Sonos this morning sent out an email to users advising them to immediately update their wireless music system software with a security “enhancement” in order to plug a hole that “in rare cases” could have been exploited by malicious people to gain access to sensitive, personal customer data.

In the message, which was also posted on its forum, Sonos says it is not aware of any breaches so far:

This update fixes a bug that, in rare cases, could allow someone to access the usernames and passwords of services used on your Sonos. Currently, we are not aware of any customer data being compromised. If you have any evidence that your account credentials were inappropriately accessed please contact Sonos customer service at http://www.sonos.com/support.

In addition to updating your Sonos with this security enhancement, it’s always good practice to use strong and different passwords for your online accounts.

To update, go to ‘System Settings’ on any Sonos Controller and select ‘Online Updates’.

An update to the Sonos firmware and controller now allows Android users to manage their devices on a Honeycomb tablet in a native slate format, eschewing the original portrait-only Android phone app. The new version supports the Kindle Fire as well.

Users can also now Tweet the titles of music they’re listening to right from the app.

The app now also supports Slacker radio and an updated version of the Sonos Labs API, allowing programmers to interact directly with the Sonos server and add new channels easily.

The 3.6 update also adds some minor bug fixes to Sonos hardware devices. The updates should download automatically upon starting any Sonos desktop or mobile controller.

Find and play any song, in any room, right from your favorite Android device (running 2.2 and higher) — with one free app.
View your zones, music menu, now playing pane and volume controls all at once. Intelligently scales the screen layout to take advantage of larger screen size.
Set alarms or sleep timer to wake up or fall asleep to your favorite music or station.
Send tweets about what you’re listening to on Sonos.
Access advanced Sonos system settings.
Connects to Sonos over your home WiFi network.
Download it for free from Android Market™.
Available worldwide.

Robbie Bach, 22 year veteran of Microsoft and most recently the company’s Xbox division, has moved to Sonos. Sonos head John MacFarlane pulled Bach out of semi-retirement in order to help with their retail presence.

Sonos makes audio sharing devices for the home, creating seamless soundscapes in multiple rooms using hardware that, for the most part, surpasses a standard set of bookshelf speakers. Bach was a big fan of the devices early on and plans to help the company expand their overall presence on the market.

The company has gone for years without retail stores, an amazing feat for a homegrown, fairly small organization that has never gone public. The ease of use and styling, however, make the product ripe for sales in big box stores and, potentially, dedicated storefronts a la Bose.

Bach will be part of the company’s board.

Image via Wikipedia

If you’re looking for a high-class all-in-one streaming music system, Sonos has you covered. The company today announced the Play:3, a Sonos music player that gives the user access to Sonos’ complete library of streaming music services. Users can control the Play:3 through their Sonos Controller app, available for Android, iPhone and iPad, and the whole thing just costs $299.

Ok, maybe I lied. To use the Play:3, you must first purchase a bridge that hooks into your wireless router. From there you can play whatever you want, anywhere in the house, and not have to worry that shoddy cellular service could cost you your favorite part of the song. Under the hood of the rather small Play:3, you’ll find three digital drivers, one tweeter and two mid-range amps, along with three Class-D digital amps. There’s no subwoofer on board this time, but we still had no trouble hearing the nitty gritty of those bass notes.

Since this is a smart speaker, an internal sensor can detect when it’s been turned vertically, and switches from stereo to mono output. Play:3s can also be paired and set to play the dedicated left or right channel, to put some extra power behind the Play:3. We’re still waiting for our review unit to pass final judgement, but first impressions are definitely good. We got a lot of sound out of a sleek, compact speaker, and that’s about all you can ask for. The rest is just bonus.

Not to flog a spotted horse, Spotify is now available on your Sonos devices. To add the service to your devices follow these instructions.

Similar to Rdio, Spotify for Sonos allows you to create queues based on Spotify content and play playlists you’ve created on your desktop. Songs play in 320kbps streams.

