Following Beta Test, Sonos Adds Spotify App Integration for Everyone

Sonos officially rolled third-party app support for Spotify Tuesday, making it possible
for Spotify users control playback on Sonos speakers directly from the music
service’s mobile apps. Sonos and Spotify first announced this feature in August,
and a number of Sonos users have been beta-testing it for the past couple of weeks.

Up until now, Spotify users had to rely on the Sonos app to access their music catalog,
 making for a bit of a disjointed experience. Users have, for example, not been able to
 listen to music in their car, and then simply continue playback when they arrived at
home without switching apps.

Sonos executives had long talked about adding third-party app integration to their
 devices, but the company was slow to actually make these integrations happen.
Before the partnership with Spotify, consumers could only use Google Play Music
without the official Sonos app.

Sonos early on established itself as a market leader for internet-connected speakers,
but the company has struggled in recent months as sales of voice-activated speakers
like Amazon’s Echo have taken off. As a result, Sonos was forced to lay off some of
its staff earlier this year. And in August, the company announced that it was also going 
to allow consumers to control their Sonos systems with Amazon’s Echo.