Sonos to Reportedly Introduce ‘Sonos Voice’ Digital Assistant on June 1st

Citing people familiar with the matter, an exclusive report by The Verge is claiming that Sonos is getting ready to debut its own voice assistant service, which will allow users to play and control music on Sonos’ whole-home audio.

The report believes that the ‘Sonos Voice’ service will go live in the U.S. on June 1st via a software update, whereas a Canadian release, among other countries, will be announced at a later date. The offering will directly compete with the likes of Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa and will work on all Sonos products that run the S2 software.

The company has also posted some Sonos Voice-related job openings recently, noting it is looking to “make voice interactions fully private, more personal, and more natural.”

At launch, Sonos Voice will work with Apple Music, Amazon Music, Pandora, Deezer, and the company’s own Sonos Radio. Spotify and Google’s YouTube Music aren’t yet on board. In keeping with Sonos’ interest in privacy, the feature will not record user audio commands or relay them to the cloud for processing.

“Hey Sonos” will be the wake word for Sonos Voice Control, and the company’s internal tests show it to be quicker than competing assistant services at core music tasks.

Sonos has not yet provided any official details regarding the upcoming Sonos Voice service.