This is incredible.

My problem is I have too many Echos and too small a house. I set up the Sonos One but it was getting confused with the Echo nearby. So I decided to do some surgery and screwed it up completely. Then Thomas Meyer hooked me up with Sonos support and not only did Adrian fix the problem, he made me aware of all these capabilities I had no idea of.

So here’s the story, you can buy a Sonos One and have all the capabilities of an Echo. It’s got the equivalent of a Dot built in. So, what this means is you can get all the skills, all your questions answered, and FAR SUPERIOR SOUND!

This is the way to go. The Sonos One sounds like MUSIC!

But it gets better, if you already have an Echo or an Echo Show, you can control ALL your Sonos zones by voice, RIGHT NOW!

As long as you use one of the suggested names, if you customize your zone names you might have a problem, but that’s gonna be worked out, and chances are you’re not that deep into this stuff anyway.

So, let’s start over. Voice control is it in music. The only problem is right now, the devices have lousy sound. But now you can buy a Sonos One and have GOOD sound! Especially compared to the lousy computer speakers and earbuds most people are presently using.

But if you’ve got an Echo already, and Sonos already, you can control your already existing zones via voice.

But right now Spotify doesn’t work, so I connected Amazon Music Unlimited.

And the thing with Amazon Music Unlimited is you can see the lyrics in your Amazon Echo Show, which is very cool.

And if this all sounds like gobbledygook to you, it won’t be soon. This will be de rigueur overnight. This Christmas is the tipping point, when Apple introduces its smart speaker, the HomePod, but if you expect Apple to dominate…

You’re still living in the Steve Jobs era.

You see Jobs won via monopolies. The funny thing is copy protection aided Apple, it kept people locked into the iPod. And then the iPod gained momentum and killed all comers.

And then the iPhone ruled until Android, no wonder Jobs was suing about that, because he realized you didn’t want to be a player, you wanted to be the ONLY player!

So, one voice-controlled service will dominate. And right now it looks to be Amazon. The only thing keeping people locked into Apple is branding. But, with Sonos you can employ much better speakers than both the HomePod and Sonos One, you can play music through your own stereo via voice via Sonos, you can’t do this with HomePod/Apple. It’s the Wintel wars all over again. Apple is a closed system, Amazon is not.

And Google is an entrant too, and is also an open system, and has the Android advantage, but right now Amazon has a huge head start, and there’s a first mover advantage as long as you continue to innovate.

It’s here right now. Voice control of your favorite music.

And Amazon Music Unlimited is a sleeper of a service. Forget Apple Music, it’s already trolled every credit card on file, whereas Amazon is selling every day and if Amazon purchased Spotify it would be game over, but still, keep your eye on the Bezos company.

So…

It’s all about streaming services. CDs and files are dead, because they don’t offer the same possibilities.

And there’s free and paid, and you don’t have to pay to get the equivalent of Spotify’s free tier on Amazon, you just can’t pick and choose the songs. But if you want to pay the freight, you get the right to hear exactly what you want when you want.

But Spotify’s advantage is being the first mover, and its playlists and audience…

For the first ten years of this century it was all about gadgets.

Now it’s all about software.

But the Echo is a gateway gadget, kind of like an iPhone, it’s not a standalone item like an iPod, it opens the door to so much more.

Like integration with Sonos.

Dip your toe, you’re gonna dig this.