Sonos(R) and Pandora(R) Personalize the Radio Experience in the Digital Home

Sonos(R) and Pandora(R) Personalize the Radio Experience in the Digital Home

Musical Magic Combined With Wireless Handheld Control Brings Personal Radio Stations to Every Room of the House

SANTA BARBARA, Calif., May 23 /PRNewswire/ -- Sonos, Inc., the leading developer of wireless multi-room music systems for the digital home, today announced a new release of Sonos System Software v 2.2 that will bring Pandora* to the award-winning Sonos Digital Music System. Pandora, the developer of the ground-breaking personalized radio service, and Sonos have collaborated to provide music lovers with an exciting new way to discover music from the palm of their hand, and enjoy that music all over the house. Today's addition of Pandora expands Sonos' unsurpassed home audio experience -- providing access to more music services than any other whole-home digital music system on the market. The free software upgrade is available to all registered Sonos customers via Sonos' wireless handheld Controller.

Pandora's innovative approach to radio combined with Sonos' industry- leading digital music system signals a new era for radio enjoyment in the home. With Pandora and the wireless Sonos Controller in hand, users can create and play up to 100 radio stations based on their favorite songs or artists. Using Pandora's Music Genome Project(R), Pandora's highly-trained musicians analyze songs, one at a time, using close to 400 musical traits including melody, harmony, instrumentation, rhythm, vocals, lyrics, and more to automatically build a station with songs that share interesting musical similarities. Users can take hold of the Controller and rate the music they hear to further refine the station's playlist on the fly.

The Sonos Digital Music System allows music lovers to create and play Pandora radio stations all over the home without ever installing an application or turning on a computer. It is possible to play the same Pandora radio station in each room, perfectly synchronized; or, play different stations in different rooms to fit the mood. In fact, Sonos can simultaneously stream 32 different Pandora radio stations to 32 different rooms -- an industry breakthrough. Starting today, new and current Sonos customers can listen to Pandora for free with a 30-day trial -- no credit card required. Following the free trial, Sonos customers can continue their Pandora service for $36 annually.

"Pandora has melded the human judgment of music experts with the best of computer science to create a new, breakthrough experience in radio," said John MacFarlane, CEO of Sonos. "Combined with Sonos, Pandora gives you the feeling that there is someone magically guiding your music listening throughout your home."

"Our mission is to work with exceptional companies like Sonos to expand the reach of Pandora and our Music Genome Project," said Tim Westergren, Founder of Pandora. "With Sonos, we continue to unite the Pandora experience with groundbreaking devices that truly reinvent the way music lovers interact with music in the home. This partnership illustrates what radio looks like in a connected world -- anytime, anywhere."

In keeping with Sonos' tradition of continually improving the home music experience, the Sonos 2.2 software release also includes better music services support, more alarm clock choices, improved Internet radio reliability with automatic connection restart, FLAC album art support, and more. For more information about any of these new Sonos features, visit: http://www.sonos.com/support/software_updates/.

The Sonos Digital Music System is the first and only wireless multi-room music system with a full-color Controller that lets consumers enjoy digital music all over the house. To learn more about Sonos, to place an order or to locate an authorized Sonos dealer, please visit www.sonos.com.

* Pandora is available through Sonos in the United States only.

About Sonos, Inc.

Sonos(R) is the leading developer of wireless multi-room music systems for the digital home. By partnering with audio services like Audible.com(R), eMusic(R), MTV Networks' URGE, Napster(TM), Pandora(R), Rhapsody(R), Wal-Mart(R), Yahoo! Music(TM) Unlimited, the Zune Marketplace and more, Sonos gives music lovers instant plug-and-play access to millions of songs, radio stations and audiobooks that can be enjoyed all over the house. The award-winning Sonos(R) Digital Music System is available at more than 750 retailers and custom integrators in North America, including Tweeter, Magnolia Home Theater at Best Buy, Magnolia Audio Video, Amazon.com, Crutchfield, or direct from Sonos at www.sonos.com.

Sonos is also sold in more than 50 countries around the world. Sonos is a privately-held company, headquartered in Santa Barbara, CA with offices in Cambridge, MA, Hilversum, Netherlands and Penang, Malaysia. To find out more about the company or the Sonos Digital Music System, please visit: www.sonos.com.

About Pandora Media(TM)

Pandora (www.pandora.com) is a personalized radio service, available anytime and anywhere on the PC, in the home and on mobile devices. Pandora is based on the Music Genome Project, which began in 2000 and is the most thorough analysis of popular music ever undertaken. Each song in this massive collection, which includes Pop, Rock, Jazz, Electronica, Hip Hop, Country, Blues, R&B, and Latin, is analyzed by one of more than 50 trained musicians, and assessed against up to 400 distinct musical attributes (encompassing melody, harmony, rhythm, etc.) to capture its unique musical identity. Pandora uses this information to build playlists based on musical similarity. By simply entering a favorite song or artist, a listener is instantly launched into a personalized listening experience, full of new discovery as Pandora explores their favorite part of the music universe. Listeners can create up to 100 of these personal radio stations and refine them by providing feedback via the Pandora radio tuner. Additionally, listeners can create profiles, search for other listeners in the Pandora community who have similar musical tastes, and find stations built by other listeners, using artist and song names as well as genre and mood search terms. The music analyst team works daily to keep the Music Genome Project updated with the latest releases, emerging artists, and an ever-deepening collection of catalogue titles.

Source: Sonos, Inc.

CONTACT: Thomas Meyer of Sonos, Inc., mobile +1-949-212-6201,
Thomas.meyer@sonos.com; or Michele Husak of Pandora, mobile +1-650-291-9911,
mhusak@pandora.com

Web site:

http://www.pandora.com/

Web site:

http://www.sonos.com/

-------
Profile: intent