Google Vs Sonos: The losers are users!

The beef between Google and Sonos has been going for a while, but Sonos users are starting to make some noise. This is off the back of the death of Google Play Music, forcing a transition to YouTube Music. While there isn’t a specific issue with using YouTube Music within the Sonos ecosystem if you’re looking to cast from a mobile device you’re out of luck.

The background relates to the earlier mentioned litigation and the collaborative work between the two companies. Rather than continuing the collaboration, coming to a common protocol or API for casting – they’ve parted ways and ultimately the losers are the users. Sadly for Sonos users, this means that the ability to cast audio (which worked perfectly in Google Play Music) from YouTube Music to Sonos speakers still isn’t resolved.

Further to this, there’s no likely end in sight but it’s not a total loss. The Sonos app works perfectly well with YouTube Music or any major streaming service and — if you’re prepared to put the effort in — you can in fact, setup your Google speakers to use a Sonos device as an output. It’s a definite issue for a lot of users, perhaps they’ll be looking to migrate to another streaming music provider?

It will be very interesting to see if anything comes of this and how it plays out moving forward. I know as a YouTube Music and Sonos user, I’ve really missed the ability to directly cast to my Sonos Speakers. On the flip side, that has driven me to utilise my Google speakers more heavily.