Turn it up: Sonos now supports Apple Music, in beta
Sonos systems now support Apple Music. The integration has arrived via a new beta, first announced earlier this month. A final version is slated to launch early next year.
Along with access to the Apple Music streaming service, Sonos users will eventually be able to listen to Beats 1 Radio and other curated radio stations. Like Apple Music itself, content is arranged into four categories: For You, New, Radio, and My Music.
In an email to beta members, Sonos notes that more work needs to be done on the Apple Music integration before releasing it to the general public.
These include:
- Ability to enable Apple Music service on an Android running less than 5.0
- Search is limited to the first 100 results.
- Improving search to include items from My Music. (In the current beta, you can search the entire Apple Music catalog of over 30 million songs.)
- Ability to listen to Beats 1 Radio shows on demand.
- Adding songs, playlists or albums to your library is not yet supported.
- Ability to edit playlists.
- Sorting within My Music is alphabetical and may look different than your Library on the Apple Music app.
- Newly added content within My Music may take up to 24 hrs to show up within the Sonos app.
- Access to Smart Playlists, music videos and artist posts from Connect are only available within the Apple Music app and are not supported on Sonos.
Anyone interested in joining the Sonos/Apple Music beta can sign-up on the Sonos site or directly from the Sonos Controller app. Using the app, select Settings and then Advanced Settings. You’ll then need to choose Beta Program and then Join the Beta Program. After joining, users will be prompted to update to the beta version.
Apple Music launched in June. Soon after, Sonos announced that its systems would begin supporting the service before the end of 2015. Apple Music is available starting at $9.99 per month.
See also: The Sonos Play:5 review: Exceptional sound at an appropriate price.