Two members of the BlablabLab group have manned the gear all day and they’ve scanned quite a few attendees, presenting them with a finished figurine in about 15 minutes. The system uses three Kinect sensors that creates a 3D cloud of points and then the pair cleans up the figurine and adds smoothing and webbing to keep small parts from breaking off. They tried to scan me but they ran out of plastic for my Vladimir Harkonnen-like rotundity.

Check out the video above for a closer look at the hardware and process.

The service is available now and costs $9.99 for the “primo” streaming subscription.

You’ve been waiting and now it’s here: Sonos has just announced the availability of the free Controller on the Android platform. It is compatible with almost all Android phones and tablets and supports the standard Sonos feature set (music assignment, browsing, search) as well as a few interesting additions.

The app takes advantage of Android’s native speech recognition to offer voice search (“Zamfir, Master of the Pan Flute”) and it also highjacks your Android device’s volume keys to control the volume of the Sonos device.

The Sonos system now also supports Airplay but in a very roundabout way. If you have an Airport Express with Airplay support (or Apple TV, for that matter), you can transmit audio from an iPad, iPod, or iPhone to that device using Airplay. You can then take the live stream from the Airplay device and send it to any Sonos device on your network. It’s obviously not ideal, but it works. You can still transmit audio from multiple devices (including iTunes libraries) around your network.

Sonos has been slowly but surely cementing their position as one of the premier whole-home audio solutions and these small but significant changes are a testament to their dedication to slow and steady improvement. The 3.4 update is available to Sonos users now and should download automatically when you launch the desktop application.

The company just sent over a short statement from the VP of Quality, Andrew Schulert, that says in short, “It’s not ready, yo. How does April sound?” My wording. His quote is after the jump.

“We know you’re anxiously awaiting the Sonos Controller for Android. Unfortunately, testing the app is taking a bit longer than we anticipated. The latest addition to our free controller line-up won’t arrive until April, but when it does, it is going to rock.”

-Andrew Schulert – Vice President, Quality, Sonos, Inc.

Note: Sonos is in the right here. They announced the app just last month and are pushing the launch a reasonable amount of time. The company explained the issue without too much fluff. Besides, Sonos is an established company and this app is just a fun little extra and not an integral part of a product’s ecosystem. They can get away with pushing it until the bugs are fully eradicated as it’s better to a good product late than a buggy product on time.

Finally! Sonos To Release Android Controller App In March, exclaimed an understandably excited Michael Arrington back in February. Alas, bad news has just come in for my boss and many other Android handset owning Sonos users.

According to the company, testing of the Sonos Controller for Android is taking a bit longer than they’d anticipated, which means they will not make that March deadline after all.

The latest addition to its free controller line-up won’t arrive until April. The horror.

“But when it does, it is going to rock”, said Andrew Schulert, VP of Quality at Sonos.

Are you a MOG user in proud possession of a Sonos Multi-Room Music System? Let me make you a happy man or woman: US-based MOG users will have access to the company’s on-demand music service through Sonos later this spring, the companies jointly announced this morning.

With the addition of MOG, and recently Rdio and Spotify, the list of available music services is beginning to look like a very appealing offer for most anyone (the list also includes Last.fm, Napster, Pandora, Rhapsody, SiriusXM, among others).

MOG will offer Sonos customers high-quality sound, streamed at 320kbps, on-demand and ad-free, as well as its patent-pending “MOG Mobius” music discovery engine, which enables users to switch between “artist-only” radio stations or a full mix of similar artists.

The company says it will offer a 14-day free trial to all new and existing Sonos customers after which users can sign up for its $9.99-per-month ‘Primo’ subscription plan.

The following probably speaks to Sirius XM silliness more than anything else, but what are you gonna do? Sonos’ Multi-Room Music System is now fully compatible with the “new and improved” Sirius XM stream. The system had worked on the Sirius side of things just fine, but now it works on the XM side of things, too.

XM now works because Sirius XM updated its Web feed a few weeks ago, which, judging by comments here and there, meh, it would be charitable to call the new player “OK.” The iOS and Android Apps still seem to work OK, which is good enough for me since I rarely (read: never) use the actual Web player.

Baby steps for Sirius XM.

