Starting today, Sonos will being offering a new Sonos Radio experience in its app, bringing free curated listening experiences from some of the industry’s most notable artists, and over 30 ad-supported genre-based stations.
Radio is a great way to discover new music, and Sonos says around half of the company’s 10 million users around the world use their Sonos systems to listen to radio, so it makes sense to enhance the experience.
The new features are coming to the Sonos app in updates scheduled to roll out starting today.
Here’s a look at what you can expect.
Sonos Sound System
The big news here is the launch of Sonos’ signature station Sonos Sound System. Sonos intends for the station to sound like a real radio station with some back-announcing on tracks, featuring a host of new and popular music run from Sonos’ store in NYC. It’s completely free for Sonos users.
Every Wednesday morning, Sonos Sound System will feature a guest hour with music, commentary and some of the guest artist’s latest work. The guest hours will be kicked off with content featuring Angel Olsen, JPEGMAFIA, Phoebe Bridgers, Jeff Parker (Tortoise), Vagabon and more.
Artist-curated Stations
Alongside Sonos Sound System will be a selection of stations curated by popular and well-known artists. They’ll pop up, hang around for a little while and cycle out so it’ll be worth your time checking back to see what’s new.
First up is Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, whose station is called In The Absence Thereof… offering tracks that Yorke says fascinate, challenge, move and obsess him. Especially created with our current extended time indoors in mind, Yorke hopes his station offers a connection and an escape for listeners.
Sonos will launch other artist-curated stations over the coming weeks, featuring Brittany Howard (Alabama Shakes), David Byrne and Third Man
Records. These stations are free for Sonos users.
Genre Stations
Drawing on popular content from partner services, Sonos will also over over 30 curated genre-specific stations for users.
Users will find stations such as Concert Hall, Country Outlaws, Hip Hop Archive, Kids Rock, and more awaiting them in the app. There’s a lot of tastes represented here, but I’m hoping to see a soundtrack-centric station pop up here in the future.
These stations are ad-supported, but Sonos says the ads shouldn’t be obtrusive (you’ll hear one only a few times an hour).
Local Radio
Finally, Sonos will also offer you access to your local radio stations – but if you’d rather listen to something from the other side of the planet you can also go global.
Sonos will draw on content from partner services like iHeartRadio, TuneIn, Global and Radio.com in this area. All up, the company is offering some 60,000 stations from across the globe here.
