Sonos

The webcast service Songza, known for its "music concierge" interface that offers playlists based on the time of day and your likely activities, launched in Canada this week. The free service is now available to Canadians on the Web, Apple and Android mobile, plus home streaming device Sonos (see below).

Though the Internet is a global marketplace, many webcast services aren't available outside their home country due to the difficulty in negotiating licensing with copyright owners around the world.

Songza worked with Canada's music licensing company Re:Sound to secure the necessary licenses to stream to a Canadian audience (an audience, by the way, with a significantly high broadband and smartphone penetration, as well as the relative lack of other streaming options).

Sonos owners (that includes those in the U.S. as well) can now access Songza on their devices, and "Songza's music concierge goes a step further so that you can choose a playlist based on rooms in your home."

By the way, Sonos has also announced availability of Amazon's new Cloud Player music storage service on the device.

Sonos, the wireless home music device company, has announced updates to its Controller apps for iOS and Android.

The Sonos system enablea you to play your digital music collection throughout your home, on your stereo, intercom, or home theater systems. The system is controlled remotely via apps for iOs and Android phones and tablets.

The updates are mostly visual, and make the apps more pleasing to the eye, and perhaps easier to use. For Apple's devices, the update includes support for the high-resolution Retina Display on both the iPhone 4S and New iPad (hope you've been saving your CD cover art in a good resolution!). For the Android version, the Sonos Controller for tablets is optimized for both 7" and 10" devices, and include "landscape mode."

There's more in the Sonos blog here. Photo from The Verge here.

Sonos, the maker of wireless home music systems that support dozens of streaming music and radio services, has landed $135 million in new investment.

"The funding is a bet that digital music will no longer be confined mainly to PCs and portable devices," writes Billboard. Kohlberg Kravis Roberts' David Kerko and Elevation Partners' Fred Anderson hvae also joined the Sonos board of directors.

Sonos' system supports Pandora, Last.fm, Slacker, iHeartRadio, Spotify, MOG, Rdio, SiriusXM, Deezer, Rhapsody and other music services. Billboard has more coverage here.

Sonos has announced it will stop selling its CR200 touchscreen remote control on June 1. The company acknowledged that the remote (pictured left) was "nudged into obsolence" by Sonos' smartphone and desktop remote apps.

Both the CR200 and smartphone apps control Sonos' wireless home entertainment system, which can stream content from Pandora, Slacker, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Last.fm, MOG, Rdio, NPR, Rhapsody and many other services.

The move reminds us here at RAIN of a similar decision by Slacker, made in 2009, to shift focus away from hardware to smartphone apps (RAIN coverage here). It's another noteworthy sign of the dominance of mobile devices and app stores.

You can find more coverage of Sonos' news in Engadget here. -- MS

Streaming radio device manufacturer Sonos has a pretty neat graphic in its Sonos Blog. "The History of Radio" is a winding timeline beginning in 1892 with Tesla's first experiments, through the evolution of the radio industry, up to today's latest technology.

The timeline is divided into six segments, the last of which begins in 1990 with the Birth of Internet Radio.

Read the Sonos Blog and see "The History of Radio" here (or click the image, which is a fragment of the entire chart).

Google is developing a home entertainment system with a focus on wireless music streaming, according to the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and other publications.

The system would reportedly be based around Google-made devices (unlike Android and Google TV devices, which are made by third-party manufacturers). It would include a hub device with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi built-in, wireless speakers, and would be controlled by smartphones and tablets. Google will apparently test the system over the summer.

"Like Apple AirPlay does for iOS, it would stream music from Android devices to home entertainment systems, which are usually the nicest speakers in the house," comments Eliot Van Buskirk at Evolver.fm.

There's no word yet on whether the system will involve radio in some way. One would expect Google's own cloud music service -- which includes a Pandora-like Instant Mix feature (RAIN coverage here) -- will be included.

"Google’s larger goal, a person closely tied to the project said, was to connect everything in the home to the Internet, including light bulbs, speakers and TV sets," writes the New York Times.

Engadget comments that the project sounds "a whole lot like a Sonos competitor."

For more on the story, check out the New York Times' coverage here, Evolver.fm's article here, or Engadget's report here.