Everyone’s favorite home music streamer, Sonos, just announced the availability of the Sonos Controller for Android, a free program for managing your Sonos receiver from the comfort of your cellphone. The controller is long overdue as iOS users have had a version of the Sonos system for well over a year.

The app will be available in the Android Market in March and will be officially unveiled at MWC next week.

The Sonos Controller for Android is designed to work on any Android smartphone running Android 2.1 or later with a screen size of HVGA 320 x 480, WVGA 480 x 800 or WVGA 480 x 854. Sonos Controller for Android joins the family of Sonos Controllers which includes free apps for iPhone and iPad, a dedicated touchscreen controller, the Sonos Controller 200, and free software for your Mac or PC, included with every ZonePlayer. All controllers work together seamlessly.

We talked quite a bit about Sonos in this post but essentially this pounds a final nail into their well-loved but slightly expensive CR200 dedicated controller. Sonos was really first to market with excellent whole-house music sharing. Although devices like Apple TV can do the same thing now for considerably cheaper, Sonos is the only company that has survived as a single-play CE manufacturer in this space.

You can read more about it in the release below or you can just wait until March and try it out yourself.

ROCK THE HOUSE:
SONOS INTRODUCES
SONOS CONTROLLER FOR ANDROID

Wireless Music System for Android Provides
Unlimited Music, Incredible Control and Amazing Sound in Every Room

SANTA BARBARA, CA – February 10, 2011 – Sonos, the leading developer of wireless multi-room music systems for the home, today introduced the Sonos Controller for Android, a free app that transforms most Android™ smartphones into a wireless music controller for the award-winning Sonos Multi-Room Music System. The Sonos Controller for Android, available in late March as a free download from Android Market™, will make its public debut next week at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. To watch a video introduction of the Sonos Controller for Android, please visit www.sonos.com/android.

With the award-winning Sonos S5 in any room and an Android phone in hand, music lovers will enjoy an unmatched wireless music experience in the home. You’ll be able to access and play all the music on earth—from the Internet and your personal music library—throughout the home, wirelessly. Use the free Sonos Controller for Android app to control all your music and rooms, all from the palm of your hand. And, Sonos Controller for Android features Sonos’ latest innovation in the home music experience – music voice search – allowing users to find any artist, album or track by simply speaking into the phone.

“Sonos’ mission is to fill every home with music,” said John MacFarlane, CEO, Sonos, Inc. “We are thrilled to bring the joy of music to the homes of Android fans worldwide.”

To get started enjoying music in any or every room of the home, all you need is a Sonos ZonePlayer and a Sonos Controller such as the free Sonos Controller for Android. The most popular Sonos ZonePlayer is the Sonos S5, an all-in-one wireless music system you can plug in anywhere. Now you can play any track you like, anytime you like, in any room you like. Wirelessly play the same song in every room of the house – perfectly synchronized. Or, mix it up and play different songs in different rooms.

When it comes to controlling Sonos, you simply reach into your pocket for your Android smartphone. With Sonos Controller for Android, you can search for songs and stations by typing or speaking, choose the music and control the volume in as many rooms as you like. And because your Android phone is controlling the music, and not the source of it, when a text comes in or you need to make a phone call, the music doesn’t stop.

Sonos connects directly to the Internet so you can access a world of music without ever turning on your computer. Search and play more than 100,000 Internet radio stations, shows and podcasts — from around the world. Play songs, playlists and radio from the most popular music services like Deezer, iheartradio, Last.fm, Napster, Pandora, Rdio, Rhapsody, SiriusXM Internet Radio, Spotify, Wolfgang’s Vault, and more. And of course, Sonos can play your entire digital music library (such as iTunes) stored on a computer or Network Attached storage drive.

The Sonos Controller for Android is designed to work on any Android smartphone running Android 2.1 or later with a screen size of HVGA 320 x 480, WVGA 480 x 800 or WVGA 480 x 854. Sonos Controller for Android joins the family of Sonos Controllers which includes free apps for iPhone and iPad, a dedicated touchscreen controller, the Sonos Controller 200, and free software for your Mac or PC, included with every ZonePlayer. All controllers work together seamlessly.

