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For at least the past two weeks, my playlists will no longer play normally.

One playlist of 68 tracks sometimes plays a couple of songs and then stops suddenly and without cause. Other times, it doesn't play at all. This I noticed for the first time on Nov 30. I hadn't played that playlist for a long time (possibly before the disaster app release), but it did play normally before. Individual songs sometimes play, sometimes seem to start but fail after a second.

Another playlist with a mere 6 songs shows the same behavior, and often refuses to play at all. I use it for alarm (it's called ‘Wake-up songs'), and the Sonos by my bed just sounds wake-up beeps at the appropriate time, doesn't play any of the songs. I've used that same playlist for my alarm for several years now, and up until yesterday, it worked perfectly.

The first, longer playlist consists solely of songs in my local music library. The wake-up playlist has 5 local songs and a Spotify song. The Spotify song doesn't do any better than the local songs.

The local songs are all on a NAS hard-wired to the Wifi router which the Sonos devices connect to wirelessly.

I've refreshed the Music Library twice now, and the songs in the playlists are all found. Often, but not always, the songs play normally when I play the directly from the library.

What's going wrong here, and how might I fix it?

ETA: Attempting playback from the Windows controller, the error I get when a track fails to play back is that //IFANAS/Music doesn't exist. IFANAS is the network name of my NAS, and Music the share where the music resides. Both are available, obviously, and have never changed names. When a library track plays succesfully, it always resides in that share.

ETA: I've rebuilt the 6-track playlist, removing and re-adding the tracks from my library. This may have solved the issue for this playlist. Can anyone confirm that rebuilding entire playlists is necessary since the new app? (This also removed a track from that playlist, as I apparently can no longer add Spotify songs to Sonos playlists. Created a new thread for that.)

Also reconstructed the 68-track playlist by removing and re-adding each track from my library. Seems to have fixed that playlist as well.

Please, can someone confirm that Sonos somehow broke the connection with local libraries, and local playlist need to be manually reconstructed?

 How do you create your playlists?  Are they M3U playlists?

The iTunes created playlists I use in S2 are working without any issue, on the firmware released yesterday, and the iOS client today. 

​@MoPac, I don't create playlists in a particular way. The playlists I'm talking about here were created years ago by adding and naming a new playlist, and then using the Add to Sonos Playlist option from the library listing of each track. The vast majority of tracks are MP3, with possibly some M3U here and there.

​@Airgetlam, that suggests that my issue is limited to Sonos playlists with local library tracks.

I honestly don’t know why you’re having trouble, and I’m not. I’d certainly suggest getting in contact with Sonos Support directly to discuss it, even if it only gives them hard evidence of an issue that they can pass on to the development team. My response was more to confirm that Sonos did not, at least completely, break the connection with local libraries, as was asked. 

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 network and Sonos system.

​@MoPac, I don't create playlists in a particular way. The playlists I'm talking about here were created years ago by adding and naming a new playlist, and then using the Add to Sonos Playlist option from the library listing of each track. The vast majority of tracks are MP3, with possibly some M3U here and there.

M3U is a playlist file extension.  M3U files can be opened in a text document like WordPad.  M3U files have path statements that tell a player where a track is located so it can be found and played.

I create my M3U playlists in JRiver Media Center.  After I create or add to a JRiver playlist they are exported as M3U text files.  Then I edit them in WordPad for use in my NAS where the music files are split between an internal SSD and an external SSD.  The front end of the path statements have to reflect the root folder name in the NAS which is different for the internal SSD and external SSD locations.  Also have to change the \ to /.  All very easy to do with the Replace option in the WordPad editor.

So M3U is not a file extension for an actual music file.  It’s not like .FLAC, .WAV or .MP3 etc.  although if I wanted to I could right click on a .M3U playlist file and choose to open with JRiver Media Center and JRiver will begin to play that playlist.

Gotcha, ​@MoPac, my mistake. My playlists were created from within the Sonos UI, after adding the NAS to my music library. I've never worked directly with M3U files (as is probably obvious from my noob response 😃 )

In the end, I did recreate all playlists by removing each track and re-adding them from the library. Apparently, the links of the individual tracks to their NAS locations were somehow destroyed in an app/controller update. All good now.

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