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It seems as though Apple music playlists are no longer appearing in Sonos when indexing the library.

After many hours of chat with Apple / Sonos it appears the reason is that Apple no longer generate the XML file required by Sonos to index the Library. It is unclear as to whether this is a result of my recent Monterey upgrade or not.

The “iTunes Music Library.XML” ( you must have the spaces !! ) file can however be exported by Music  / saved to your Sonos library index location and all should be fine, (although you’ll need to do this every time you change a playlist ) but importantly for us all is that Sonos clearly know this restriction to their offering but are not making to clear to all.  Unless a fix is provided by Sonos, or you have the capability to generate XML files (many people will not), the Sonos APP is now in my view seriously compromised.  It was bad enough when we lost the ability to play direct form our phones, but this is now even worse.   I fear 3rd party APPs like Sonos are being squeezed out by APPLE with a view to them controlling all access to playlists generated on their APP...the thin end of the wedge.

I for one will not be upgrading  / adding any more Sonos products until the way forward is clear .

Happy to be corrected / updated on any of the above if i’ve missed anything

Hi @Steve9,

 

It’s correct that in order for Sonos to read your iTunes/Mac Music (I’ll refer to this app simply as iTunes to avoid confusion with the Apple Music streaming service) playlists we need to have the iTunes Music Library.xml file in the shared folder. This is true of any third-party app that can index files from iTunes. The XML file contains all of the track information required to import the playlist so it’s necessary to be there. The XML file is Apple’s way of giving applications, other than its own, access to the playlist data. If your music is in a different directory than where iTunes updates to then you would have to manually move the XML to the location that Sonos sees. This isn’t a result of any Mac upgrade or Sonos upgrade; it’s always been this way. We can’t automatically import playlists from a file that doesn’t exist in a folder you’re giving the Sonos application access to.

I hope that clears things up a bit.

Thanks for the comment Mark...but it seems that Apple no longer generate this XML - So SONOS doesnt work with Itunes / Music playlists as it can no longer find them in an XML, unless they are manually exported by the user to XML IN the appropriate indexing location .

 

Does that make sense - unless the Music APP / Itunes APP on my MAC is not working - Having chatted with Apple they seem happy that my MUSIC app is working as it should

Does File> Library > Export Library no longer create the .xml file? 

 

Certainly agree with Apple not really caring if their software doesn’t work with anyone else. In their view, there’s no reason not to be using only Apple’s software. 

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