Myth 2: Sonos doesn't have an open API

This myth is usually repeated in several different forms, including "Sonos has a closed API" and even "Sonos won't let you use it's proprietary API".

I have heard these statements from people who claim to be "integrators" when what their job title should really be "installer" (they wouldn't know what integration was if it hit them in the eye).

I have heard this from ignorant people who assume that because there aren't dozens of Sonos apps written by third parties that this must be the reason.

I have heard it from fans and employees of other vendors who are trying to spread FUD about a competing product.

The bottom line...
It isn't true!


The Sonos control API is based on UPnP which is one of the most open commercial home control protocols there is. All of the specifications can be downloaded for free from www.upnp.org.

Furthermore, much of the functionality is based on UPnP-AV, which is the AV specification from www.upnp.org. Again, the specification documents for this are available free of charge from www.upnp.org. Here's an example:
UPnP Device AV Architecture 1.1

With these specifications, and these specifications alone, you can perform a whole host of activities with your Sonos setup including:

• Getting a list of devices on the network, their name, device type, IP address, etc.
• Getting the "tranport state" of a Sonos zone (whether it's playing, paused,. etc.)
• Getting track information about what any zone is playing, including cover art (if available)
• Setting a track to play, or pausing it on a specific zone, or all zones.
• Changing the volume,muting and unmuting on any zone
• Browsing the Sonos index by Track, Artists, Album, Folder, etc.
• Browsing Sonos playlists
• Seeing changes in the status of any zone, such as the player changing from paused to playing

That's a pretty good range of integration capabilities, right?
On top of that, there's a range of Sonos-specific capabilities that, whilst not standard UPnP, are published via the UPnP interface. That means they are visible to end users and some idea of how to use them is presented. Most of these are fairly obviously named so it doesn't take much more than a little experimentation to work out how to use them. It would be nice to have documentation, but as none exists part of my aim here is to use this blog as an unofficial documentation of some of these features, as and when I get around to addressing them.
The sort of things that are available:

• Adding songs to the Sonos queue (note you can play tracks using standard UPnP-AV, the queue is slightly different)
• Setting alarms
• Grouping and ungrouping zones, and seeing how they are grouped
• Creating Sonos playlists
• Changing Sonos device configuration (e.g. Line In settings)

As I say, I'll try to address these eventually in this blog, but it's totally subject to my personal time, so it might be a while off.

One area which really could do with some more documentation is Music Services (more recently this includes radio as the radio service is provided by TuneIn). The trouble is many music services have their own API which Sonos hooks into to use them. This API is the property of the music service and,even if they wanted to, Sonos could get into contractual problems with their partner if they publish it. I'll try to illustrate some of these as I go along, but bear in mind I don't have access to all of the music services so I can't cover all of them.

These generally work in roughly the same way:

1. use music service API to log in and browse music service
2. Use UPnP to push selected tracks to Sonos queue (as normal)

More recently Sonos have announced a standard integration API for music services. I think this is a smart move as most music services have yet to develop their own streaming API. By providing a free, open API standard which makes it easy for services to build a streaming interface to their systems, and therefore to reach Sonos users, this should escalate the development process and may lead to a more standardised streaming service interface across the industry.
In theory this should make control app development easier, as the interface to control external music service access should be more standard.