Why Sonos can't afford to lose the Music Intelligence race (www.techradar.com)

Amazon this week rolled out Alexa+ inside the Amazon Music app for all U.S. iOS and Android users, bringing conversational “Music Intelligence” to streaming: multilayered, vague queries (“recommend music to make me seem cool to my 13‑year‑old daughter”), advanced playlist generation, artist/lyric/concert lookups and nuanced playback requests. That level of natural-language, context-aware control marks a step-change from older voice assistants’ simple request/response model and lets users manage discovery and playback without wrestling with playlists or precise commands. For Sonos this is a looming existential threat. The company’s longstanding software edge — its app, universal search and Sonos Voice Control (SVC) with some offline speaker commands — was undermined by a disastrous 2024 app redesign that pushed users toward native streaming apps, AirPlay and Connect ecosystems (Spotify, Tidal, Qobuz). Now streaming platforms are embedding increasingly powerful AI that can both replace Sonos’ UX and control speakers directly. Sonos’ new CEO acknowledges the AI shift, but the company must choose to rapidly evolve SVC into a competitive, cloud-enabled assistant or double down on third‑party integrations; otherwise Sonos risks becoming prized only for hardware while losing ownership of the listening experience.