It actually does sound exactly like a networking issue. My initial thought is that your speakers are fighting with some other device for IP addresses. When they temporarily “lose”, then they can’t play the station, since they’re not able to connect.
I’d start by a simple network refresh. Unplug all your Sonos devices from power, then reboot your router. Once the router comes back up, plug back in the Sonos devices, and they’ll grab new IP addresses from the refreshed DHCP table on the router.
However, it could also be other issues of wifi interference, so if that doesn’t work, and the solutions in the linked FAQ don’t help, I would recommend that you submit a system diagnostic within 10 minutes of experiencing this problem, and call Sonos Support to discuss it.
There may be information included in the diagnostic that will help Sonos pinpoint the issue and help you find a solution.
When you speak directly to the phone folks, they have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your Sonos system and network.
Unlikely, it could also be a problem on Amazon’s end, or the network between your router and the Amazon servers that aren’t owned by Amazon. Which is why that diagnostic might help pin that down, especially as you say it’s not having an issue with Pandora.
I can’t see how this could be a network or WiFi issue as it just seems to happen with Amazon stations. At the exact same time I can play something from Sirius or another music service without issue. Also, if you go to the Amazon service and select the same or even a different station, it will work. I think it something between how Sonos and Amazon servers connect at the back end or the station ID’s change on the Amazon side.
There really are no “Sonos servers”, at least for music purposes. When you use the controller, you’re telling the Sonos application running on your speaker to go directly to the Amazon server, log in with X credentials, and stream whatever they give in the stream. The only “Sonos” part of that is that you’re telling the Sonos application to reach out to X to get data.
Sonos servers are really there for updates, etc. They may (and I’m not 100% sure, but haven’t looked in to it) maintain a few servers for their Radio HD streams, but I think the majority of that is just pointing the system to other peoples HD streams.
But Sonos doesn’t have a server that sits between you and Amazon.
I see the same thing, easy to test it out.
Pick any Amazon station you have in My Sonos that is failing.
Go to Amazon and add the same identical looking station to My Sonos.
Now you have two identical looking stations.
Tap one and see if it works.
Tap the other and see if it works.
Go back and forth a few times and you will see one is not working and the other is.
No solution and frustrating to fix when you have 15-20 stations quit working before you notice a dead one.
You might submit a diagnostic and ask Sonos to look at the issue. Doubt Sonos can fix it and that Amazon is interested in fixing it.
I submitted a diagnostic to Sonos and spoke to them. They had me do several things, one of which was to delete and re-add my Amazon account. Of course this removed the Amazon stations from My Sonos. I’ve had to re-add the stations to My Sonos and of course they’re all working again now. Then they asked me to reboot my home network and try again. I’ll have to wait until the problem reoccurs before I try that (which I’m sure will be futile).
The problem did reoccur today. I rebooted everything and the issue persisted. I spent an hour and a half on the phone with support to finally find out that it’s a known problem that Sonos is working with Amazon on.
Wait for a fix...
I see the same thing, easy to test it out.
Pick any Amazon station you have in My Sonos that is failing.
Go to Amazon and add the same identical looking station to My Sonos.
Now you have two identical looking stations.
Tap one and see if it works.
Tap the other and see if it works.
Go back and forth a few times and you will see one is not working and the other is.
No solution and frustrating to fix when you have 15-20 stations quit working before you notice a dead one.
You might submit a diagnostic and ask Sonos to look at the issue. Doubt Sonos can fix it and that Amazon is interested in fixing it.
Spot on with the steps to reproduce, and importantly rule out network issues and other common suspects with this sort of thing.
Good to hear that Sonos are aware and are looking into it. Is there any value with others (eg me) still raising a support ticket so as to add to the numbers that are known to be affected, or just leave them to it?
What concerns me though is that this issue (or, more accurately, these symptoms which could of course have different causes given how non-specific the error message is) has been reported several times over the past few years with no apparent resolution.
