Apple Music partner Sonos to layoff employees, renew focus on streaming and voice control
Apple Music partner Sonos to layoff employees, renew focus on streaming and voice control
Citing its newfound partnership with Apple Music, Sonos on Tuesday revealed that the company will be refocusing its company on streaming music services, and as part of those changes it plans to layoff some of its employees.
In a vague blog post, Sonos Chief Executive John MacFarlane didn't indicate how many employees would be let go, or what specific changes might be in store for the speaker maker. He cited a continued shift toward subscription streaming music services, bolstered by Apple's entrance in 2015.
"This past year, when Apple announced its entry with Apple Music, we saw and helped drive a dramatic acceleration of paid music subscriptions," MacFarlane wrote. "With Apple's influence, the entire ecosystem -- labels, artists, management -- began to embrace and advance streaming all over the world."
While Sonos apparently plans to "substantially and confidently increase" its investment in the future of music, the company will also be cutting some employees from its workforce.
"We do this with a heavy heart, as we are in the process of letting go of some Sonos employees who have played important roles getting us to this point," MacFarlane said. "We wish them well, and we're doing everything we can to make their transition as smooth as possible."
Beyond streaming, Sonos also has a keen interest in voice control in the home. The CEO specifically cited Amazon and its Alexa personal assistant and Echo hardware.
"Voice recognition isn't new; today it's nearly ubiquitous with Siri, OK Google, and Cortana," MacFarlane said. "But the Echo found a sweet spot in the home and will impact how we navigate music, weather, and many, many other things as developers bring new ideas and more content to the Alexa platform."
Apple Music became an official Sonos streaming option in February. The partnership brought Apple access to an installed customer base of about 5 million households with Sonos products.
Citing its newfound partnership with Apple Music, Sonos on Tuesday revealed that the company will be refocusing its company on streaming music services, and as part of those changes it plans to layoff some of its employees.
In a vague blog post, Sonos Chief Executive John MacFarlane didn't indicate how many employees would be let go, or what specific changes might be in store for the speaker maker. He cited a continued shift toward subscription streaming music services, bolstered by Apple's entrance in 2015.
"This past year, when Apple announced its entry with Apple Music, we saw and helped drive a dramatic acceleration of paid music subscriptions," MacFarlane wrote. "With Apple's influence, the entire ecosystem -- labels, artists, management -- began to embrace and advance streaming all over the world."
While Sonos apparently plans to "substantially and confidently increase" its investment in the future of music, the company will also be cutting some employees from its workforce.
"We do this with a heavy heart, as we are in the process of letting go of some Sonos employees who have played important roles getting us to this point," MacFarlane said. "We wish them well, and we're doing everything we can to make their transition as smooth as possible."
Beyond streaming, Sonos also has a keen interest in voice control in the home. The CEO specifically cited Amazon and its Alexa personal assistant and Echo hardware.
"Voice recognition isn't new; today it's nearly ubiquitous with Siri, OK Google, and Cortana," MacFarlane said. "But the Echo found a sweet spot in the home and will impact how we navigate music, weather, and many, many other things as developers bring new ideas and more content to the Alexa platform."
Apple Music became an official Sonos streaming option in February. The partnership brought Apple access to an installed customer base of about 5 million households with Sonos products.
Comments
Amazon has done an admirable job with their voice and control features so far based on every review I've read and being a multi-platform player has huge benefits.
As a speaker though, it's not a patch on any of my Sonos speakers.
Multi-Room audio will be the norm in 5 years or less. The low end is going to be dominated by Bluetooth and Chromecast like products. Amazon's done a great job building out Alexa but it's not something that Apple cannot have on the market in less than a year (Beats Bluetooth speaker with Siri/Homekit support...done)
Apple hasn't really touched Airplay in quite a while. Will it go synchronous multi-room?
Me personally i'm going to hold out another year. Don't discount Bose and it's SoundTouch lineup. The speakers sound as good as Sonos and Bose has a nice lineup of soundbar systems, outdoor speakers and more that they can leverage. Yes I'm not a fan of their weak subwoofers (never have been) but they're primary weakness is mobile and desktop app maturity.
Sometimes she's able to find my "groceries" list, sometimes not. Sometimes she is able to add to my Costco list while other times she tries to create a Cosco list.
My personal favorite is when I say call my wife and she responds that she doesn't know who that is so I give Siri my wife's name. She then responds that she can't find her in my contacts even though Siri spells and pronounces her name correctly (her first name is spelled diifferenty from the norm and my last name is a little difficult).
Sometimes I wish I could ask Siri if she's f'n with me.
By the way if you think "Alexa" is something you buy you're wrong. You are obviously confusing it with Echo, an Amazon hardware product you CAN buy for which there's numerous positive reviews outside of Amazon's own site. A little reading would do you good IMO so you might understand what Alexa is.
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/amazons-free-alexa-api-is-a-boon-for-developers/
As for what I use it for, honestly, almost nothing now. It's not as good at sound reproduction as my Sonos (though it's not bad - if I didn't have a Sonos speaker in every room, I'd use it, but I bought it expecting not to use it all that much, since a friend of mine was the Project Manager for it), and it just seemed weird asking it what the weather is going to be like. While as a whole product, I don't really get the point of Echo, my experience is that in terms of speech recognition, it's streets ahead of Siri.
It's not that she doesn't "understand" me. She does, she generally gets the name right in pronunciation and spelling but generally goes to the web before searching local on the device. For example, if I say "The Rice Inn" as it is in my contacts, I get at least two restaurants not in my contacts; one being a Mexican place that sounds nothing like The Rice Inn or I sometimes get an Italin place that I never heard of. I use to think it was bad when I had a contact who's last name was Rice but the first name could not have been confused with The Rice Inn. It was when I deleted that contact that I realized Siri must be skipping contracts check as a business in my contacts. It wasn't always like that. The search logic is screwed up.
And you wouldn't think Siri would think you meant "Costco" which already exists instead of "Cosco"?
I often use commands like "Hey Siri, set timer for 10 minutes" in a noisy ice rink and those commands work fine.
I know, but Siri's been around for years now. Siri seems to respond better somedays than others but generally speaking she should be a little more advanced than she is now.