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The OP writes that Sonos speakers can function without an internet connection which is entirely untrue and what differentiates the product from others in the ma

The OP writes that Sonos speakers can function without an internet connection which is entirely untrue and what differentiates the product from others in the market. Sonos speakers access the net and your streaming music accounts by themselves without using your phone and you can demonstrate this by turning off the phone while they're playing. Logically, therefore, the cloud service on which this relies must keep that personal info about you. Location is used to find the speakers around you when you're using the phone app. I'm very against unnecessary data collection and even more opposed to companies selling my data, but I'm very happy with my Sonos and I don't see any evidence that they're doing either of those things.

pintxo 6y ago
True, no need for a controller (phone). But the sonos speakers themselves are little controllers, in theory they can perform all necessary actions, store the needed data and talk to any streaming services. Why is there a technical need for a cloud service?
- avianlyric 6y ago
  > Why is there a technical need for a cloud service? oAuth? I suspect a primary need for a cloud service is to just handle authentication with music services. In theory you could do it entirely locally, but then you would run into super weird and dangerous (from a security perspective) situation where the redirect leg of the oAuth would need to point to a local IP address or similar. I imagine it is possible to work around these issues, but it would be a huge faff, and would be very hard to make it as slick as a cloud based system. Ultimately most consumers just don’t mind signing up for things. So why make your engineering 50% more complicated for a tiny minority of your target market.
  - Bud 6y ago
    On the contrary, it's really quite easy to run a NAS and do all your music locally, and it's very easy to make it "as slick" as a cloud system. Millions of people are doing this already with products like Plex.
    - avianlyric 6y ago
      I’m not saying that running a NAS is hard. I’m saying that most of Sonos customers don’t run a NAS, they use something like Spotify. The number of Sonos customers that are really interested is a local only setup in the music streaming age is vanishingly small. I run a NAS, Plex, and even had a local music collection. But I’ve ditched it for Spotify. I simply can’t be bothered to deal with the faff. When I want music, I want it to work first time every time, not a 1% chance that something brakes that require 30mins of my time to fix.
    - nobody9999 6y ago
      >Millions of people are doing this already with products like Plex. That's fair up to a point. Plex doesn't require network access, but if you want to use it, even with just local media, you still need to register an account with them, and usage data for local media is sent to them. Which is why I don't use Plex. Any device/app that requires you register/give access to usage information in order to utilize local resources is an intrusion of my privacy. Please note the word requires above before replying to my comment.
  - pintxo 6y ago
    Maybe oAuth then is not the right technology to be used in this setting? Sounds like a case of "if all you have is a hammer".
clairity 6y ago
i own an old play:1 for the bathroom, which hasn't been updated since sonos started requiring accounts a few years ago. it happily chugs along without any of my personal info (though i only listen to free stations, not subscription-based ones).
avianlyric 6y ago
> The OP writes that Sonos speakers can function without an internet connection which is entirety untrue Afraid you’ve got this a little wrong. It depends entirely on what music services you use. It’s quite possible to use Sonos speakers without an internet connection if you use something like AirPlay, a local NAS, or an audio in (e.g. TV or Record Player). If you wanna use a streaming music service like Spotify, then obviously they need an internet connection. Unless of course you stream via your phone using AirPlay, but your phone will probably still need an internet connection.
- rsync 6y ago
  "It’s quite possible to use Sonos speakers without an internet connection if you use something like AirPlay, a local NAS, or an audio in (e.g. TV or Record Player)." Yes, this is technically true (and is my primary use-case for Sonos). However, in the 15 years that I have been in their ecosystem, the ability to play while Internet-disconnected has ranged between completely non-functional to sort-of functional to only-functions-when-Internet-perfect.[1] The fact is, they don't care about this use-case anymore and don't devote resources to testing and bug-fixing it. [1] There was a long period of time when Sonos worked fine with no Internet, and also with perfect Internet, but if you had laggy or lossy Internet they would just puke.
  - gingerlime 6y ago
    Author here. I don’t disagree with you that a typical or primary use case is to have an Internet connection. I just use it wity Airplay however and it works fine. Due to the excessive tracking I don’t trust it to connect to the internet. I found your comment about devoting resources etc a bit weird. Does rsync work locally to sync files? Would it make sense not to devote resources for local sync and only support remote transfer? ;-) this is slightly in jest but I hope you see my point.
williamscales 6y ago
> Sonos speakers access the net and your streaming music accounts by themselves without using your phone and you can demonstrate this by turning off the phone while they're playing. Logically, therefore, the cloud service on which this relies must keep that personal info about you. This is definitely one model, there’s also the chromecast model which allows you to turn off the phone. I guess it might not as fully featured as Sonos though? Chromecast appears to work by the service issuing a token of some kind to the chromecast after you start playing from your phone.

