Spotify is the most popular music streaming service in the world and Sonos is one of the top brands of smart speakers. Here’s how to get them to work together.
Getting Ready
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To use Spotify on your Sonos speaker you need:
A Sonos speaker set up and connected to your Wi-Fi network. A Premium Spotify account and the Spotify app installed on your smartphone. Unfortunately, Spotify doesn’t support streaming from free accounts on a Sonos. The Sonos Controller app (available for iOS and Android).
We’re going to demonstrate all this with an iPhone and a Sonos One, but the process should be very similar on Android.
Setting Up a Spotify Account on Your Sonos
Open the Sonos Controller app on your smartphone, tap the “More” option, and then tap the “Add Music Services” entry. From the list of services, choose Spotify.
On the Add Service page, tap the “Add to Sonos” button, and then tap the “Connect to Spotify” button on the next screen.
The Spotify app opens on your phone and passes your login details to the Sonos app. After a few seconds, the Sonos app opens back up again, and you can type a name for your Spotify account. Note that this name will only be put into use if you add additional Spotify accounts to the Sonos app. Name your account, and then tap the “Done” button.
And just like that, you’ve got Spotify set up on your Sonos. To set up another Spotify account, just follow the same steps above.
Controlling Spotify on Your Sonos
There are two ways to control Spotify on your Sonos: from the Sonos Controller app and directly from the Spotify app.
From the Sonos Controller App
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Open the Sonos Controller app, select the “Browse” option and then select your Spotify account. From here you can select any music you’ve saved in Spotify, including the playlists you’ve made by going to Your Music. You can also use the other options to play music from Spotify’s own playlists and the top songs at the moment.
You can also use the “Search” tab to find any song, artist, or album you want. Spotify’s search is universal, so it lists all the locations an artist is available.
From the Spotify App
The Sonos Controller app is functional, but not very well tailored to Spotify. The best way to control Spotify on your Sonos is actually through the regular Spotify app.
Open the Spotify app and select the song, artist, or playlist you want to hear. Tap “Devices Available” to see a list of all the devices currently connected to your Spotify account. You can see one option for me is named “Kitchen.” This is the Sonos device I just set up.
Select your Sonos from the list and whatever you were listening to on Spotify starts to play on it.
Now you can just use the Spotify app as normal but, instead of music playing on your phone, it plays through your Sonos.
The Sonos Controller app is great for setting up your Sonos, but it’s not an ideal controller. It just has to work with too many different services to be great for any one of them. Fortunately, it’s easy to directly control your Sonos from the much better Spotify app.
