Playlist Editing

  • 27 February 2013
  • 27 replies
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Userlevel 1
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Could Sonos let us know where they are on allowing some form of playlist editing? Following the merger between Napster & Rhapsody (or vice versa) I have playlists filled with "track unavailable" debris items (eg 365 tracks on a 2500+ playlist). Because there is no way of sorting them (eg on a PC Controller), even when I note that a track is not available, there is no way for me to sort the playlist eg alphabetically or search the list to nail and boot out the offending item (or even better, allowing me real time to see something similar that is available and do a swap). The lack of any editing playlist capability is, in my view, the Sonos systems weakest (and perhaps only) failing. I note previous comments on backup files: I was not aware of this "new" weakness and it would be a disaster if I lost my playlists (even the ones with Napster debris). Come on Sonos: it cant be that hard to have some playlist editing and playlist backup?

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27 replies

Userlevel 2
I want to get more feed back from the community on this one. Some of our best enhancements have been born here in the ideas section. If our project development team likes this idea you may see the status update to "Under Consideration"
Userlevel 4
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Editing playlists is truly SONOS's big weak point. I have one playlist that is over 6,000 tracks, and I can't sort it. I'm trying to remove all the XMas songs, but I actually have to wait for one to play, then quickly edit the playlist, delete the track, then save it. A real pain since I know the name of the album AND the artist, but can't sort edit and delete. Same goes for my Rhapsody account where artists are pulled and tracks no longer exist.
I'm a little dumbfounded by this shortcoming in the Sonos system. The playlist ability is the primary means of using the system -- the technology in my new subwoofer in other words is completely lost on me if it can't play the music I want. Here's a suggestion. If Sonos can import playlists from other sources (which allow editing of every sort) why can't it export? Seems like a simple fix until there's a real Sonos editor. Currently for reasons unknown I can't save my playlists to Sonos because I have too many? Or too big? I have no clue and no power to experiment.
I too need this feature. With many playlists with 100's to over a thousand track this is a real problem.
Userlevel 1
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Bump yes.
Bump yes too!
Userlevel 7
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Bump - a big issue with Sonos in that you can't backup (and edit) playlists and favorites offline.  Backup being the bigger of the 2 issues.  Too many times people have lost their playlist because of a hardware or connection failure on a Sonos device and all their preferences being wiped!  Seems as though it would be a simple fix at least for backup.  An offline editor would be nice but probably a harder aspect to implement.
Could not agree more with the above comments. Yes we all have tons of music just not always how we would prefer to hear them.
Userlevel 1
I want to get more feed back from the community on this one. Some of our best enhancements have been born here in the ideas section. If our project development team likes this idea you may see the status update to "Under Consideration"
It's been more than 2 years since your comment, Jay C. Still no "Under Consideration" on this topic as we all just have installed update 5.2.

Knowing that Sonos still does not care about this is just a f....in' disaster!

It's pretty arrogant of Sonos not bothering to do something about this at all. That means Sonos don't understand the needs of their users.

These updates in 5.2, who needs them? They probably were an easy fix, but really? They were pretty useless for most people.

This post has 17 likes so far, but it is A LOT more out there who don't bother going to forums like this, unfortunately.

Jay C, you should really take this to the next level a.s.a.p.
I want to get more feed back from the community on this one. Some of our best enhancements have been born here in the ideas section. If our project development team likes this idea you may see the status update to "Under Consideration"
I agree wholeheartedly. editing a playlist in any one of your apps is so difficult as to make it impossible.  PLEASE invest a little in this and you will solve a big problem for your users and bring you many new ones.
Userlevel 7
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A while ago I posted 5 ideas, including (among others) playlist editing: https://ask.sonos.com/sonos/topics/five_ideas_to_make_sonos_even_better. I never got any feedback from Sonos. Too bad.
Userlevel 2
just a simple sort by track name would be huge.   big big fan of the sonos, but playlist management is very poor.
Userlevel 1
Same here. I want to add some songs to my playlist, but I'm not sure if they're already there or not. It seems the only way to find out is to read through a list of 400 songs!! That's just nuts.
Userlevel 1
This post has 19 likes pr now, so if you have not done so yet, please hit the like-button on top of the page. I think that's the only way we will get some attention from SONOS...
absolutely need to update and improve the Sonos to allow us to edit songs- such as editing the length of our songs, can do this on our playlist in iTunes but sonos doesn't have a way to transfer this info. 
Having lost my playlists more than once now I would definitely back the idea of being able to export and back up my playlists above everything else. I'd also like to be able to find a tune when I'm out and about (i.e. through the controller app on the phone) and add it to the playlist offline so it will update when I get home. Rather than having to remember the track and wait till I get back to add it.
As above, really need a playlist editor.  In my case, I switched file format (from flac to m4a) and now need to simply change ALL the file names on ALL my playlist; something that sb trivial to do, but as currently set up would take many man-hours...
Userlevel 2
took me awhile to find this thread again. 4 years old, and still no reply or updates from the sonos development team. How does one get their attention???
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Ditto to all of the above. Dear Sonos, 1) the items in the Sonos Playlist should be available for viewing by song or album list, without having to opening to Queue. 2) One should be able to select the album one wants to play from the Sonos Playlist, without having to open all items to the Queue. 3) One should be able to see all items in the Sonos Playlist, to check whether the current music is already there.
4) One should be able to edit the Sonos Playlist without opening it to the Queue and one should be able to edit the Sonos Playlist by album as well as by
as well as by song.
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+1 for basic sorting
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I just found this thread 😞 I can't believe it's been so long and nothing has been changed yet.
Well that only implies that Sonos does not really care what customers want. It's a competitive market and my next purchase would definitely consider this, meaning that Sonos will definitely not be on top of my list because of the inconveniencing of its playlist feature
On the contrary, it implies that Sonos prioritizes features that they think will sell more speakers, the only way this newly public company generates revenue.
Hi All,

Having done some searching I'm guessing that Sonos hasn't really done anything about improving playlist creation/management yet? I've been trying to create playlists based on the year of track release but this seems to be impossible...unless anyone can give me any good tips?

Thanks,
Nige.
Userlevel 5
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Hi All,

Having done some searching I'm guessing that Sonos hasn't really done anything about improving playlist creation/management yet? I've been trying to create playlists based on the year of track release but this seems to be impossible...unless anyone can give me any good tips?

Thanks,
Nige.


It's not really possible using only Sonos software because of certain limitations - in this case the limited amount of tagging information that Sonos either stores or fetches on demand.

If you built that playlist externally for a specific music source (eg. iTunes, Spotify) then you could just have your Sonos play it.

If you wanted to create such a playlist as a Sonos playlist (for local library or a mixture of local and streamed tracks) then you would have to do all the hard work of figuring out which tracks to include (iTunes makes this very easy with its smart playlist queries) using a mix of iTunes, Spotify, wikipedia, pen-and-paper, etc. Once you had the playlist contents (and track sequence if you care about such things), you could then manually assemble the playlist on your Sonos system.

It's not great, but I'm guessing there's less need for Sonos to commit the resources necessary for awesome playlist management when they're not under the same pressures as the likes of Spotify to lock users (and their curated music collections) in to a service (and a monthly payment).