Looks like we may lose our networked libraries with next big update? NAS drive?

Dear Sonos,

let me join the choir of very very disgruntled customers(!) by your “courageous” update. Losing access to local search is a major set back, and you should not have rolled out this update to all users yet - by all means, have a courageous beta channel, but do not break paying customers’s setups.

Plus, you’ve also lost v1 search which you stated only a few months ago would remain indefinitely (and which the integration for my local services relied on, so I can’t even search via that mechanism). Now all my searches go to your servers; why? No.

I work in tech as well and I do appreciate that software maintenance and development are an ongoing cost, while you’ve chosen a business model of a one-time fee. I would have understood if you were to shift this somehow to remain a viable business. Fair, times change, and your (hardware) components probably didn’t have the growth/replacement rate to sustain development.

But this is the second major upgrade you’ve pushed that, to me, was/is a major and very frustrating regression. I’ll be looking to replace my (10+ devices) setup if I possibly can over the next months, which means a lot of hardware hitting the second hand market and further undercutting your business, plus an opportunity for the competition, be it commercial or Open Source. I’m not sure that’s the intended business outcome.

I really don’t understand this. If I handled our major product roll-outs like this (with the second(!) time of a negative media wave), I’d be reporting to our board of directors / CxO level with a lot of explaining to do, if I was even given that chance. If you need help with software development processes, consulting is available in the industry, you know?

It’d not be that hard. Just add an official “local” plugin mechanism and all of your pesky nerdy customers will flock to that and you won’t have to deal with us in your own app. You’d be enabling innovation and build an ecosystem that attracts Open Source developers (while you deal with the annoying copyrighted codecs and patented Dobly/HDMI part, sleek hardware components etc pp none of us can be bothered with).

I have a 10 year old QNAP NAS drive with all my library on. Prior to the upgrade I was able to manage and playback through the app. After the upgrade I seem to be able to browse the library but cannot play any content or see a way to mange the library.

is this due to the problems being discussed. I am not sure which version of smb is being used. There seems to be no way to view this in the NAS web interface. It just states SMB. I’m not even sure of this is the problem

in any case what Sonos have done is render my system useless which is disgusting behaviour for such a large company.

i only just recently purchased an Arc and now wish I had looked for other options.

@JohnD_1 

As the NAS is fairly old it could be SMBv1 - does the user-manual perhaps mention any later versions of the sharing protocol - perhaps check with the manufacturers, as there might be an update you need to install to cater for the later versions. I had to do that with my Netgear NAS boxes here.

@JohnD_1 If you have a Qnap HS-250, here's a step-by-step instruction to check your SMB version: https://www.qnap.com/en/how-to/tutorial/article/how-to-use-smb-3-0-in-qts-4-2. Most probably it's on SMB version 2.0 or 2.1 already, since version 1 has serious security problems. But you guessed right, the Sonos smartphone app doesn’t give you the opportunity anymore to control the music on your NAS (the Windows app still works, but will be phased out as well).

Some big words were used on this forum to describe this behaviour of a listed company and the way they treat their customers, and they’re all hitting bulls eye.

But the reality is, they don’t care. NAS users are probably a small part of their client base. Losing this group has been taken into account. There’s no other way I can explain the silence from Sonos headquarters. Sonos is aiming for more shareholder value by introducing a headphone, forcing it's customers to use Spotify or other streaming services (data collection) and selling more speakers to people who don’t care about sound quality. Probably a bigger audience.

Good luck with researching a future-proof solution for playing music in your home. I have a feeling it won’t be called Sonos.

Sonos have announced that they plan to incorporate the local-library in the new App "search” feature. So it’s certainly not going away - see the link here:

https://support.sonos.com/en-gb/article/the-new-sonos-app-and-future-feature-updates

All they’ve done is to remove the insecure sharing protocols, SMB v1 and ‘http’ … I also understand that if you look online you may find Microsoft are doing this too with Windows 11 etc.

Thanks for your reply @Ken_Griffiths. The gist of your story comes across as follows: trust us, follow this link and as you can see, we will slowly bring back all functionality into the app.

A significant part of your customers (early adopters too) listens to files on their NAS. Sonos, without blinking its eyes, took this functionality out of the app. Following your link tells me that all these customers cannot use their (often) thousand+ dollar Sonos system for more than a month in a way they thought they could, when they bought the system. A company that treats its customers in this way, is that a company that deserves our trust?

Moreover, can we be really sure that it won’t take longer than mid-June before we can reach our local music library? And if so, can we be really sure that it will be the same ease-of-use we had in the former smartphone app?

Your appeal to trust Sonos is totally misplaced. It was Sonos that seriously betrayed its customers. And the proverb says: trust arrives walking, and departs riding. Sonos will have to earn our trust back. For instance, by putting back the former app version, and then work on a really improved new app with all the functionality your customers need and expect.

Sorry, my bad @Ken_Griffiths. It also shows, however, that you come across as a Sonos employee. In my view you're mitigating their behaviour. Telling me that I can still access my files through the app is not a good advise.Yes I can access my files, but I can only play them one by one and with no tags. Instead of trying to look for a  viable workaround, we should all demand the original functionality. That is the easiest solution, and one we deserve given our investment.

True, all they have done is pull the trigger. I think that SMBv1 and the HTTP sharing are very different problems for Sonos and us - SMBv1 is a deprecated and insecure file sharing protocol, unauthenticated HTTP (+UPnP APIs) is an old, insecure and widely supported way for sending and controlling streaming media around a home network. HTTP+UPnP enables other software to collaborate with or control the Sonos speaker I just bought. 

Currently I am sharing my local audio files using “http”  - using a UPnP media server named “Our Music” that appears in the 16.1 app Browse screen. The server offers a *read-only* and quick to navigate view of some books and music albums that I have sitting on storage accessible to any device *on my local home network* with no required username or password. I don’t consider this situation as a significant security risk alongside the other network exposures on a typical home network. While SMBv1 has been replaced with v2/3 in MS Windows for a long time, Media Sharing is still allowed: How do I enable DLNA on Windows 11? - Microsoft Community 

Sonos have not implemented any ability to browse this type of media server in the new app, and so “Our Music” disappeared in the update with no advice in the app about what to do. I need to configure my network storage to offer my music over SMBv3 then. The advice from Sonos is to “type in your computer password” to access the files (Add your music library to Sonos | Sonos). Giving my computer password to my Sonos speaker and associated web services doesn’t seem like a step forward for security, so I’ll be careful to create a special Sonos user with a unique password that only has read access to the relevant folders. (Maybe I’ll make it passwordless for simplicity, which Sonos is happy with, but again is this a step forward for security?)

Regardless of the new Sonos app now refusing to browse a local UPNP media server (http), my Beam Gen 2 can still play streams sent to it with the old app or any other UPNP controller. I hope it will keep that capability, but I’ve turned off automatic firmware updates to the speaker just in case the next security update aimed at the speaker turns it off.

DLNA sharing is via the Windows Media Player but instead of using that maybe this link will assist you better instead..

https://en.community.sonos.com/controllers%2Dand%2Dmusic%2Dservices%2D229131/adding%2Da%2Dwindows%2Dsmb%2Dshare%2Dstep%2Dby%2Dstep%2D6892060