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SONOS, With Partners and Industry Leaders, Ushers in New Era of Connected Home ListeningNEW YORK, Aug. 30, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --Flanked by music and tech industry leaders at an event in Manhattan, Sonos® today unveiled software innovations including voice control and partner app integrations that make it easier than ever for listeners to navigate, discover and share music in their homes. The company also demonstrated how partners are building new connected home experiences on the Sonos platform, further bolstering its leadership in multi-room home audio. "With the unprecedented growth in streaming, music has become abundant and immediate," said Sonos Chief Executive Officer John MacFarlane. "Together with a growing ecosystem of partners, we're making sure Sonos owners can easily play the music they love out loud in every room in the home, and intuitively control that experience using our app, our partners' apps, touch and voice." Alexa, Turn It Up! "Our Amazon customers love listening to music. With Echo and Alexa, we combined that love of music with the ease of hands-free voice control, and today, music is one of the most-used features on Alexa-enabled devices," said Mike George, vice president, Amazon. "We're thrilled to collaborate with Sonos to combine the magic of Alexa with an incredible way to listen to music in every room in the home." "Our mission is to fill every home with music," said Sonos President Patrick Spence. "We don't care what you listen to, how you get to it, or in what room – we just want it to be effortless, quick and epic. Alexa on Sonos will be all that, and fun too." These new voice capabilities will be delivered in a software update that will work with new and previously purchased Sonos and Alexa-enabled devices such as Amazon Echo, Echo Dot, Amazon Tap, and Amazon Fire TV. The companies will begin rolling out the experience through an invite-only beta test later this year, with general availability in 2017. I Want My Spotify The inherently social listening experience also makes it possible for everyone in the home to control a listening session with both the Spotify and Sonos apps, which stay linked with one another. Friends coming over? They can connect to your WiFi and use their own Spotify app to instantly pay music to your Sonos speakers without downloading the Sonos app. And since you can control your Sonos system when you're away from your home WiFi, you can now have music playing for you as soon as you come home. "Fifty percent of all Sonos households use Spotify," said Sonos Vice President of Software Antoine Leblond. "By tightly integrating the Spotify experience with the Sonos system, we've created an easier way for Sonos owners to get music out of their phones and playing all around their homes." "We're excited to partner with Sonos and enhance the at-home listening experience," said Gustav Söderström, chief product officer at Spotify. "Spotify listeners can now seamlessly transition their listening throughout the day from their headphones, to the car, to their computers, to their Sonos system at home with complete control of all their favorite Spotify features directly from the Spotify app." This free software update will be available in October as part of the Sonos public beta program. More to Come "We've collaborated with Sonos for years to create a delightful, personal in-home experience for Pandora listeners," said Tim Westergren, Pandora CEO and founder. "Using your Pandora app to control Sonos will take this unique music experience one step further – making it easier to use than ever before. We're excited to continue our quest with Sonos for the ultimate home music solution." Sonos: The Heart of the Connected Home "Custom installers are at the vanguard of making the connected home a reality," said Spence. "For years they have worked tirelessly to bring disparate technologies together, and are pushing hard to make smart homes both accessible and ubiquitous. Our work together ensures our sound platform integrates well with their systems now and in the future." Advocates for Quality Listening at Home "There's a huge gap between how people feel about music and how they experience it at home," said Sonos Chief Marketing Officer Joy Howard. "We're using the weight of our brand and our unique position in the industry to create a better future for music." The effort kicks off with a new global marketing campaign that pokes fun at the absurdities of modern listening and exposes the problems that stand between us and the music we love. The hilarity of listening on "craptop" speakers, the frustration of a phone tethered to a speaker by Bluetooth and the irony of wiring a home for sound in the age of WiFi are all part of the campaign. The work premieres on TV, online and out of home on September 1. Sonos will also partner with Airbnb to use the power of music to make everywhere feel even more like home. The companies will work together to enhance the home listening experience, not only for Airbnb's host community, but for their 100+ million guest arrivals around the world. Sonos has been offering Sonos systems to new Airbnb hosts, and together the two brands recently piloted a Sonos Home pop-up activation with promising early results. Finally, Sonos announced it has joined the Open Music Initiative, an organization founded in June 2016 by Berklee's Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship with the goal of dramatically simplifying the way music creators and rights owners are identified and compensated for their art. As a member, Sonos will champion high-quality music experiences worth paying for, a major hurdle for continued growth. "Sonos is the perfect partner for OMI – it's a company that deeply and genuinely cares about the power of music in our daily lives and sees the long-term health of the entire music industry as something worth fighting for," said Panos Panay, founder, Open Music Initiative and founding managing director of BerkleeICE. "With the brainpower of companies like Sonos, OMI will more quickly bring solutions to ensure proper compensation for all creators, performers and rights holders of music." Video, photography and more information about the other news of the day is available here: http://press-us.sonos.com/en. For more information about Sonos, please visit www.sonos.com. About Sonos Sonos is now in more than 60 countries, with dozens of streaming music providers, through thousands of retailers, and in millions of homes. With a constant investment in software and services, Sonos is improving the experience customers have with music in the home for years after they buy it. Sonos is changing the way people listen to music – one home at a time. Sonos, Inc. is a privately held company, headquartered in Santa Barbara, California with additional offices in Boston and Seattle, as well as in the Netherlands, France, the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany and China. © 2016 by Sonos Inc. All rights reserved. Sonos and all Sonos product names and slogans are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sonos, Inc. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160830/402549 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150922/269147LOGO
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