Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Audio / Video
  3. News

Sonos Radio HD offers ad-free, CD-quality streaming for $8 per month

By

Sonos has launched Sonos Radio HD, a premium tier of its Sonos Radio service that eliminates all advertisements and boosts audio quality significantly, for $8 per month. The service is available in the U.S. and U.K., with other countries being added in the future.

Sonos Radio HD
Sonos

Sonos claims that its free tier of Sonos Radio is already the fourth-most-popular music source for users of its whole-home wireless speakers. After listening to user feedback, the company decided to add the premium HD tier, which addresses several desired changes:

Recommended Videos

Sonos Radio HD will also be the exclusive home for new artist-curated stations. The first of these is Dolly Parton’s Songteller Radio, which Sonos claims will continually evolve and feature Dolly’s hits, favorite artists, and special commentary on songs and moments throughout her career.

Related

The company plans to keep adding more of these artist-curated stations over time, with five more promised in early 2021.

In addition to serving up all of the same stations currently on tap with the free Radio tier, Sonos is developing a new set of stations exclusively for HD subscribers. Stations like Nashville Now, Americana Ramble, Unforgettable, and Distant Kingdom each offer a deeper exploration into genres and music scenes with the help of expert curators.

Specialized stations such as The Inner Now, Chill Beats, and Mellow Morning are designed to be companions for at-home activities like cooking, working, relaxing, and sleeping.  Six sleep stations have also been created with soundscapes that have been tuned specifically for Sonos speakers: White noise, pink noise, brown noise, rain, rainforest, and piano.

As intriguing as Sonos Radio HD sounds, the question is whether or not Sonos users will pay $8 per month for the service.  Like the Sonos app itself, Sonos Radio HD (as well as the free tier) cannot be accessed from any other device — it only works when at home listening to Sonos wireless speakers over a Wi-Fi network. This means that there’s no way Sonos Radio HD can fully replace a traditional streaming service like Spotify or Apple Music, even if it offered the same on-demand library of songs, which currently it does not.

Nonetheless, a pandemic might just be the perfect moment to launch an at-home-only premium radio service. Playlists are popular because they take the guesswork out of trying to find something to listen to. Netflix believes that the same thing could be true for streaming video — it recently launched a linear, nonskippable stream in France called Direct.

It’s also worth noting that SiriusXM, which offers a streaming-only version of its subscription, charges $13 per month and you can’t skip songs or get a lossless, CD-quality stream.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Simon Cohen
Simon Cohen
Contributing Editor, A/V
Simon Cohen covers a variety of consumer technologies, but has a special interest in audio and video products, like…
There’s a rare deal on the Sony WH-1000XM5 headphones today
Sony WH-1000XM5 headphones seen in black.

The massively popular Sony WH-1000XM5 wireless headphones rarely appear in headphone deals, so if you've had your eye on them for quite a while, you're in luck because they're currently $51 off on Walmart. From their original price of $400, you'll only have to pay $349, but only if you hurry because we don't expect stocks to last long. You're going to miss out on the offer if you take too long, so don't hesitate -- add the wireless headphones to your cart and check out as fast as you can.

Why you should buy the Sony WH-1000XM5
The best headphones that you can buy right now are the Sony WH-1000XM5 wireless headphones, and it's not even close. At the heart is their outstanding wireless sound, supported by top-quality active noise cancellation that uses two processors and eight microphones to block all unwanted sound, as well as crystal-clear hands-free calling using four beamforming microphones and advanced audio signal processing. The wireless headphones also offer Bluetooth multipoint connection so that you can quickly switch between different devices, touch controls for functions like adjusting volume and calling your digital assistant, and Speak-to-Chat and Quick Attention features to stop your music and let ambient sound in without having to take them off.

Read more
Sony’s premium soundbars will finally get support for VRR, ALLM
Sony HT-A7000 Dolby Atmos soundbar close-up of top panel.

It's been a long time coming, but the wait is almost over. Sony's premium home theater soundbars are set to receive a software update that will add support for variable refresh rate (VRR) and auto low-latency mode (ALLM), two HDMI 2.1 gaming features that have been absent since these products launched.

The soundbars in question are the Sony HT-A5000, HT-A7000, and the multi-wireless speaker HT-A9 system. All three are scheduled to receive the update this fall, but Sony has declined to share specific timing, saying only that there will be more information closer to the rollout date.

Read more
What is Roku? The streaming platform explained
A roku powered TV hanging on a wall running Roku OS 12.

How do you get your Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, or Prime Video fix? Chances are it's through a streaming device or smart TV, and there's a good chance that it's through a Roku device or one running its pioneering streaming operating system. At this point, cord-cutting is old news, and Roku was one of the earliest companies to drive the adoption of web-based streaming with its self-contained, app-driven devices.

Today, watching something "on Roku" is standard parlance and the company's popular platform can be found baked into some of the biggest TV brands in the world as well as in its own lineup of streaming devices sticks, and set-top boxes. Even so, that doesn't mean you totally get what a Roku actually is. What is Roku? How does Roku work? Do you need a subscription to use it? Is it just a device you buy, or is it software?

Read more