Problem Free Imported Playlist Solution:

I was one of the victims of Sonos’s recent upgrade in May. I lost everything and was unable to play music until August, still without my imported playlists. 

Work arounds proved faulty. My music library would appear and disappear forcing me to do another significant reload. The NAS work around has proven satisfactory but not ideal. My external hard drive is not a NAS, why are we treating it as such?

Sonos support was completely unacceptable; the representatives were polite enough and while apologetic (offering nothing but empty promises that these issues would be fixed in future)  proved completely unable to resolve the issue  Call wait times are oft north of 75 minutes and level 2 technicians have to be scheduled weeks in advance. The CEOs letter trying to mitigate the situation left me apoplectic. My imported playlists have never returned. And given the dearth of actual support, I gave up. Admittedly, the imported playlists (when they worked) weren’t complete because Sonos for some reason caps the number of playlists/songs.

I was done, had I not invested so much in these units, they would have been out on my curb. 

I took to doing some research. All my playlists emanated from Apple Music (formerly ITunes). I found Apple Music could be added as a music service and once I did that I was able to get ALL my playlists as I organized them. It now costs me a little over $10 a month, but given the formidable alternative (ie having no playlist and nonsense from Sonos), it’s worth every penny.

Now subscribed to Apple Music I can play all my music on Sonos via Apple Music. All my music is in the cloud and so I can play from my entire library anywhere I go via blue tooth connection with my phone. When I add an album it immediately adds to the library and can be played on Sonos, via Apple Music, I no longer need to suffer through long updates to get access to the new album via Sonos’s process.

In sum, my solution was to go with Apple Music, a superior platform with no limits on playlists, and completely bypass the morass of Sonos, as recently updated. All my playlists are as I painstakingly organized them on Apple Music. The transition is flawless.

Sonos should be ashamed of itself; this update was not ready for prime time. Their premature launch inconvenienced many; their efforts to resolve incomplete and totally wanting. 
 
I’m with Apple Music (upload into the Sonos controller), happy as a lark because I have my music again, with all my playlists, and I’m done with the other aspects of the failed Sonos platform.

Hope this helps.