Then things started to happen. Most notably they released the Sonos ZonePlayer S5, a lower cost Sonos device that could be controlled via an iPhone or iPod Touch. And, last year, they finally had an iPad controller app.

But nothing for Android. Always promised in the near future, but we had to wait. And wait.

And now the wait is over. Sonos says the Android app will be released in March. Details here.

There are some nifty feature that the iOS folks don’t get. Deeper hardware integration allows you to control the volume on Sonos devices via the physical volume buttons on your Android phone, for example.

“We think we make the best wireless music system for the iPhone. Now we make the best wireless music system for the Android, too,” says Sonos marketing director Thomas Meyer.

Good times.

There’s a dirty secret in gadget start-ups: they fail. Constantly and catastrophically. Unlike web or web service start-ups, gadget start-ups require R&D, manufacturing, and distribution. The Gizmondo, the most famous of all flame-outs, involved unkept promises, horrible hardware, and an exec with organized crime ties wrapping a Ferrari Enzo around a light pole.

Making hardware is hard. It takes time, and MacFarlane and his team took three years to finally launch the ZonePlayer 100 and remote control. During this time multiple vendors tried and failed to ship similar products. However, thanks to a unique design aesthetic, some nice software, and a lot of luck, Sonos survived and is now thriving.

GigaOm did a great analysis of the company as a business, but let’s talk a bit about why the company what the company did to succeed in a difficult marketplace.

A Unified Design

The Sonos is easy to describe: it’s a device that sends music to every room of the house, wirelessly. Originally requiring a dedicated PC, the system now streams audio from multiple sources and includes speakers, amplifiers, and even a uniquely excellent remote control that presaged the common end-user LCD remote by years.

Sonos has a unique identity and consistent trade dress. All Sonos devices look similar and they all share a common, muted color. There are few, if any buttons, and set-up is dead simple, even back in 2005 when consumer electronics were even less logically designed than they are today.

Simplified Visual UI And Language

The Sonos controller, a box the size of perhaps two old fashioned iPods put side by side, had a large, bright screen and dead simple UI. You selected a song, sent it to the room you wanted it to play in, or sent it to all the speakers in the house. Compared to anything else on the market six years ago it was very heaven.

Premium Pricing

Many manufacturers fall into one of two traps – they price their devices at the mid-point of the market, in order to be on parity with larger companies, or try to flood the shelves with low-priced garbage. As evidenced by a number of successful hardware companies, the premium spot is actually the first place to target, especially as a primarily American company.

Why? Well, a gadget start-up usually needs to target early adopters. Early adopters want quality and are usually not afraid of spending money to scratch an itch. Granted the price can go down over time, but an early high price can slowly roll down to a lower, more manageable price in the future. This is exactly what Sonos did: they launched initially as a fairly high-priced item and then launched lower-priced accessories and versions. They also accepted the inevitable and create an iPod Touch/iPhone app that would eventually replace their hardware remote control solution.

Getting It To All The Right People

All of the tech nerds in Silicon Alley and Silicon Valley know about Sonos. If they don’t, they know someone who has one. Many swear by them and there is a small but vocal community of well-known users.

Many of these users were tech journalists – I know even our own Arrington has used one and I reviewed it a few times in its lifetime – and I’ve been approached consistently by the company on a regular schedule. The key, here, is reminding the tech press that you still exist. Compare that to something like the homegrown FitBit. It was a clever product, but it seemed to disappear after an impressive launch.

Constantly Telling The Story

Smaller companies can’t release product on a monthly basis. It takes years to prepare and ship new hardware and given the problem Sonos set out to solve – the streaming of audio to speakers – they are more an appliance than a disposable item of whimsy. Therefore, they solved that problem by updating the software in various ways, bringing in media partners, and generally gathering attention every six months or so. When new hardware launched, it was a big deal. But it was also a big deal when the smaller stuff launched because the established install base was ready for upgrades.

This also kept the idea of Sonos fresh in customer’s minds. The Sonos solves a very specific problem and once you realize it exists, you’re initially intrigued but the pricing puts you off. After reading more and more about it, however, it begins to make more sense. This is how you build a customer.

