Review: Spotify, Sonos Partner for Wireless Music Nirvana

With Spotify making seemingly infinite music available on every device on demand, as well as sharing my friend's playlists, through Facebook-connected social profiles, it's a rare time that I even open my old standby music library, iTunes, except when I need to plug in my iPad and sync up. I take Spotify with me in the car when I play music via Android on my HTC Evo. I have Spotify on my laptop, and yes, on the iPad. Until a few weeks ago, just about the only missing place I couldn't get Spotify was through the three Sonos S5 systems I have in my home. That the two services would eventually come together was a near certainty, as one has the most promising on demand music library in the world, and the other has the best setup for playing music sourced from the Web.


  
Three Sonos S5 Players, Linked, Featuring Spotify
(Screenshots from iPhone app on iPad)

A few weeks ago, before today's more official announcement, I got access to new firmware that updated all my Sonos S5 systems, bringing Spotify support, complete with playlist integration, and search. This combination means, if I want, I can group together these systems, from the family room to the living room, and my upstairs office, have all of them playing the same music, and I can pull practically any music out of thin air.

Pulling ABBA from Spotify on Sonos

Search for a track on Spotify, or an artist or an album, and hit "Play Now" or "Add it to the Queue" and the music in the cloud becomes the music in your home - wherever you have speakers, be they small, on your phone or computer, or larger, now embedded in Sonos.

Searching Depeche Mode on Spotify Via Sonos

Demoing Spotify and Sonos connectivity wirelessly on the iPad is almost like magic - with a futuristic feel whereby I can, with a few taps, summon any song from any era and have it filling my house with music. A swipe to the right, and my entire home rises in volume, all players at once, turning an otherwise domestic venue into an understated dance club, with the sound echoing from room to room.


   Playing Spotify Playlists and Searching Underworld On Sonos

After the quick firmware update to my Sonos machines, all linked together by a Sonos SoundBridge attached to my wireless network, Spotify was added as a service to each device, adding on to previous support for Internet radio, terrestrial radio, localized stations, satellite radio through Sirius XM and also Last.fm. I didn't have to update every single application, but every Sonos app, from the iPad to my desktop, could see Spotify supported.

As existing Sonos owners know, one of the more futuristic bits about owning one of the company's S5 players is the complete lack of physical media. The devices feature simple up/down volume buttons and a mute button atop the unit, looking more like a speaker than central music hub. There's no spot for CDs, no radio dial, no vestigal digital clock, and clearly no cassette deck. Just pure music and attention to serious aural detail. Bringing Spotify to this physical media free wonderland just makes sense.


   Searching for New Tracks on Spotify And Adding to My Queue

For those, like me, who own multiple Sonos devices, you can also set different players to feature different songs at the same time, should that strike your fancy. You can play rock and roll upstairs and lounge music downstairs. Similarly, you can tap into Spotify to point that music library toward different devices. One source, but two musical streams at the same time.

Spotify only acknowledged the partnership with Sonos a few hours ago, and for most people in the US, waiting for Spotify to launch officially in this country is still a dream, but for those of us who have gotten early access, thanks to generosity from the company's head of special projects, Shakil Khan, whom I interviewed at LeWeb 2009, we're already living the digital dream. It works, and the combination of the two offerings is amazing. It's no wonder I'm not buying music from iTunes at all.

The Five Stages of Filtering, Relevance and Curation

Tonight's news of Gmail taking on information overload directly, using a combination of intelligent algorithms and your own feedback to build in box personalization is yet another hallmark move to taking on the increasing deluge of content approaching us from all directions - be it our e-mail, static Web pages, audio and video, or the many different social streams which we have subscribed to. There is no question that content creation and sharing is exploding and people are completely incapable of giving every single message and item their full attention. And many smart folks are looking to bring solutions to find the best and ignore the rest.

As I see it, there are five major ways companies and individuals take on the topic of relevance.

1. Editorial Filtering

Loose definition: I am the smartest person. I know best for you, and I deserve to decide for you what is the most important.

Example: The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN and most mainstream media outlets today, who for years have been trusted arbiters to find the most important news and bring it to us in the way that they decide.

