only listening on one speaker, in one room.

There will be 8 different sets ranging from two to four room sets with Sonos Ones and home theater sets with Playbase and Playbar. Speaker sets start at $469.

Starter sets for your whole home:

• 2 Sonos Ones: $469 (vs. $498 separately)
• 3 Sonos Ones: $679 (vs. $747 separately)
• 4 Sonos Ones: $899 (vs. $996 separately)
• 2 Sonos Play:5: $1,169 (vs. $1,298 separately)

Home theater:

• 3.1 set-up: $1,649 (vs. $1,798 separately)
• 5.1 set-up: $2,118 (vs. $2,296 separately)

For more information go to sonos.com

Sonos is introducing Playlist Potluck – a partnership with Spotify that encourages people to invite guests to RSVP to their holiday parties with a list of music suggestions. The role of music at these gatherings is essential so we’re taking the stress out of having to compile a playlist. And once the party is in full swing, guests can easily add to the queue with the Sonos app or directly through Spotify. And anyone who registers their event Playlist gets a chance to win a dinner for 10 with a renowned Canadian chef. Canada is one of eight countries participating in Playlist Potluck.

In support of Playlist Potluck, Sonos conducted a holiday study that delves into hosting, holiday gatherings and music.  Call it what you want – Friendsgiving, Friendsmas, or Friendsmakah – thanks to globalization and our increasingly busy, virtual lives, new friendship ceremonies are growing in popularity, especially this time of year which are all covered in the study.

With the help of music psychologist Dr. Daniel Müllensiefen and author Oliver Burkeman, Sonos spoke to 8,000 people in eight countries to find out what makes a holiday party tick.

Sonos knows music has a powerful effect on our relationships at home, but what happens when you invite friends over?

• 75% agree that music helps break the ice
• 61% say that music in the background makes the food and drink taste better
• 62% feel that a good playlist at a party makes people more attractive

Please see here for the full survey results.

Sonos is also working on a special episode of the popular series Mind of a Chef. The hour-long episode will be available exclusively on Netflix in the U.S. and on YouTube globally, and will feature an inside look at chef and co-founder of Mission Chinese Food, Danny Bowien, and his very own Playlist Potluck. The episode debuts on December 1, 2016.

Sonos announced today that they are expanding their collaboration with Apple and bringing Sonos into Apple’s physical and online retail stores. Two of their most popular speakers — the PLAY:1 and PLAY:5 — are immediately available at Apple.com in the US today, at 468 Apple Stores worldwide on October 5, and Apple’s online stores outside of the US starting November 2. Also, those who buy a Sonos system at Apple retail stores or at Apple.com between today and Dec. 31 will receive a free three-month subscription to Apple Music.

For more on how you can get your hands on Sonos speakers through Apple, head over here.

At an event in Manhattan that I watched live this morning, Sonos unveiled software innovations including voice control and partner app integrations that make it easier than ever for listeners to navigate, discover and share music in their homes. The company also demonstrated how partners are building new connected home experiences on the Sonos platform, further bolstering its leadership in multi-room home audio.

• Sonos owners with an Alexa-enabled device such as an Amazon Echo or Echo Dot will soon be able to use Amazon’s popular Alexa service to control their Sonos sound system, the companies announced. The software integration – collaboratively built from the ground up using the Alexa Voice Service (AVS) SDK– taps into both Sonos’ and Alexa’s existing music capabilities so owners don’t have to learn additional commands or key words. Simply ask Alexa to play your music from Amazon Music, Spotify and more and it will flow to any group of Sonos speakers in the home. By integrating Alexa into their Sonos sound systems, owners can use their voice to play, pause, skip, control volume and more. These new voice capabilities will be delivered in a software update that will work with new and previously purchased Sonos and Alexa-enabled devices such as Amazon Echo, Echo Dot, Amazon Tap, and Amazon Fire TV. The companies will begin rolling out the experience through an invite-only beta test later this year, with general availability in 2017.

• Sonos also announced a Spotify Connect integration with additional functionality that will make it the only whole home sound system that can be fully controlled directly from the feature-rich Spotify app, including play controls and easy access to grouping and ungrouping of rooms. Spotify will be the first music streaming service that allows Spotify Premium listeners to have full control of the music all over their homes outside the Sonos app. The inherently social listening experience also makes it possible for everyone in the home to control a listening session with both the Spotify and Sonos apps, which stay linked with one another. Friends coming over? They can connect to your WiFi and use their own Spotify app to instantly play music to your Sonos speakers without downloading the Sonos app. And since you can control your Sonos system when you’re away from your home WiFi, you can now have music playing for you as soon as you come home.

• Rapid innovation is happening across native apps from all the streaming services. Sonos also announced its commitment to enable direct control experiences across its entire lineup of music service partners, including Pandora.

