Sonos has announced Sonos Pro, a new service targeted at businesses — restaurants, bars, and retail stores — that makes playing music across numerous locations easy without breaking any licensing rules. Sonos Pro works with all S2-compatible hardware, including the Ikea Symfonisk line and, if you’re into retrofitting existing speakers, the Amp and Port.
Pro customers will gain access to a web portal that lets them remotely control what’s playing in each of their locations (divided into different zones) and perform troubleshooting from afar. If you’re a regular consumer and want to reset your Sonos system at home, you’ve got to unplug the products, but Pro customers can do it with software. They’ll also be able to schedule particular genres for different times of the day to lock in the right atmosphere for their business. Want to keep the volume low in the mornings when you’ve got less foot traffic and automatically raise it during peak hours? Sonos Pro can do that.
I admit my bias as a long-time Sonos fan. What caught my eye was the move from consumer to business here; servicing retail is a significant offering. There’s a lot of power here, and similar to how simplified point-of-sale solutions changed retail, so too could an audio offering like this.
It also gives a case study into ancillary markets, which any services organization should consider. What market is similar that you can adapt to?
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