There’s no guarantee of success in the gadget space, but Sonos hit on all the right cylinders at exactly the right time. They may be small, but they’re popular and their still going strong, even after a good 9 years.

Could a larger company like Sony pull off a Sonos? Probably not. The product is too niche and Sony would probably overdo it with an odd branding campaign centered around rubber balls and lithe Moroccan dancers. Sonos kept it small, kept it sane, and sold a lot of hardware.

Pretty sure 99.9% of you won’t care one bit, but this fills me with joy: Rdio, the music service I was most happy to have discovered in 2010, will soon be available on Sonos, the awesome wireless sound system I was most happy to have discovered in 2010.

Scheduled for release ‘later in Q1 2011′, Rdio Unlimited subscibers (that’s me!) in the United States and Canada will be able to listen to the social music service on Sonos’ phenomenal Multi-Room Music System.

Sonos already had partnerships in place to do the same for Spotify, Last.fm, Napster, Pandora, Rhapsody and SIRIUS users (it also lets you access the single best-kept secret in online music land, Wolfgang’s Vault).

But as a proud Rdio fan, and I was left out in the cold.

Sure, I got Sonos’ wireless docking station so I could actually use the Rdio iPhone app to stream music to the system, but it wasn’t an ideal solution (considering the phone also receives calls, text messages, push notifications and whatnot whilst streaming).

Rdio and Sonos, you’ve made my day. Apologies, 99.9% of you who don’t care.

Spotify, the European streaming music service (that’s awesome), recently inked a deal with Sonos to allow the service to work on Sonos’ home devices. Here we have a brief demo of the magic in action.

While having Spotify available on your home audio system is neat and all (and I suppose you could always plug your iPhone or computer into your home audio system), the very fact that us Americans are still a country mile away from having the service available, well, stinks.

Stare and hope, I suppose.

U.S. users still have to wait for Spotify to launch here, of course, or find another way to access the service. On the upside, Sonos says their iPad controller app will be hitting iTunes sometime soon. So they’ve got that going for them, which is nice.

I’ve always had a soft spot in my necrotic heart for Sonos. In the face if iPods, Zunes, mobile phones, and everything else, they’ve kept pumping out great, compact products for folks with big houses. They’ve never pretended to be too high-class for the rest of us yet you basically use their products to create soundscapes, just like Disney World, Vegas, and the haunted house I made in my basement as a kid.

Sonos just announced their iPad app – probably available in August – that allows you to control your Sonos system on the iPad’s bright screen. The app allows you to browse your iTunes and Sonos collection, pick radio streams, and even set different rooms with different playlists. When I tested the Sonos kit I used to like to make my bathroom, for instance, the Drum’n'Bass room to ease evacuation.

There are other solutions out there but Sonos has remained a consistent fave.

Product Page

Sonos stopped by our office in San Francisco today to show off their newest toy: the iPad controller app. Those familiar with the iPhone/iPod touch version of the controller will feel at home here, though obviously the larger screen allows Sonos to do some more creative music management things with the UI. It looks to be a pretty killer way to manage multiple Sonos systems throughout your home (it can manage up to 32 separate zones).

While the app looks polished and ready to go, Sonos says it’s still pre-beta. The plan is to have it ready to submit to Apple’s App Store by mid-August. Once approved, it will be available as a free download.

They see the iPad version of the app as the most social Sonos controller yet — great for parties. As to why you would buy a CR200 — their dedicated remote that costs $350 — instead of an iPad with this app, they note that the CR200 is still faster to use if you want to access your systems instantly. And the dedicated remote is going to stay in your home, if someone leaves with the iPad, you’ll have no remote.

Watch a video of it in action below. As you can see, it seamlessly runs two Sonos S5s (including the new black one), in two different rooms. Below that, find a video of Sonos telling us a bit more about the strategy behind these apps. Of note, they’re completely focused on Apple’s mobile platforms for the time being (meaning, sadly, no Android app is in the works just yet). And while they may be hesitant to say it, they’d clearly love for their systems to be available in Apple Stores.

For those who can’t wait for the iPad version, check out the iPhone version (which will work on the iPad) here in the App Store.