Quick Hits: Playlists and music festivals. Sonos CEO talks business.

Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web:

This Forbes feature examines the connection between music festivals and the rise of playlists. Many large live events are now promising a wide range of programming across genres and styles rather than focus. “There is also a growing perception in the music industry that festivals have comparable influence to playlists and terrestrial radio stations in launching and sustaining artists’ careers,” writes Cherie Hu.

The Apple HomePod is out today, which means one more player in the smart speaker space. Sonos CEO Patrick Spence isn’t too concerned about the new competition. In his appearance on a Recode podcast, Spence said, “There were a lot of people, back when we started, saying, ‘There’s no way you could ever compete with Bose and Sony,’ the heavyweights of audio at the time. And here we are. I was joking with the team, the reward for having disrupted the space over the last decade is to get to compete with Apple and Google and Amazon.”

Anna Washenko