Speaker maker Sonos has said for awhile now that it wants to remain agnostic in the voice-controlled smart home wars, and offer a high-end audio experience that supports all different kinds of software. But Sonos is in a particularly interesting position: It’s both trying to work with tech companies like Amazon, Apple, and Google, while also now competing with them.

This dynamic is something we had the chance to ask Sonos CEO Patrick Spence about at the Wired 25 festival a few weeks ago, along with the questions about his approach to innovation and culture now that Sonos is a publicly-traded company. We also talked about what the future of music listening looks like when algorithms are deciding everything for you.

We should note we taped this podcast in mid-October. Since then, Sonos has said that it will not launch Google Assistant on its smart speakers in 2018, as it had originally planned to do. “The reality is that we need a bit more time to get the experience right and will now look to lock down a date in 2019,” the company said in a blog post. Sounds like being the Switzerland of smart speakers may be a more daunting task than Sonos expected it to be.

Show notes: Check out some of our recent stories and reviews of Sonos products.

Recommendations this week: Due to the Gadget Lab podcasters all being in different locations, we’re skipping this week’s Recommendations roundup. But stay tuned for more next week.

Send the Gadget Lab hosts feedback on their personal Twitter feeds. Arielle Pardes can be found at @pardesoteric. Lauren Goode is @laurengoode. Michael Calore can be found at @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. Our theme song is by Solar Keys.

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