Sonos, a company that has pioneered easy access to digital audio around the house, has announced a new system that makes it even easier to deliver streaming audio from "the cloud" (or your hard drive, if you insist) to any room in your house. And you can run the whole thing from an app on your iPhone.
The feature sets look pretty rich and well thought out. The content comes from a nearly infinite number of Internet radio stations, including Pandora and Last.fm. It also provides access to on-demand subscription services like Napster and Rhapsody (no Lala.com yet, but I'm on it…). Or if you must, you can listen to the stuff you've got stored in your own iTunes collection.
And as the narrator in this video says, this device further eliminates the need to "own" the music you want to hear: "Even if I don't own the music I want to listen to, I can just click and play."
This gizmo looks to me like an important development in the evolution of our celestialjukebox. And given that it's controlled by an iPhone, how long will it be before it's voice activated?
When that happens, then you really will be able to walk into the room and say (as I've been saying or ten-plus years now), "Beatles. Abbey Road. Loud."
Except for one minor detail: the Beatles still don't offer ANY of their catalog through ANY digital delivery channel. Not iTunes, Rhapsody, Lala, or Pandora.
What did Klosterman say? "The Beatles – a band so obscure that their music doesn't even appear on iTunes.
Them I've got in my iTunes library.