Pandora: back in charts!

Thursday, May 24th, 2007

music recommendation has seemingly been dominated by Last.fm recently (new widgets, video-content, mashups), while competitor & innovator Pandora was less lucky being forced to shut down services outside the US. at yesterdays press-event at the Museum of Modern Art (SF), Pandora  reported back with an impressive array of announcements, including…

  •   …a much needed revamp of their website, aiming to bring Pandora’s social networking-features to the attention of 6.9mio registered users
  • …integration with  the Sonos Digital Music System, bringing personalized radio into every corner of your house (read my in-depth review of the Sonos at PLAY.FM)
  • …a mobile WiFi-player jointly developed with SanDisk & Zing
  • …and most groundbreaking - from my point of view - a deal bringing Pandora to Sprint-cellphones across the United States…music recommendation finally goes mobile!

related articles: Pandora, Last.fm

Sonos integrates Rhapsody

Friday, September 15th, 2006

with recently released version 2.0 software-update, Sonos integrates support for Rhapsody’s music-subscription service with their network audio-player. while competitor Slim Devices supports playback of Rhapsody on their Squeezebox-players only when looped through a Windows XP PC running Rhapsody software, Sonos goes a big step further by enabling stand-alone access to the library. Rhapsody offers 2millions of tracks, genre-based- and customized radio and music recommendations - all browsable on the sleek Sonos remote. other than Rhapsody-integration, the software upgrade includes more internet radiostations, an alarm-clock & scheduled music feature, enhanced language support (french, italian, spanish) and several minor additions regarding format- & metatag-support.

update: Jeremy Toeman has an extensive hands-on review.

review: Sonos Digital Music System

Saturday, July 15th, 2006

I just finished my review of the Sonos Digital Music System for PLAY.FM - definitely the most amazing network audio player I’ve reviewed so far. the Sonos is a modular multi-room-system, streaming all sorts of audio-data from a PC/Mac or any SMB-fileshare (f.e. a fileserver or a stand-alone NAS-box) to a home stereo or (in case of the ZP100) any pair of speakers. A Sonos setup can connect up to 32 receivers  (think of one ‘ZonePlayer’ for every room of your apartment/house) which are managed by a neat handheld-controller. the controller features a crisp 3.5″ color-LCD and an iPod-like click-wheel - a great tool to navigate large media-collections. I’ve tried other systems like the Squeezebox or the Terratec Noxon before, and while both offer basically the same functionality, it just isn’t fun to browse through thousands of mp3s with a simple plastic-remote control and a tiny display you can’t decipher when being away more than 2 meters from the device. of course, all that shiny technology has its price: a basic setup for streaming music to one room costs about 800,- USD, additional receiver-units go for 350,- USD (ZP80, hooking up to an existing stereo-amplifier) and 500,- USD (ZP100, integrated amplifier).

since I’m going to move into a 2floor-apartment by august, I’m thinking about getting a basic setup…if my budget isn’t eaten up by the move, that is ;)
sonos.jpg

update: while the Sonos is a great product, I think there is still room for improvements. primarily, I’ld love to see Sonos open up APIs to the controller unit. since the system seems to be based on linux, I’m sure a great number of innovative extensions would pop up soon. if you don’t believe me, just check the directory of available Squeezebox-plugins. moreover I hope it’s just a matter of time until Sonos integrates video-capabilities into their devices. I think of a ZonePlayer connected to my TV (maybe even HD-TV) or video-projector, streaming video-data (divx, mpeg2…) from a central file-storage. now that’ld be cool… :)