Sonos + Rhapsody = Music Nirvana at home

Michael Gartenberg | September 15, 2006, 11:32 AM

I've talked in the past about how much i like the Sonos music system. We also like Rhapsody a lot here as well. But one thing has been lacking. While it was possible to use my Rhapsody service with Sonos, it meant leaving a PC on and connected and using UPnP. While that model worked, it's hardly an elegant solution. What if Rhapsody were to make their APIs available to everyone? What if the folks at Sonos could plug into them and make the Rhapsody experience a native part of the Sonos interface? Well, they've done exactly that and I can say after testing it, it works and it works well. A device like Sonos, with an excellent UI on the controller, connected to your home stero takes the Rhapsody experience to a whole new level. I love the seamless integration between my personal music collection and the 2 million tracks in Rhapsody combined with Internet radio. It's a fantastic way for the music lover to have access to pretty much everytning. I suspect, there's going to be a whole new class of Sonos owners who never will bother using the music on their PC with the Sonos and a whole new class of Rhapsody customers who will only use their PCs to sign up for the service and to manage their stuff. This is excellent integration and a very compelling (if slightly expensive story). Excellent work from both the folks at REAL and at Sonos.