New Sonos Patent Describes Emulating Radio Dial for Better Music Discovery

Sonos landed a U.S. patent Tuesday for a tunable “music discovery dial” on a user's “command device” for reducing the stress of finding and playing back streamed digital audio content by emulating the functionality of an old-fashioned radio. Though streaming audio services have made accessing audio content easier “by placing millions of audio tracks a click or tap away, music discovery using such services is harder than ever,” says the patent (10,877,726), based on a May 18 application. “For many users, instant access to millions of songs can feel like an unmanageable degree of choice. If a user knows what song they want to hear, they can play that song in a myriad of ways, such as by searching for that song, by selecting that song from a saved playlist, or by speaking a voice command to play that song.” But for users who might want to “stumble across something that they would not normally listen to,” modern graphical user interfaces or voice commands don’t work well because they may lead users “to listen to the same music over and over,” it says. To ease music discovery, the invented command device may include a dial to facilitate tuning to different streaming audio channels, “similar to how rotating the frequency dial of a radio tunes the radio to different stations,” it says. “In contrast to the millions of songs available from a streaming audio service, the number of streaming audio channels of a dial can be limited to a manageable degree of choice.” Unlike the dial on a traditional radio, the command device can be personalized via a user’s “playback history,” says the patent. “Using such history, streaming audio channels can be configured to include music that is unexpected or new for a particular user, rather than just generally out-of-the-mainstream.” Sonos didn't comment on commercialization plans.