Sonos rolling out AirPlay 2 support for its newest speakers, enabling multi-room audio playback with HomePod, ability to control Apple Music using Siri, more
Great news for Sonos customers: AirPlay 2 has arrived. This makes compatible Sonos speakers the first third-party AirPlay 2 speakers …
Context & Ripple Effects
Sonos has spent years courting Apple's ecosystem: after a 2015 commitment, Apple Music officially launched on Sonos speakers in 2016, making the service playable on third-party hardware well before Apple had its own multi-room story. That changed in May 2018, when iOS 11.4 finally delivered stereo pairing and AirPlay 2 multi-room streaming to HomePod.
Today's rollout closes the loop from the other direction: compatible Sonos speakers become the first third-party AirPlay 2 speakers, meaning Apple's multi-room protocol now runs on both sides — HomePod grouping with Sonos, and Siri controlling Apple Music playback on Sonos hardware.
First-order effects
- Owners of Sonos's newest speakers can immediately group them with HomePod into a single multi-room AirPlay 2 setup and start Apple Music playback with Siri, no Sonos app required.
- Apple gets distribution it could not build alone: HomePod's multi-room footprint now extends across Sonos's installed base instead of stopping at Apple's own speaker line.
Second-order effects
- Sonos's multi-assistant strategy deepens — having already committed to Alexa integration alongside Spotify app control, it now carries Apple's voice layer too, pressuring rivals like Bose and Denon to chase AirPlay 2 certification or cede the Apple-adjacent premium segment.
- For streaming services, Sonos hardware becomes a contested access point: Spotify's app-based control and Apple Music's Siri path now compete on the same speakers, shifting leverage toward whichever service owns the voice command.
Third-order effects
- If AirPlay 2 adoption spreads beyond Sonos, smart-speaker competition shifts from closed ecosystems toward interoperable hardware where the assistant and music service are swappable layers — a direction Sonos later formalized by planning its own voice assistant supporting multiple music services.
The trend: Premium speaker makers are repositioning as neutral hubs that host rival ecosystems' protocols and assistants rather than locking customers into one.