It's an OK solution, but it requires you to use that Spreaker service. I'm an avid podcast listener, and part of it is finding your preferred method of listening to the content. I've been an avid user of Doggcatcher on Android for five years, and I have it set up exactly as I want it. My wife also uses it on her phone, but unlike music listening, it's much more about keeping track of what you've listened to and where you are in your current episode. I'd prefer to use the app I'm comfortable with.

The best thing about the Spreaker announcement is that Sonos can stop pointing people to the other way they've been suggesting to listen to podcasts: that the app could look at your local files on your phone, which are often gibberish file names. You wouldn't be able to pick up where you left off listening in your app, but the content would be there. Clearly, I wasn't a fan of this solution.

The only answer I could come up with for my wife and I to listen to our podcast apps on a Sonos system was the following:

- buy the Play:5, which is the most expensive of the regular Sonos speakers at $399! This is because it's the only model that has audio in.
- attach an HDMI to VGA adapter to the line in on the Play:5
- plug a Chromecast into the adapter

This way I could Chromecast to the line in of the Play:5, and other Sonos speakers could get their source from that line in. It's not at all elegant, but it's currently the only way to play my podcasts around my home on synchronized speakers using the app I want to use.

This is why I eagerly await some sort of announcement that Chromecast will add Sonos-like capabilities.