Sonos is opting for an agnostic approach to its participation in the smart speaker market, having added a second voice assistant, Google Assistant, to its app alongside Amazon‘s Alexa via an update released yesterday (May 14).
Sonos users will be able to choose an assistant for each individual speaker, with multiple voice assistants on a single system.
Sonos CEO Patrick Spence has called the integration “a major milestone for the industry” and added that the company is committed to having multiple voice assistants on its app “as soon as possible”.
The Google Assistant access via the free software update is currently only available for users in the United States.
Support in the UK, Germany, Canada, Australia, France, and The Netherlands comes in July with additional countries to follow on a rolling basis over the coming months.
At launch, Google Assistant on the Sonos app can be used to control music on Spotify, YouTube Music, Google Play Music, Pandora, TIDAL, TuneIn, iHeartRadio and Deezer.
“We imagine a day where we’ll have multiple voice assistants operating concurrently on the same device, and we’re committed to making that happen as soon as possible.”
Patrick Spence, Sonos
Patrick Spence, Sonos CEO said: “We value freedom of choice, empowering listeners to choose what they want to listen to and how they want to control it. Adding voice, now with the Google Assistant, has made that control even easier.
“We partnered with Google to build this integration from the ground up, layering in the best of the Google Assistant into the Sonos ecosystem of products and partners.
Continued Spence: “Today we’re the first company to have two voice assistants working concurrently on the same system, a major milestone for the industry.
“We imagine a day where we’ll have multiple voice assistants operating concurrently on the same device, and we’re committed to making that happen as soon as possible.”Music Business Worldwide
