Sonos will announce its own voice assistant in the coming weeks, tech website The Verge claims based on its own sources. With the voice assistant, users will soon be able to play and control music on their Sonos speakers.
Sonos Voice comes according to The Verge out in the United States on June 1. An international release would follow shortly after. The voice assistant will be an alternative to Amazon Alexa and the Google Assistant, which are already supported by the company’s speakers and soundbars. All Sonos products that run the S2 software will receive support for the assistant, according to The Verge sources.
Initially, Sonos Voice will receive support for Amazon Music, Apple Music, Deezer, Pandora and Sonos Radio. Support for Spotify and YouTube Music are missing at release. Sonos Voice would be activated by saying ‘Hey Sonos’. The voice commands are not recorded or forwarded to the cloud for processing.
The possible arrival of a Sonos voice assistant comes as no surprise. In 2019, the company acquired Snips. That’s a company that makes limited voice assistants that run locally on devices. That corresponds to the functionality of Sonos Voice, which would be mainly aimed at playing music and therefore does not work via the cloud. Sonos recently published a vacancy regarding the Sonos Voice Experience.
Sonos may soon also come with a new, more affordable soundbar, The Verge previously wrote. It would be released in June and cost $ 249. Remarkably, this soundbar does not contain microphones for use with a voice assistant, so presumably the new soundbar does not work with Sonos Voice.