Better music discovery

[Blaizefm]

While I love my Sonos setup, I do find it lacks in one aspect: music discovery.

What do I mean by this? Well, I use an app on my iPad called Groove. It is a music player app, but it's core function is providing a gateway to your own music beyond a simple browse artist/album structure in the form of playlist suggestions such as three of a kind, or mixes based on similar artists and provides a more compelling gateway to my music. I often go blank when staring at a hierarchal list of my music - Groove allows me to connect to my music by suggesting what I can listen to.

This is what I think Sonos lacks. I'd love something similar which offers me music rather than the other way around. Show me my last played albums, top played tunes, offer iTunes genius like playlist functionality, build radio stations of my own tunes. I want to be able to open my Sonos iPad app and it gives me these options rather than a mind-numbing list of albums/tracks.

It's so frustrating that the Sonos hardware tech is perfect, yet the core software functionality is a generation behind (especially the iOS apps which are practical at best, frustrating at worst). In technological terms we have reached a point where access to ones music library throughout the home has been done - discovering your music in different ways is the next logical step.

All of this happens with Spotify to some extent, but I want this feature with my own library.

The way I see it is that at some point Airplay/Squeezebox/A.N.other technologies will improve to the point that feature-wise there will be very little differentiation between themselves and Sonos (and to a certain degree is has almost happened). Sonos is an excellent hardware solution, that's for sure, but they need to step up with their software.