New media examples: The Drudge Report, which has grown from one man's curation and sorting to a full team, and Techmeme, which was once almost completely algorithm driven, and now is staffed around the clock by savvy editors who pluck the best of the tech Web.

Of course, it is easy for an individual to be a curator. I share a lot of content, manually, through @lgstream on Twitter, as well as on Google Buzz, FriendFeed and Facebook.

2. Global Popularity Filtering

Loose definition: The will of the people can be trusted, and they will decide what is most important, thanks to the most votes.

Examples: American Idol, Digg and Reddit. He with the most votes wins and gains a coveted front page slot.

New media example: Twitter Trending Topics display the most frequent topics and hashtags, not necessarily the most important. Also, you can see tools like Tweetmeme and FavStar which watch for number-driven popularity online.

This would also have included RSS shared items counters of the past, such as RSSmeme and ReadBurner.

3. Social Filtering

Loose definition: What your friends like, you will like. If it's important to them, it's important to you.

New Media Examples: Facebook recommended friends and pages, which display how many friends like them, Google Social Search, which pulls results from your friends content, and FriendFeed Best of Day, which shows the items from your friends that gained the most activity over a time period.

4. Explicit Personalization

Loose definition: You told us what you like or don't like, and since you know yourself best, you know what's important.

New media examples: Netflix's star ratings and TiVo's Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down feedback mechanisms, as well as Kosmix's MeeHive project.

5. Implicit Personalization

Loose definition: Just be yourself. Read what you want, do what you want, and the system will learn from you, continuously updating.

Examples: Amazon.com, my6sense.

There is a time and place for practically all types of filtering. Mona Nomura of Pixel Bits today talked about the serendipity algorithm and what it means to marketers looking to leverage machine learning. With Gmail's announcement, ReadWriteWeb's recent coverage of TrapIt and ChatterApp in an article on consumer information overload, and the high visibility of Facebook's News Feed, against the recent feed, the challenge has grown to a level where you no longer have to convince people there is a problem in filtering, but instead, you need to make a concrete decision as to how to approach that problem.

I believe that there is a role for trusted curators of news, people who have unique access or unique insight, who can get to news more quickly than anybody else, or dive into it more deeply. I believe that social similarities are a good hint at an individual's interests, but they cannot replace your own preferences - which go beyond your ability to fill out a form and try to tell the truth on what it is that you really like. The best systems, as Gmail is trying to do (with some help from your own feedback on whether they are getting it right), happen naturally and transparently in the background.

It's natural I would think this given my work with my6sense, but I have long believed in there being a perfect place for humans to act as curators and guides, while there is another perfect place for machines to provide, to the best of their ability, resources to aid your discovery. So when you are challenged with a mountain of information coming at you from any angle, think of the best way to get it handled. Should you turn to an editor, to the will of the people, to your friends, or to code? The options are all there, and more tools are coming to help you attack the noise - because there's little chance it will fade away any time soon - and a very strong chance it could get much worse very quickly.

Disclosures: I am vice president of marketing at my6sense. ChatterApp and TrapIt are assumed competition. In addition, Kosmix.com is a client of Paladin Advisors Group, where I am a co-founder. I was also previously an advisor to ReadBurner, since closed.

Future US Shuts Down DailyRadar, Ballhype, 'Blips Sites

As Andy Beal from Marketing Pilgrim discovered earlier this week, a once-promising news and social networking family of sites, owned by FutureUS, including ones dedicated to sports, Hollywood, politics, and much more, was snuffed out with little warning. In its wake, sites I often visited in the last three years, including BallHype, MacBlips and many others, are gone, and aren't coming back. The move was said to be a "reluctant" one, derived from "continuing shifts in consumption and sharing patterns", which made the sites stodgy dinosaurs in a Twitter and Facebook dominated landscape.

Ballhype sparked the genesis of the network way back in April of 2007, gaining visibility not just from me, but from TechCrunch and MG Siegler, before most folks in the Valley had heard of either of us. The promise was to make a Digg-like site focused on specific topics, and tap into real communities. For a while, it worked. Six months later, the Ballhype team went for the glitz of Hollywood and launched Showhype.

