2/13 New SoundTouch Product Update - A Note From Our Product Line Manager

[Jason_G]

Moderator note: 

This post is the latest in our series of communications regarding our SoundTouch products for the community here.  We hope you find this information helpful in answering some of your most commonly asked questions about the systems.  

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Hello again, everyone.  In advance of the next update which will begin rolling out this week, I wanted to take a moment to touch base again about what's on the horizon for SoundTouch. 

Some of you have asked about the ability to rebroadcast AUX sources.

There have been a lot of questions regarding the ability to broadcast an AUX source throughout your SoundTouch speakers. So here’s the latest on that:

In terms of timing, we’re currently targeting late summer (timing, as always, may change). Compatible products include:

• SoundTouch 10
• SoundTouch 20 (all series)
• SoundTouch 30 (all series)
• SoundTouch Portable (all series)
• SoundTouch SA-5
• SoundTouch Wireless Link Adapter
• SoundTouch 300
• SoundTouch Lifestyle 600/650

Products not included in this list, are unfortunately unable to be supported due to limitations in the hardware itself.

General app responsiveness

With the release in February, you should see significant improvement in App responsiveness. We have made optimizations for some operating systems and the performance and fluidity seems to have improved noticeably. We hope you’ll agree.

What are some additional music services on the horizon?

Honestly, I dread this question.  This is the question I know means a lot to our customers, and yet it’s always the trickiest one to answer because I have to choose words carefully. The answer to this question doesn’t involve just Bose; it also involves PR, Legal, and Engineering teams from our music service partners. That said, we will announce new music service partners as soon as we are able. I can tell you that we are currently working on 2 new services at the moment, and are waiting patiently (more patiently and for longer than some of you would like) for other services to enable us to integrate them. We endeavor to keep delivering more of the music you love. There will be more news to report on this area soon.

What about Apple Music!?!

The SoundTouch community has been EXTREMELY vocal on this one. We are WELL aware of your desire for Apple Music. Please see the answer to the 3^rd question in this list.

Are you working on a solution for more presets?

In short, yes. To be clear, we are not thinking of adding “double press” functionality to the physical buttons on SoundTouch (i.e. button 1 acting as both preset 1 and preset 7), but rather a solution that adds more presets within the App. More info will follow as specifics on implementation and timing solidify.

Alarm Clock/Sleep Timer

This is something we want to get to, but it is not as far along as some of the other items discussed here. In the meantime, there are some solid alternatives for this feature request that have been built using our public API, available on the app stores.

What if you didn’t answer my question?

We are working on a system for all of your product and app suggestions to be sent directly to the Product team. Rather than creating a forum post, you’ll be able to submit your suggestion or ask, directly to an Idea Portal. Everyone will be able to see what ideas have been submitted, and follow along as the ideas are reviewed by the product team, when they are planned, and when they’ll first see the light of day.

Additionally we are planning a question and answer series with our Product Managers in the coming months.

We appreciate the passion and the continued feedback and suggestions as we work to continually improve SoundTouch.

Mike Angelo
Product Line Manager, SoundTouch Software Group

[Jason_G]

Moderator Note: This post was copied from a response provided to community user SADLoyalist.  

Our community moderators reached out to our product teams to ask for updated information regarding some of your most requested features and services.  We have reposted it and featured it here for the benefit of all of SoundTouch forum readers. 

Community, 

I share some of your frustration. The software team at Bose, of which I am a part, has some relatively new faces (I assure you we didn’t force the acoustics guys to code), and this team has been and will continue to work on improving the speed at which we deliver software releases (we’re moving to multiple releases a year for speaker updates, with more frequent app releases as needed). This is a much faster cadence than we’ve had in the past, but we are just starting to get into this groove. We also have some work to do on improving communications.
In way of an explanation, it is typical to keep hardware under wraps for as long as possible until launch day. This is not the case with Software. For too long we have received feedback in this forum and responded with a standard response “thank you for your suggestion, we will add it to our list for consideration…” We are putting an end to that. We will answer you honestly and as quickly as we can. That said, there will still be some things we aren’t allowed to talk about…we can all blame contracts, partnerships, exclusivity periods, etc….but when those types of questions arise we will tell you clearly that we can’t talk about it. I hope that’s fair.

