Sonos Exploring API For 3rd Party Music Apps
Sonos appears poised to correct the only real flaw that I've found in it's otherwise superior wireless music system: the ability to contol Sonos from within my favorite music apps. A new jobs ad posted by the company points to the creation of an API that would allow digital music services to do just that.
I openly admit that I love my Sonos music system
. No other wireless system that I've tested offers the combined sound quality and ease of use. But I have found the Sonos app a bit limiting. It delivers the online music servies that I use regularly including Spotify, Songza, TuneIn, etc (though I recently had trouble adding Tidal and Deezer), but it does not deliver all of the features available when I'm using each music service's own app.
According to the new jobs post for a Software Test Engineer, other Sonos users apparently agree:
Sonos does already have an API that allows music services to be included within the Sonos app, but opening up to 3rd party developers opens up a multitude of possibilities.
Sonos is facing increased competition, but still appears to be the dominate player. Sonos CEO John MacFarlane said last fall that the company expected to generate a billion dollars in revenue in 2014, according to GigaOm who first noticed the new job ad.
I’ve found two significant limitations to sonos: (1) 65K song file limit (which in reality is lower than this as database issues arise well before this actual limit is reached) and (2) no support for hi-res files (higher than CD quality). Until both of those issues are addressed, sonos will not be a viable choice for many an audiophile.