pintxo 6y ago

True, no need for a controller (phone). But the sonos speakers themselves are little controllers, in theory they can perform all necessary actions, store the needed data and talk to any streaming services. Why is there a technical need for a cloud service?

avianlyric 6y ago
> Why is there a technical need for a cloud service? oAuth? I suspect a primary need for a cloud service is to just handle authentication with music services. In theory you could do it entirely locally, but then you would run into super weird and dangerous (from a security perspective) situation where the redirect leg of the oAuth would need to point to a local IP address or similar. I imagine it is possible to work around these issues, but it would be a huge faff, and would be very hard to make it as slick as a cloud based system. Ultimately most consumers just don’t mind signing up for things. So why make your engineering 50% more complicated for a tiny minority of your target market.
- Bud 6y ago
  On the contrary, it's really quite easy to run a NAS and do all your music locally, and it's very easy to make it "as slick" as a cloud system. Millions of people are doing this already with products like Plex.
  - avianlyric 6y ago
    I’m not saying that running a NAS is hard. I’m saying that most of Sonos customers don’t run a NAS, they use something like Spotify. The number of Sonos customers that are really interested is a local only setup in the music streaming age is vanishingly small. I run a NAS, Plex, and even had a local music collection. But I’ve ditched it for Spotify. I simply can’t be bothered to deal with the faff. When I want music, I want it to work first time every time, not a 1% chance that something brakes that require 30mins of my time to fix.
  - nobody9999 6y ago
    >Millions of people are doing this already with products like Plex. That's fair up to a point. Plex doesn't require network access, but if you want to use it, even with just local media, you still need to register an account with them, and usage data for local media is sent to them. Which is why I don't use Plex. Any device/app that requires you register/give access to usage information in order to utilize local resources is an intrusion of my privacy. Please note the word requires above before replying to my comment.
- pintxo 6y ago
  Maybe oAuth then is not the right technology to be used in this setting? Sounds like a case of "if all you have is a hammer".

clairity 6y ago

i own an old play:1 for the bathroom, which hasn't been updated since sonos started requiring accounts a few years ago. it happily chugs along without any of my personal info (though i only listen to free stations, not subscription-based ones).

avianlyric 6y ago

> The OP writes that Sonos speakers can function without an internet connection which is entirety untrue Afraid you’ve got this a little wrong. It depends entirely on what music services you use. It’s quite possible to use Sonos speakers without an internet connection if you use something like AirPlay, a local NAS, or an audio in (e.g. TV or Record Player). If you wanna use a streaming music service like Spotify, then obviously they need an internet connection. Unless of course you stream via your phone using AirPlay, but your phone will probably still need an internet connection.

rsync 6y ago
"It’s quite possible to use Sonos speakers without an internet connection if you use something like AirPlay, a local NAS, or an audio in (e.g. TV or Record Player)." Yes, this is technically true (and is my primary use-case for Sonos). However, in the 15 years that I have been in their ecosystem, the ability to play while Internet-disconnected has ranged between completely non-functional to sort-of functional to only-functions-when-Internet-perfect.[1] The fact is, they don't care about this use-case anymore and don't devote resources to testing and bug-fixing it. [1] There was a long period of time when Sonos worked fine with no Internet, and also with perfect Internet, but if you had laggy or lossy Internet they would just puke.
- gingerlime 6y ago
  Author here. I don’t disagree with you that a typical or primary use case is to have an Internet connection. I just use it wity Airplay however and it works fine. Due to the excessive tracking I don’t trust it to connect to the internet. I found your comment about devoting resources etc a bit weird. Does rsync work locally to sync files? Would it make sense not to devote resources for local sync and only support remote transfer? ;-) this is slightly in jest but I hope you see my point.

williamscales 6y ago

> Sonos speakers access the net and your streaming music accounts by themselves without using your phone and you can demonstrate this by turning off the phone while they're playing. Logically, therefore, the cloud service on which this relies must keep that personal info about you. This is definitely one model, there’s also the chromecast model which allows you to turn off the phone. I guess it might not as fully featured as Sonos though? Chromecast appears to work by the service issuing a token of some kind to the chromecast after you start playing from your phone.