Can you have two separate music libraries on a single Sonos system?

hi @snappa in my humble opinion you may need to address this by creating playlists: either Sonos playlists or ‘imported’ and created by external music library management tools like Apple Music on macOS - hope this helps

Thank you for your suggestion.  Work around is not what I’m looking for.  I want to be able to search MY artists, albums, songs, etc.  We have very different tastes in music and neither wants the other’s entire catalog in their realm.  This is the reason I provided the use case.  I’m hoping this might be looked at as a future enhancement.  Full disclosure, I’m an engineer and it’s how I view systems / problems.  I’ve also been a Sonos owner since the beginning.  Still have the original smart remote that existed before there were smart phones / apps and believe it or not, it still works.  I’m a huge fan of Sonos’ products both as a consumer and an engineer.

do I get it right that you expect the Sonos speakers to be setup in two different Sonos Controllers each one with its own libraries, favourites and playlists?

No.  I have a 4 zone Sonos setup in my home.  There is a list of Music Sources available.  For example, I have 2 SiriusXM accounts and 2 Pandora accounts.  Each account is identified by its service name and user name.  I’m looking for the ability to have multiple “Music Library” sources, one for me and one for my wife.  If I select my wife’s Music Library I would see her albums, artists, songs, etc and if I selected my Music Library I would see my albums, artists, songs, etc.

She isn’t one to add ALL tracks on an album.  She purchases lots of singles.  I like entire albums.  I don’t want to mix the two any more than she does.  When she looks up tracks by an artist she wants to see JUST THE TRACKS SHE ADDED and not ALL as they would show for an artist we both like.

Manually setting up playlists could achieve this but it’d be very tedious to setup that way since we have thousands of songs / albums.  That’s why I’m looking to be able to support multiple libraries.  If my kids were still living at home I wouldn’t want to listen to most of their music or find it in my searches.

Does this make sense?  I know the function isn’t there currently and I don’t believe I can have multiple Sonos accounts associated with a given set of Sonos devices, correct?

Sonos doesn’t have this feature, and doesn’t really have a concept of multiple users per a single Sonos account/system to even build it around.  Even if Sonos did build out this feature, Sonos isn’t going to enable it on an S1 system, which I assume you are using.  S1 is only ever going to receive bug fix/security updates, not new features.

So alternatives are needed.  One option is to split your system into two systems.  I doubt this would work as you would want both to have access to the same speakers.  The other is to use a service to store the tracks you own for you or your wife.  Amazon doesn’t do this anymore, not sure if Google does.  Plex is a good alternative, as your music files will still be stored locally, Plex will just organize them and make them accessible through the cloud.  You likely will need to pay a subscription fee though.

my two cents: provided that you are using iOS and macOS, you could share Music libraries with Apple Home Sharing - each one could create/manage its own library with playlists - playback would require AirPlay support

Thank you. The correct answer is “no, Sonos doesn’t support this”.

I understand the technology around this very well. S1 has no relevance as S2 doesn’t support it either. If it did that could be a reason to upgrade.

I appreciate the info and the suggestions. You need to understand you’re dealing with someone that wants to browse her music without seeing my library which is much larger.

As I’ve said earlier, I’m a longtime fan of Sonos and clearly have lived with it the way it’s been for a long time.  I’m not about to abandon it now. I was just hoping there was a way to manage multiple digital libraries the same way you can manage multiple service accounts.

The only solution currently is to map a folder of her music and create a playlist or set of playlists for her to come close to what she’s looking for. 

as @melvimbe suggested, you may try Plex and hope she likes the user interface 

It’s Sonos or nothing.  Plex is a non-starter.

As I said, I’m an engineer.  I’ve designed and built home automation and theater systems.  They’re great but not what we’re looking for at this location.  It has to be Sonos and it has to be natively supported.