DTS added SiriusXM to its roster of music...
DTS added SiriusXM to its roster of music services, it said Thursday (http://bit.ly/1pu04Bn), which in the U.S. includes Pandora, Deezer and a partnership with Songza that’s yet to go online. Sharon Graves, vice president of DTS’s Phorus division, told us…
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that Phorus’s Play-Fi platform is trying to add a new music service every 60-90 days “or faster.” Music services are looking for multi-room audio platforms with a “broad reach,” Graves said, and Play-Fi has been aggressive in signing hardware partners over the past few months. Sound United’s Polk Audio and Definitive Technology brands demonstrated new Play-Fi gear last week, while Martin-Logan and Paradigm brands joined McIntosh at the high-end of the audio market with Play-Fi partnerships. On Play-Fi’s plans to extend its entry-level reach, Graves said plans are in the works and a product will be announced “soon.” Graves noted that the Phorus brand of Play-Fi products serves that role. A deal with Hewlett-Packard will bring Play-Fi into notebook PCs and tablets in the near future, and the platform will extend to smartphones down the road, she said, declining to provide a roadmap or timeline. Play-Fi’s strategy for differentiation takes on market leader Sonos and the growing field of Sonos wannabes. As a Sonos alternative, Play-Fi “preserves the user experience” of streaming music service’s look, she said. Sonos creates a “very Sonos-like user experience, and the services get smooshed into it,” Graves said. In contrast, when Play-Fi customers go into a SiriusXM app, “it'll look very much like the native Sirius XM experience,” she said. Looking ahead, Play-Fi has no limit to reach and is “open to having us licensed by every brand out there if they're interested in doing multi-room,” she said. The primary selling point for Play-Fi is that it’s building a multi-brand platform for wireless multi-room audio, said Graves, calling that an advantage for retailers. “It’s confusing today to have limited sets from all these different manufacturers that don’t interoperate,” she said. For customers shopping for multi-room audio, “If you're able to walk in and [Play-Fi] is as ubiquitous as, say, Bluetooth ... and people are choosing based on brand loyalty, aesthetics and acoustics, that ... makes it simple for everybody,” she said.