Even though you can finally add songs to the end of your queue, you can’t save your queue to a playlist. 

I could not possibly disagree more. Whatever.  I plan to move in a new direction and leave Sonos in the rear view mirror. So disappointing. 

rockingnyc wrote:

For perspective, CEO simply doubled down.

"...it’s actually much easier to navigate, more responsive, and just a better overall experience, and that is the thing for the 99 percent of customers that you’re never going to hear from as you go through it."

https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/22/24162168/sonos-ceo-patrick-spence-new-app-design-interview

Dear Patrick Spence:

In words of few syllables, you're full of it. I’ve had Sonos speakers in my home for nearly a decade. I’ve rarely had an issue. As of the time I mistakenly allowed Sonos to upgrade’ my devices with your new app, I cannot access any of the Sonos playlists I devoted time and effort to ‘curating’ over the course of a number of years. I cannot reliably control my three stereo pairs of speakers. Maybe they’ll connect, maybe not. I’ve created queues of tracks (although I cannot edit them, thanks very much). At random, the app will disappear the queue… ‘no music in queue.’ 

And then there are the many times the app simply locks up or refuses to load. 

The search function works when it’s in the mood. If it’s not, fuhgeddaboutit. And for some reason, the search often fails to turn up albums and tracks I know are available on the streaming services in which I’m a subscriber. Because if I exit the Sonos app and go directly to the service, voila! There’s the music I was looking for.

Screwing up is one thing. Screwing up, refusing to admit there’s a problem, and then blaming the devoted customers you’ve just shafted… that’s called ‘corporate suicide,’ chum. And the Sonos share price is beginning to register your abject failure.

Fix this problem; and fix it fast. Or you may find yourself the CEO of a homeless community living under an I-5 freeway overpass.

Could not have said it better. I might add that the app is infinitely more sluggish starting up and I routinely get “Something went wrong try again” messages that I NEVER got in the past when trying to play recently played items. The app is broken in so many ways far beyond playlists. It is now TOTAL CRAP.  I don’t understand this mind blowing arrogance. How can it possibly be a good thing for them?  It has soured me on the company to the point that I have zero plans to ever buy another Sonos product. I resurrected my decades old squeezeboxes and they work better for playing my music library. Sound better too. It buys me time to see if Sonos wakes up and fixes this. Otherwise I will dump them for something else. I am already researching. 

The new app won’t interface with music services that you use. It’s total garbage. Sonos have released a total turkey. 

HOW? Just HOW can you mess up a key area that music lovers are passionate about? How and why did SONOS mess up playlists???? ‍♂️ Gets award for the most botched update release...... ever! 

As a longstanding Sonos user (and fan) I would just like to add my voice to this topic. The new app quite simply does not work at all

I can no longer play a whole playlist and I can no l longer see my NAS on my iPhone so to quote Sonos “help” I have to use my laptop “as a workaround “

We have basically been used as unwitting beta testers of the worst app that Sonos have ever made!

As per the Sonos help page I did email the CEO. unsurprisingly, I got the standard response that it seems you all got

Very disappointed and, yes, angry (I dare not say anything more appropriate for I am sure it would be moderated

if Sonos had said that this app wasn’t ready yet then I wouldn’t have updated but now I’m stuck

You are so correct in your comments.  My Sonos used to be so dependable and easy but that is no longer the truth.  Sad.

That maybe the case for you and your Sonos setup, but some others, myself included, have things working fine, including local libraries too - you just need to ensure the old sharing protocols are not in play (SMB v1/http) as those are not supported in the latest Sonos App. Nor are they supported by Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon and various others, due to the security vulnerabilities widely mentioned online.

It can of course also just be share permissions/user credentials and even incorrect paths or metadata in play here too, that’s if an SMBv2 (or higher) share is still not working with the new App. So it might be something you ‘perhaps’ may need to resolve yourself, locally.

If all of this is fixable I would need a LOT more details about how to do what.  Sonos should have considered that they needed to provide more information before hitting us with the update.

Some issues, like the changes to shared libraries for example, were widely discussed here in the community prior to the new Sonos App update and some helpful users posted guides (with screenshots) and YouTube videos etc. to help others switch their shares over to SMBv2, or higher … A few example links:

For MacOS users see this YouTube video:

https://youtu.be/kjhKhDuvgDY

For Windows Users:

https://en.community.sonos.com/controllers-and-music-services-229131/can-t-add-folder-to-music-library-913-6893981

Sonos also sent out notices via the S2 App and emails (see attachment in my earlier post) and produced this helpful guide…

https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/add-your-music-library-to-sonos

Yup agreed. Saying it will change in a couple months then changing it a few days later is indefensible. They Didn’t do a good enough job with resources on how to transition.  The community thankfully picked up the pieces. 

“Sonos app version 80.0
This setting is not currently available in the Sonos app for iOS or Android, but it will return in a future update.

As a temporary workaround, please use the Sonos app for macOS or Windows to manage and update your music library.”

This is from the Sonos help page - looks like I am correct in my original post that the new app does not work, as even Sonos agree…

SMB or not SMB

There’s also this help page too…

https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/the-new-sonos-app-and-future-feature-updates

Hi @KathyMusic and @singgs, you are both right in that local library music has not been handled well in a variety of ways, especially for Normal People (that’s my term for non-technical users).