Let’s talk about Apple for a second. There is a belief on our forums that we don’t like Apple, or that they don’t like us. I won’t address the reasons people feel this way, but I will point out that we do work with Apple, in many ways.  Currently, you can buy some of our products through Apple Retail.  Likewise, many of our shipping products contain Apple technology.  I can’t say much more than that, but we work together often and deliver benefits when we can and when priorities align.

With that said, we do hear you. You deserve answers. First, we really do appreciate that you have invested in our ecosystem, and we are focused on making it better…so, some answers to your questions:

Music Services in General - We follow the requests of customers closely. As a result, we maintain a prioritized list of music services to be added to the ecosystem. Some will obviously get done sooner than others, and some are, I assure you, as wanted by us as much as by you all. Although I’d like to share the prioritized list, there are a bunch of reasons why I can’t. I’m walking a line here, please bear with me. That said, we are working with some new music service integration tools that will hopefully make adding music services much faster. 

Apple Music - I know this is important to many, but beyond the facts stated above, I cannot comment further at this time.

Tidal Music - It is on the aforementioned list.

Amazon Echo Control – Can’t talk about this one, read into that what you will. 😉

Xbox One App – I would need to stop playing Star Wars Battlefront for more than 30 seconds to think this one through in more depth…but in all seriousness, we have heard this request from a small group of people. It’s a solid idea, we just need to do some additional work to investigate the effort level.

IFTTT Integration – This one is a bit more complicated. We’ve been looking closely at this. Overall, we believe that control of SoundTouch should be “open” so that any product or service can integrate, thus our API.  To that end, we’ve actually done a bunch of work with Samsung on SmartThings. That said, we definitely think it would be awesome to hook SoundTouch products into IFTTT. Right now, our API is only accessible via products on the local network – and IFTTT can only integrate with products that are accessible from the cloud. So, we’re actively exploring ways to improve our API offerings to enable integrations with cloud-centric services like IFTTT. No solid details on timing are available yet, but stay tuned.
 
BONUS INFO:

November release:

November will be an interesting month for SoundTouch.

We’re delivering Left/Right Stereo Pairing for SoundTouch 10’s. Finally.

We have made some minor changes to how Bluetooth works in order to improve the way SoundTouch works with some complementary products from our partners.  Keep an eye out for more details on this topic THIS WEEK. We will post info from the CEDIA show here on SoundTouch.com when available

We are also adding QPlay functionality for access to QQ Music, a great music service for our friends in China who haven’t been able to enjoy many of the other music services that we have integrated.

And finally, we’re delivering the first phase of a complete overhaul of the SoundTouch app. It provides MUCH faster access to the music you love. Also, frankly, it doesn’t look clunky and out of date anymore. We hope you’ll like it.

I know the lack of transparency has been frustrating, but bear with us. Some good changes are on the way. Oh… also adding Apple watch support early in the new year.

Thank you for taking the time to write.

All the best,
Mike Angelo
Product Line Manager, SoundTouch Software Group

[Jason_G]

Hey everyone,

Wanted to check in before the holidays and let you know that we have heard the feedback on the newest app release. Thank you for posting and sharing your thoughts with us. As a result of the feedback we are introducing fixes and making improvements on the app.

Many of you were vocal that “Recently Played” needs to make a return. We heard you, and as a result  it will be back in the app in January.

Many of you have also given feedback on the actual design of the app. We know it’s not easy when something changes, and we agree that there are some areas that can be improved, so we will be continuing to evolve the design.

We are also working on some improvements on the discovery/connection issues that have been reported. We have diagnosed a few of these instances, and some improvements will be in place for January. Moving forward we are going to be working with members of the community to better understand these issues, and make sure we have all bases covered. 

We have also heard the feedback that the app feels slow on some devices. We have made, and will continue to make, enhancements to how the app loads and pre-loads screens and content so that we can optimize the speed and fluidity of the app.

There was also some chatter around Shuffle for stored music not working correctly. This will also be fixed, slated for February.

Finally, on the services side, we saw some frustration about the lack of availability for Amazon in European regions.  While Amazon Music is now available via app in Europe, it is not yet available to Wi-Fi Streaming partners. We have spoken to Amazon, they are aware that we have Bose customers really looking forward to this, and they tell us support will be available early in the new year.  We also expect to be communicating more about new services in the near future.

We appreciate the feedback and patience, And we will continue to work diligently to make improvements. 

Mike Angelo

Product Line Manager