50 shades of blue: Sonos honors 75 years of Blue Note Records with limited edition speaker

By Ryan Waniata February 4, 2015

In celebration of iconic jazz label Blue Note Records’ 75th anniversary, Sonos has gone blue. A limited edition of the company’s stalwart Play:1 speaker, the entry point to the Sonos empire, now dons a shiny coat of paint that fades from navy to cerulean blue for the occasion. As a bonus, Sonos is also offering an exclusive playlist specially curated by some of today’s seminal jazz artists.

The Play:1’s specially-crafted color shift should be enough to turn some heads on its own. The breakaway from Sonos’ traditional color scheme is meant to be a shout-out to the so-called “blue notes” of jazz, those that venture into melodic micro-tone realms that standard popular music dares not follow.

But more exciting to the jazzers among us will be the new exclusive curated playlist from Blue Note. The iconic label that has been home to jazz legends like Thelonius Monk and John Coltrane will provide the track list for a new Artists Select station, which will proffer tunes hand-picked by current Blue Note artists, including Robert Glasper, Jose James, Terence Blanchard, Ambrose Akinmusire, Lionel Loueke, and Don Was.

The new exclusive station will show up on Sonos’ intuitive centralized app, joining two other Sonos exclusive stations from Blue Note that all Sonos owners landed in October, including Born in Blue and Blue Note 101. But those looking for the hand-picked favorites from the artists above will have to go blue to get them and cough up a $250 asking price, $50 above the normal Play:1 pricing.

If you’ve got an eye for the new Blue Notes Play:1, you’ll have to act fast once the speaker hits the market, as Sonos claims only around 4,000 of these blue bombers will be made. And just to keep your ear a little longer, Sonos has not yet offered a release date, indicating it will unveil the news in the coming weeks. To be notified when the speakers arrive, you can sign-up for an email notification at Sonos’ website, or simply follow Digital Trends, as we’ll update this story as soon as the speakers land.

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Ryan Waniata is a multi-year veteran of the digital media industry, a lover of all things tech, audio, and TV, and a…

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