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

M
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I could be wrong on this but maybe someone on this list can answer it. You will need to know some basic info on my SONOS system so I posted below..

I mostly use my personal music library that is located on a solid state drive via my ethernet wifi connected network. I have a Apple Ethernet-wi-fi router that has an USB input on it. My SS drive with over 39,000 tracks on it (also my Apple itunes AKA Music drive) is connected to that same router. My SONOS components grab my music from that SS drive.

 With this upcoming software update it sounds like I (anyone with a similar hook up) will lose access to their connected drives??? I will lose of all my own paid for music on that drive. So one questions since I’m not quite a computer nut is… Is the way I have my SS drive connected to the router via USB considered a NAS drive?? Will I lose access to that drive if I do the update? 

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Best answer by Ken_Griffiths 3 May 2024, 01:53

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B
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It’s because that prior to the new App launch, Sonos announced that the (considered) insecure ‘http’ (sonoslibrary service) and SMB v1 protocols were to be removed from the new App. 

…

I also use Plex, iBroadcast and Emby services for my library with my Sonos speakers.

Other options are to maybe use 3rd party Apps (I use MusicStreamer on iOS, for example) with search functionality that supports either Airplay, Bluetooth or DLNA compatible protocols.

Thanks for you posts that have helped me understand the consequences of Sonos's statement. I use Twonky as a UPNP music server (with the Sonos Support option ticked), and my library disappeared from the new Sonos app. I guess this was because it uses "insecure http"?

If the app can't browse my local music library no problem, I can use other software that supports UPnP to browse the library and send the music to Sonos - for now.

Does it seem very likely that a future firmware update for my speaker will remove the equally "insecure http" UPnP renderer API, so that only Sonos approved apps will be able to stream music to the speaker?

M
Userlevel 2

I should not expect to have to load an old version of the app to continue to play my own music on my Sonos.

The app should already have the ability to search and play music on my NAS, without this my Sonos would be rendered useless as I don't use paid content services. Very poor service on behalf of the Sonos development team/management.

D
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I am really mad about losing the NAS functionality. Thousands of euros worth of SONOS audio equipment have become worthless overnight. This is a criminal act and saying this is for security reasons is nonsense. The thousand of files on my NAS are all lossless. I will and cannot listen to that inferior rubbish on Spotify. Add this functionality again or reimburse me for the now worthless SONOS equipment.

Ken_Griffiths

I am really mad about losing the NAS functionality. Thousands of euros worth of SONOS audio equipment have become worthless overnight. This is a criminal act and saying this is for security reasons is nonsense. The thousand of files on my NAS are all lossless. I will and cannot listen to that inferior rubbish on Spotify. Add this functionality again or reimburse me for the now worthless SONOS equipment.

NAS functionality is still in the new App - I can see my local library. Screenshot attached. 
It’s also available via the Web App interface too.

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D
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Thanks Ken. Really appreciate it. The ease-of-use sucks even more, but at least it's there.

D
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Just shuffle a share on my NAS seems impossible. Does anyone know if that still goes?

D
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SONOS doesn't show the tags anymore, I can only play one song at the time, this is an outrage SONOS. At least make the old app available again. If this continues, I will sell my equipment and change brand. I suggest everyone here complaining will do so.

D
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The next few days I will research the possibility to start a class action against SONOS for deveiving its customers. This is an absotute outrage.

L
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A work round for personal libraries on a NAS drive, is to plug a Bluetooth receiver into the line in and connect your library that way . I have one attached to a play 5 and then you can send the track to whatever speaker, group you wish. It's a slight faff but it does work .

R

Perhaps a workaround for some who have spend thousands of dollars and don’t mind to spend another 1k: Use ROON. Perfectly integrates streaming services (Tidal, Qobuz, no Spotify) and local files. Can use all sonos devices (and better ones) as output.

D
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Thanks for trying to find solutions @lonestay and @raschmo. Really appreciate it. The thing here is however that people are trying to find workarounds for problems that Sonos caused. And in my opinion, there was no need to do this. In the case of a Bluetooth receiver, there will be quality loss. In the case of Roon, why not invest your 1k in Bluesound? A system that is more future proof than Sonos. And a company that has the best interest of audio lovers at heart.

R

@Dandyhorse surely there are many options but I don’t know if you can preserve your investment in Sonos products when switching to Bluesound. I can however confirm this for Roon. I personally have invested a lot in the last 15 years and won’t pay one more cent on Sonos equipment.

D
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Same here @raschmo. We're about to refurbish, had plans to mount speakers in the ceiling of the kitchen and bathrooms. But I'm glad Sonos announces this now, and show it's a total unreliable company. There won't be more Sonos speakers, there will be less speakers. If I cannot trust Sonos in the long term, they force me to switch system. That is a destruction of capital, you're right. But investing more in Sonos would mean a further destruction of capital with no perspective.

T
Userlevel 2

This is infuriating! You invest in all the equipment: $2,500 on Sonos speakers; $200+ on a NAS drive; $100+ on the Sonos WiFi Booster, etc - then they just strip you of fundamental functionality over night.

 

I have a Spotify account, but a good quarter of my music isn't avaliable on there. Plus that's not what I signed up for - that's not what you sold me Sonos!

 

This is why people don't want "smart devices", as you wake up and the book or film you paid for is removed from your device, or you can no longer listen to the music that you've been listening to for 8+ years on this exact same set up…

Won't be buying or recommending Sonos equipment going forward. 

 

T
Userlevel 2

. -Uninstalled the latest version of the app.

 

-Installed the old archived version of the app (I'll be backing this up on my laptop, NAS drive, etc). Link here: https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/sonos-inc/sonos-for-android/sonos-for-android-16-1-release/#downloads. 

 

-Turned off Sonos' updates in their app. 

 

-Turned off auto updates for Android apps in the Google Play store. 

 

-All working well again with access to the music on my NAS drive. 

 

-Will never recommend Sonos again...

L
Userlevel 1

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).

 

J
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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.

 

 

Ken_Griffiths

@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.

D
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@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.

Ken_Griffiths

@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.

D
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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.

Ken_Griffiths

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.

You speak as if I am employed/work for Sonos, I don’t. I’m a user/customer and just provided that link for info. You’re shooting the messenger here.

Just to say though, the users local library is still in the new App, even now. It’s just the ability to access it via the new Sonos search facility that’s missing. This is supposedly coming mid-June. Meanwhile it can still be browsed by Artist/Album/Folder/Playlist etc. and all tracks can be played on Sonos products attached to the system. See attached screenshot from my own controller App.

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D
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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.

B
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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.

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.

 

 

Ken_Griffiths

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.

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

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