Sonos Bows Limited-Time 'Sonos Two' Bundle With 2 Voice-Enabled Speakers

Sonos will launch the limited-time “Sonos Two” bundle Friday, offering two voice-enabled Sonos One speakers, regularly $199 each, for $349, it said in a Thursday announcement. That’s the same price as one Apple HomePod, which goes on preorder Friday, ahead of Feb. 9 availability (see 1801230058). Apple pushed Apple Music integration in its Tuesday HomePod news release. The bundle announcement coincided with an ad Sonos ran in The New York Times Thursday headlined “Freedom of Choice.” The full-page ad shows a Sonos One speaker with logos of nine music services: Spotify, Amazon Music, Deezer, Google Play Music, SoundCloud, Apple Music, SiriusXM, TuneIn and Tidal. Copy for the ad reads: “Big Tech wants to lock you into one music service. We think what you listen to should be up to you. That’s why we support over 80 music services, more than any other smart speaker system.” The announcement said Sonos has always been agnostic about sources of music and audio available for its speakers and said the company is “doing the same with voice assistants, preferring to stay open-minded and let listeners make the choices.” On whether Sonos would work with Siri or Bixby voice assistants in the future, a spokeswoman said the company is “always looking to add more voice partners.” On the timing of the Times ad, she said: “With several conversations around smart speakers, the ad calls out a trend where we are seeing big tech try to lock people into a single ecosystem.” She repeated Sonos’ agnosticism with music services and said Sonos has “always been about creating a home sound system to fill any room with your favorite music and content, not just a single speaker.” Sonos is continuing to work on Google Assistant and AirPlay 2 integration for later this year, she said.