Sonos beta for Android now includes a bunch of Spotify discover options

I don’t own a Sonos speaker – I used to, and an update today to the Sonos Controller really makes me wish I still did: Spotify users now get access to a ton a great discovery features that were previously missing.

The discovery features from Spotify now accessible through the Sonos Controller include featured playlists, charts, genres & mood, new releases, your music, and radio. I won’t go through exactly what all of these do, but most of Spotify’s discovery options are now there, which is awesome.

If you’ve ever played Spotify over Sonos before, I’m sure you’ve run into some of the same frustrations that I have. The Sonos Controller, which is the app through which you queue up music for your Sonos to play so you can go back to partying and not have to spend all your time DJing on your laptop or smartphone, strips some your favorite music apps down to just the music you’ve collected. Without its great discovery features Spotify is just like Google Play Music (quite a good choice, I will say), Rdio or any of the other countless music streaming services. Sonos still doesn’t even let me play my “Songs” catch-all playlist in reverse-chronological order (I save new songs and then listen to them on repeat for a while), but I’ll let it slide because today’s update makes up for it and then some.

This update is in beta, though, so you’ll need to hit up this link and sign in with your Sonos account to download an APK (you also need to go into the security settings of your device and allow installs from unknown sources). I’d recommend visiting that page (click here) on your Android device so once you get in you can just click the APK link and it’ll begin downloading. And the icing on the cake here is that these features have hit beta for the Android app before iOS or desktop.