Build premium audio experiences with Sendspin
Sendspin is an open alternative to Apple AirPlay and Google Cast, with extra control and visualization features to create a truly immersive music experience for your customers.
Why current protocols are failing manufacturers
Available technologies are not keeping pace with consumer expectations.
Modern music fans want more than single connected devices: they're looking for immersive, synchronized experiences that unify audio, visuals, and lighting across their entire home. Delivering this level of orchestration is now an expectation for any premium hardware brand.
Achieving this within closed ecosystems is nearly impossible. Here's why:
- The proprietary trap: Standards like Apple AirPlay and Google Cast turn you into a "tenant" on their platforms. You lose the freedom to define your own user experience and are left vulnerable to their shifting rules, fees, and changing featuresets.
- The functionality gap: Legacy technologies like Bluetooth or UPnP/DLNA lack the microsecond synchronization required, and aren't designed to support the specialized control over audio, lighting, and visuals needed to build a richer product ecosystem.
- The R&D burden: Attempting to build these advanced capabilities from scratch requires massive investment, diverting resources from your core innovations.
This leaves you with a difficult choice: pay ongoing royalties for proprietary solutions that restrict your control, or settle for limited features that cannot compete with premium, integrated ecosystems.
There is another way: Sendspin
Sendspin is flexible. It's designed to drive a complete music listening experience, or coexist alongside your existing technology stack, allowing you to synchronize audio, lighting, visuals and more without sacrificing support for standards like AirPlay, Cast, or Bluetooth – and your customers who use them.
Strategic advantages for your brand
Elevate your offering
Move beyond basic audio streaming: Sendspin coordinates sound with visual displays, album artwork, track metadata (artist, title, lyrics), and music-reactive lighting to deliver immersive experiences that go beyond what most ecosystems offer. Precision engineering provides microsecond-level synchronization that eliminates echo and timing drift, giving you the technical foundation to command premium positioning.
Enrich your ecosystem
Sendspin unifies your hardware – from speakers and screens to smart lighting – into a single, coordinated environment. As an open standard, Sendspin also allows your products to mix and match with a growing ecosystem of third-party devices, ensuring your hardware is always compatible with the products your customers already own.
Broaden your reach
Sendspin can be added alongside existing protocols like AirPlay and Cast – or used as a standalone solution – giving you flexibility to serve users across all platforms. It is also part of the broader Open Home Foundation, Home Assistant, and Music Assistant communities: giving you access to millions of users who actively choose open, interoperable devices.
Protect your margins
Sendspin doesn't require expensive, high-spec processors to manage multi-room synchronization, so can be run on cost-effective components like ESP32 microcontrollers. As an open standard, it also eliminates the "Big Tech tax": it is free for everyone to use with no licensing fees or royalties to Apple or Google. This protects your margins and allows you to reinvest resources back into your own hardware and product development.
How it works
Sendspin acts as an "orchestration layer" between your hardware and the user's music content.
- Synchronized delivery: Sendspin uses a specialized timing architecture to ensure audio, visuals, and lighting stay perfectly in sync across multiple devices on a standard home network.
- Automatic discovery: Devices identify each other instantly without complex manual pairing, creating a "plug-and-play" experience for the end user.
- Open implementation: We provide the open specifications and reference code, allowing your engineers to integrate the protocol directly into your existing firmware.
Ready to build? Check out the specifications and code.
Protected by the Open Home Foundation
Sendspin is protected by the Open Home Foundation, a Swiss non-profit organization that fights for the fundamental principles of privacy, choice, and sustainability in smart homes. This strict governance ensures the protocol remains a permanent, open standard that cannot be bought, closed off, or monetized by a single corporate entity.
When you use Sendspin, you join the world's largest open source smart home community. The foundation owns more than 250 projects, standards, drivers, and libraries – including ESPHome as well as Home Assistant and Music Assistant. This gives you credibility with a global audience that values hardware built to protect our principles. Sendspin isn't just a protocol, it's your connection to a thriving ecosystem dedicated to making the "Open Home" a reality.
Sendspin certification (coming soon): We are developing a Sendspin Certified program. Similar to our Works with Home Assistant program, this will allow manufacturers to display a trusted quality badge on compatible products (subject to testing and a nominal fee). This badge would signal premium interoperability and build trust with our community.
Join us as we build the future of open audio
We are looking for forward-thinking manufacturers to help us pioneer this exciting new standard during the public preview stage. This is your opportunity to engage directly with our team, influence the protocol's development, and ensure your hardware is ready to deliver the truly open, multisensory experience that modern consumers demand.