Supported audio content

All content is streamed to the player; no music is stored locally on players. Sonos supports several mechanisms for playing audio including streaming radio, programmed radio, on-demand tracks, audiobooks, and podcasts. Your service may provide one or more of these mechanisms to users. See Supported audio formats for details about formatting your audio content.

On-demand tracks

If your service supports on-demand, you let users select individual tracks to play, Tracks are finite-length audio files that can typically be queued up to create a personalized set of continuous music and other content. These sets can often be saved as playlists. Content stored on a personal hard drive, network drive, or a user's phone is also available to that user via an on-demand content service provided by Sonos directly. To implement tracks, follow the instructions in the rest of this Get Started.

Streaming radio

If your service supports streaming radio, also known as online radio, you provide a continuous stream of music or other content without any dynamic input. That is, user actions or preferences have no control over content choice; it is predetermined and the same for every user listening to your stream. This is similar to traditional over-the-air radio. An example of this is an online feed from a regular radio station. After you've completed this Get Started, see the Stream radio with non-HLS M3U playlists section in Playback on Sonos for details.

Programmed radio

If your service supports programmed radio (also known as smart radio), you provide a generated sequence of tracks that users cannot directly choose. User preferences, such as a chosen genre, user ratings, or favorites can influence the tracks that play on a station. Also, users may be able to skip tracks (depending on the limits placed on them by your service). For example, you might offer a programmed radio station based on a user-supplied artist. As users listen to this station, you might allow them to refine it by rating the tracks that play.

Audiobooks and podcasts

If your service supports resumable content, your users can listen to any number of audiobooks and individual tracks such as podcasts or songs, choose to stop listening at any point, and come back later to resume listening where they left off. For audiobooks, Sonos supports additional user navigation including skipping to the next or previous chapters, skipping 30 seconds forward or backward, as well as selecting any point in an audiobook from a sliding progress bar.