According to Sonos, radio playback allegedly accounts for approximately half of all the times a customer spends tuned in to its products. To curate and provide more engaging and interesting radio streaming content, Sonos says that it has partnered up with multiple streaming partners that, in turn, provide access to more than 60000 stations. Sonos Radio will also a sub-section called Sonos Presents. The brand says this part of the service will provide customers with originally curated content such as behind-the-scene stories, special guest radio hours and what it calls “Artist-hosted radio hours” where guest artists will host a radio show for one hour. Complete with music and commentary. Last but not least is Sonos Stations. Sonos has disclosed that these curated radio streaming stations will have ads. Based on general location data and music genre information.
Not surprisingly, there is a drawback to gaining access to these stations. Sadly, Sonos Radio will only stream at 128kbps; that’s bitrate quality is really low, considering services like Spotify offers 320kbps streaming quality for its radio streaming service. Also, and we don’t believe this needs to be said, the service is clearly designed to work optimally with other Sonos audio products. At the time of writing, we’re unsure if or when exactly Sonos Radio will be launching. While we would like to tell you more about how it works, we don’t exactly have access to Sonos speakers. (Source: Sonos via The Verge)