The success of these sites, and promise for even more subject-centric vehicles, led to Future US picking them up in July of 2008 for a rumored $3 million, which brought even more sites, including Beltway Blips for politics, spawning an avalanche of "Blips" clones, like MacBlips and GadgetBlips. The sites themselves were very cool, pulling headlines from around the Web by topic and letting you vote them up or down.

But this alone seemingly didn't help the long term success of the network. The engagement once a hallmark of Ballhype didn't make it to all the other properties, and it was well known that Future US scaled back its plans in 2009. Now, it seems the two year experiment has been closed.

The husband and wife team behind Ballhype, Showhype and the rest, Jason and Erin Gurney, ended up being good friends with my own family, and even provided our twins with some of our most-enjoyed toys, after their kids had outgrown them. It seems the social Web outgrew the Daily Radar and Blips sites, and we'll be watching the pair to see what they come up with next.

Braden Adds to the Gray Family to Make a Full House

As of Tuesday night, after 11 pm, we are officially outnumbered. My wife and I now get the opportunity to contend with three kids, the oldest pair being just over two years old, and the newest, starting his second day as I write. The expansion of the family continues the rapid rate of change brought on with our moving, joining my6sense, and setting other dominoes in motion. One person, in response to the many updates, even included my switch from iPhone to Android as a big move. I guess for any geek this is the case, but the addition of a new member of the family is a huge deal, much more than any operating system, office suite, or handheld.

Like Matthew and Sarah before him, Braden Thomas Gray (his full name) joined us four weeks ahead of schedule, deciding a little over 35 weeks of baking was enough. And as Sarah did in 2008, when the twins arrived, he will be spending a little more special time in the hospital as he gets needed attention.

As many parents know, the act of bringing a child into the world isn't always as beautiful as they show it in the movies. It's not always a few pushes, a cry, a smiling doctor, and a quick cuddle with mom as time of birth, weight and height are announced. It certainly hasn't been this way with us - and last night's experience was far from perfect, even if Braden's smile and fantastic skin show different through the pictures and short video I managed to escape with today. I'll save you the details, but we have had to measure our excitement with concern over the last 24-plus hours, and will keep watching until we get an all clear to take our newest guy home.

I enjoy a lot of things. I think I have more fun than most people. I enjoy interacting with all of you here and in the various places we find each other. I think I listen to more fun music than most people, and I have to self-censor constantly just so I don't ramble on like a comedian who has had a few too many drinks. But nothing has been more fantastic than raising Matthew and Sarah and watching them develop, sometimes slowly, and other times, extremely fast. They are a joy. Braden is here now, and even though I have never held him, or even touched him, he's already part of our family, and has a place.

With his rapid arrival, we're not fully ready. We don't have a car ready for three car seats, one facing backward, and two facing forward (as dictated by law). We don't have a dresser in Braden's room, and haven't found more than two newborn baby boy outfits in our garage, even though we know they are out there from when we did this just over two years ago. But Braden says he's ready, and after a rough start Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, he was looking me in the eyes through the incubator's plastic today, as he took deliberate breaths and balled his fists.


Braden's first YouTube Video

Coming on the back of late Monday's news, you would think I wanted to get everything out of the way in one week, but it's not true. Parenting is not something you get to draw up and then execute against. It takes permanent flexibility, and I look forward to the chance to bring Braden home soon and see just how much flexibility it takes to tangle with a newborn and two two year olds.

Edge Theory: Talking my6sense Tech With Chris Saad

As word of my joining my6sense as vice president of marketing broke late last night, Chris Saad (@chrissaad) put on his journalism hat, and the two of us recorded a quick Edge Theory Conversation to explain the opportunity ahead, and what this means for all the other roles I have been carrying.

Chris' insight into the opportunity for my6sense's ability to prioritize and personalize content from all streams on the Web is especially important for me, given his background as a geek and his dedication to data portability, open standards, and his day job, working for Echo, where they aggregate reactions of all types. With Echo becoming the back-end conversation repository for major media sites, it's of course possible those discussion areas are ripe for personalization and prioritization...

This and all other EdgeTheory conversations can be found on the dedicated ET Conversations site.

Listen to the full recording below: