Sonos Radio is a free streaming service for Sonos owners

Alex Choros - Managing Editor + Group Telco Editor

Last updated 21 April 2020

Sonos is giving anyone who owns one of its speakers free access to its own in-house streaming radio service, Sonos Radio. Sonos Radio is made up out of three core pillars. Live radio, Sonos Presents, and Sonos Stations.

Live radio is exactly what it sounds like; you can tap into over 60,000 live radio stations from around the world via TuneIn and iHeartRadio. These services are both compatible with Sonos systems already, but the Sonos Radio update makes them a more prominent part of the Sonos app.

Sonos Presents is ad-free, original programming for Sonos speakers. There's two parts to this. The first is Sonos Sound System, which is a pitched a live hour of music handpicked by some of "today's most innovative" artists that runs each Wednesday. When not airing the new instalment, Sonos Sound System will feature repeats. The second is playlists curated by artists such as Thom Yorke, Brittany Howard, and David Byrne. These are standalone stations said to have hundreds of tracks built around a theme.

Lastly, there's Sonos Stations, which are ad-supported genre stations similar to what you might find on Apple Music or Spotify. Sonos says these are live, real-time stations programmed ahead of time by genre-matter experts in the Sonos Radio team, rather than something that’s been algorithmically generated.

Sonos Stations seem like they'll span a wide range of genres, with initial stations featuring names like "New Lords of Metal" "80s Flash", "Fat City Gumbo", "Rare Grooves", and "Punk Riot". Sonos says the Stations library pulls from over 80 million tracks.

Sonos Radio is available now for anyone with any existing Sonos speaker via an updated released today, including speakers that won't move over to the company's new S2 operating system.

Alex Choros

Managing Editor + Group Telco Editor | X | Instagram | Threads | LinkedIn

Alex Choros is the Managing Editor of WhistleOut Australia and an award-winning journalist. He's been writing about consumer technology for over a decade and is an expert on the Australian telco sector, to the point where he knows far too many phone and internet plans by heart. In addition to leading the WhistleOut editorial team, Alex is responsible for ruining the office Sonos with his troubled taste in music.

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