Music Ally

Connected hi-fi maker Sonos says it’s not planning to support Spotify any time soon, but that’s due to technical issues rather than a point of principle. “The way they offer the content isn’t easy for us to be able to push that out to the thousands of controllers and systems we have in the market,” says co-founder Thomas Cullen, whose company already supports Napster, Last.fm and Deezer on its systems. It’s because Spotify’s API isn’t as open as rivals like Last.fm, so a company like Sonos would need a dedicated app on every device. Is this a big problem for Spotify? Not right now, but if at some point it decides it needs to integrate with home music systems, it seems logical that it’ll open out its API to do so.

We’ve been banging on about iPhone applications for a while ago, and in last week’s issue of the Music Ally Report, we covered some of the ways iPhone apps are coming onto the music industry’s radar. But which apps are we actually using on our iPhones, hmm?

We thought we should tell you. So, here’s a dozen of the best iPhone music apps, complete with links to buy them.

1. Guitar Rock Tour (£4.99 – right)
A music game that pretty much swipes the Guitar Hero formula and runs off with it cackling. You have to tap the frets at the bottom of the screen as notes travel down a guitar, with an array of proper songs including Beat It, Smoke On The Water, Heart-Shaped Box and – yes! – Rock You Like A Hurricane. Get it

(more…)

Sonos has launched an iPhone application (pictured) allowing users to control its wireless multi-room music systems from their handset. It’s available on the App Store today, and is free to download, allowing users to navigate their digital music collection, control playback, and change the volume.

Sonos is flagging the app as “the only iPhone controller app that provides multi-room music control for the entire house and direct access to an infinite world of music including Last.fm and Napster”. It’s certainly a niche, although Apple’s own Remote app is a more restricted version, allowing users to stream their iTunes library from their computer to their iPhone.

Hang on a mo, Last.fm? Ah, yes, that’s today’s other announcement from Sonos. The company has just released version 2.7 of its Sonos System Software, which now includes support for Last.fm, allowing people to stream tracks from the popular music service.

It also lets them scrobble the tracks they play on their Sonos system to their Last.fm profile, to improve the recommendations offered by the site. So far, companies like Sonos have been more known to audiophiles and tech-heads than mainstream music fans, but this kind of multi-room music system will become more widespread in the coming years.

With that in mind, the fact that they’re signing these kinds of deals with online music services now is fascinating. We met Sonos CEO John MacFarlane in London last week, and he told us that 70% of Sonos users pay for a music subscription service, and that 60% of the firm’s customers are outside the US.