• Sonos also announced the company’s first-ever endorsed partner integrations with connected home leaders Crestron, Lutron, Savant, Control4, iPort and Deutsche Telekom’s QIVICON. These joint collaborations seamlessly integrate Sonos’ sound platform into the connected home, making it even easier for customers to control their music at home, whether from a touchscreen panel, a light switch or a remote control, all with the simple push of a button.

• Sonos also announced a series of initiatives to advocate for higher-quality music listening experiences at home, both through consumer education and industry activism. Sonos will also partner with Airbnb to use the power of music to make everywhere feel even more like home. The companies will work together to enhance the home listening experience, not only for Airbnb’s host community, but for their 100+ million guest arrivals around the world. Sonos has been offering Sonos systems to new Airbnb hosts, and together the two brands recently piloted a Sonos Home pop-up activation with promising early results. Finally, Sonos announced it has joined the Open Music Initiative, an organization founded in June 2016 by Berklee’s Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship with the goal of dramatically simplifying the way music creators and rights owners are identified and compensated for their art. As a member, Sonos will champion high-quality music experiences worth paying for, a major hurdle for continued growth.

For more information about Sonos, please visit www.sonos.com.

Sonos has officially landed in New York City. Their new permanent residence is 101 Greene Street (101G), Soho. They built it from the ground up to physically display and embody their sincere belief that better sound makes a better home. They know that the sound of music in your home is as important as the lighting or the furniture. Now they have a space where you can hear it for yourself.

The core of 101G is the listening experience. Having their Sound Experience Leader, Giles Martin sonically tune every inch of the space for max sound quality was essential. But they definitely went above and beyond in their seven central listening rooms. They’re covered in thousands of pounds of sheetrock and custom-beveled glass to make them not only soundproof and acoustically perfect, but also just like the way you really listen to music at home. They designed the spaces with studies, kitchens, and living rooms, letting you hear great sound on everything from home theatre systems to turntables in the proper context.

Environment matters to sound just as much as sound to environment. So each listening room also features custom furniture, visual art and lighting design that reflects some of our favorite styles and periods from the past century. None of them are the same. They’re into too many different design aesthetics to waste a chance to show one of our favorites. Sound is nice like that – it enhances all styles. It doesn’t limit itself to one single expression and neither does 101G.

Of course a home is better with friends, so they brought in some of their most talented ones to shape the space. Legendary illustrators and painters like Mark Stamaty, Thibaud Herem, and Mark Chamberlain designed and hand-painted our wallpaper. Thurston Moore kindly lent us a selection of his cassette tapes from the golden age of NYC cassette trading. Archivist Arthur Fournier put up rare selections from his classic zine collection. And in the front it’ll be hard to miss the eight-foot portrait of Rick Rubin we set up to greet you.

There’s a lot going on at 101 Greene Street. Doors are open to all starting July 19th. If you’re in NYC, drop by. 

Sonos today announced that Apple Music will be officially available on Sonos wireless speakers starting tomorrow after being in beta for the last couple of months. Sonos customers across the world will be able to stream Apple Music content and directly access all Apple Music features.

If that wasn’t enough, Sonos released the findings of a worldwide study that shows the transformative power of listening to music out loud at home. The Music Makes It Home Study found that listening to music out loud leads to stronger relationships, more intimacy, happier families and more quality time spent together. According to the study, people who listen to music out loud at home the most spend an additional three hours and 13 minutes per week together with their household members than those who listen out loud the least.

The Music Makes It Home Study was a two-part endeavour designed to better understand if playing music throughout a home can change the way we connect. In the first phase, Sonos asked 30,000 people across eight countries about music and their relationships at home. The second phase was a unique experiment to track what happens when people play music out loud in their homes.

The findings of the study include:

• Musical homes have more romance. People who say they listen to music out loud together the most have 67 per cent more sex, and almost a quarter of people would give up sex before music according to survey data.
• Our study shows that listening to music out loud can lead to more happiness. After music was introduced in the home, 43 per cent of participants reported feeling extremely loved, an 87 per cent increase from before there was music at home.
• Boring things can become more fun. In our survey, 83 percent believe doing chores is easier when listening to music.
• 50 per cent of respondents enjoy cooking more while listening to music. This was underlined in the experiment, where we could see an increase in the time spent together in the kitchen by 20 per cent.

Participant homes in the experiment ranged from roommates and married couples to multi-generational families, as well as couples living together for the first time. Using iPhones, Apple Watches, iBeacons and motion-activated cameras, a variety of data was collected, including daily video journals that provided insight into how music transformed the homes.

Learn more about the Music Makes It Home Study and read the full report at www.musicmakesithome.com.

Sonos and Apple today announced via a blog post that Apple Music will be available in public beta on Sonos starting December 15. You will have the ability to stream all your favorite aspects of Apple Music, including For You, New, Radio, and My Music, through Sonos smart speakers tuned for great sound in any or every room of your home.

For those of you who are looking to participate in the beta of Apple Music on Sonos, you can sign up by clicking here.