Here’s a post on how we got here …

And a post that may prove helpful if your local library is on a Windows machine …

https://en.community.sonos.com/controllers%2Dand%2Dmusic%2Dservices%2D229131/adding%2Da%2Dwindows%2Dsmb%2Dshare%2Dstep%2Dby%2Dstep%2D6892060

I must be the ultimate ‘normal person.’ ‘SMB’ and ‘Nas’ might as well be Greek to me. rAnd no, I do not read or speak Greek].

It sounds to me like these are fixes to access network shares. As far as I can tell, these “fixes” only fix access to the shares. I don’t use network shares because Sonos in their infinite wisdom chooses to limit the number of tracks it supports in a library. My work around for that has been Plex. But I no longer have the ability to edit and save playlists. They just plain took it away.  The option isn’t there in the new crappy app. It has nothing to do with network sharing. Please post the fix for that if there is one. 

I’ve read and re-read the Sonos report on anticipated future development of the S2 app. It’s not clear to me what the heck it means. Are they saying that access to pre-existing Sonos playlists will return? Will we soon be able to edit and re-save existing Sonos playlists and create new Sonos playlists?

https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/the-new-sonos-app-and-future-feature-updates

I’m not sure what they’re saying, to be perfectly honest. But if those very basic functions are not going to be restored, I’m wasting my time being ‘patient’ and waiting for updates. In that case I need to be looking for alternatives for music playback.

At the very least Sonos could be clear and candid about its plans. Right now, I’m not sure what to expect.

There’s no queue management, or saving of Sonos playlists at the moment, we’re hoping that may come later. It’s not on the Sonos ‘Add Features’ list at the moment. My workaround for the playlists has been to create them in the Music Services, Amazon & Apple Music in my own use-case, and they then appear in the Sonos App. Similarly I create my own .m3u playlists for use with my local library. 

From what I can see/gather my old Sonos playlists, which do not appear in the new Sonos App are still stored on my speakers, so I assume they will be added back at some point. Not that I had many Sonos playlists anyway, as I have always opted to save them in the native musuc service Apps and export/import them between those services using soundiiz.

Given the past 2 months +, best case scenario is expect months long wait unless they randomly move it the front of the line in which case could be today or later this month. 
 

imo best course of action is to use SonoPhone (iOS)  16.1 on Android and the desktop app. Airplay. Avoid the buggy af 80.x app as much as possible and your experience will improve greatly. 
 

Also if you have Sonos units with line ins attaching an echo dot, WiiM mini or picore player for example is another great option. 

Here’s my update:

I have all my music on a NAS (in lay terms this is a network attached storage device - I would describe this as a sort of mini computer that it is attached to your wifi server- you can load all your music onto this and then  stream it to  your Sonos system). The value of this is that you don't have to depend on the whims/costs of the big streaming services and also if, like me, you have obscure music that isn't on those services then you can still listen to it

Following the disastrous update, I could not “see” this anymore on my Sonos via the iphone app, only via my Mac. Most people’s first port of call is their mobile phone not computer so if your phone is suddenly not supported then that is pretty awful

Anyway, I have a Audiostore Mite NAS (made by an UK company and very affordable, IMO) and this can have Plex installed so I installed Plex on my Sonos app (on my phone) and eureka! I can finally “see” and play all my stored music on the NAS

Sonos took about 15 minutes or so to index these files and I can now play all my music again

NB No thanks to Sonos for any of this

Hope this helps Kathymusic and chambolle and anyone else

Now all I need is for Sonos to stop foisting disastrous updates on us

NB I still use S1 on my other sonos system and in my opinion S1 remains the best app , S2 was not a real improvement and S3 (as I will politely call this new app) is an unmitigated disaster

This is what has me furious. “We’re HOPING THAT MAY COME LATER???!!!”. For heaven’s sake it was already there!  It all worked just fine until the latest crappy app. Why the heck should I have to hope they restore functionality they NEVER SHOULD HAVE TAKEN AWAY! This is just incomprehensible to me. What could possibly motivate them to make their products worse. Magnitudes worse. Nonsensically worse. Inexplicably worse.  It is now by far the worst music app I use.  Even crappy iTunes running on windows has playlist support, and it sucks so bad Apple is replacing it. And Sonos is defending this steaming pile of garbage of an app??? I don’t want to hope, I want what was already there and working restored. 

A good and accurate critique!

Well at least the playlists are still there on the players themselves (I see them) - it’s the new App’s ability to display them that’s missing - that’s why I’m ‘hoping’ Sonos will bring them back later - it’s not something I’ve seen Sonos say they will do, we shall just have to see what happens. It’s certainly not shown on this months scheduled updates, as library searches etc. were prioritised after many here asked for that feature to be incorporated. Playlists seemed to have reared their head afterwards if you look back through all the threads here. In fact voice-over features and alarms got ‘pole position’ from users here in this community.

@Ken Griffiths: I’m pretty sure Sonos playlists are there, as you say, because they display in the desktop app, sort of (things like album art, track length and such are missing). I haven’t tried to play one of those lists fearing I’d somehow cause them all to fly off into the ozone, lost forever.

I even had one fleeting moment when my Sonos playlists displayed in the new app’s list of ‘Sonos favorites.’ I was ecstatic; but when I went to use the app a few hours later, they were gone and haven’t returned since.

I asked Sonos for an explanation; never did receive one.