What do you mean by ‘Add’ ?

You need to enable a podcast service - eg. Pocketcasts

Hello, thanks for the reply and question. I have pocket casts added already. What I am trying to do is have the latest podcast played in the morning as an alarm. The episodes come out hourly so it's impossible add the episodes the night before.

Hello, anyone else have any ideas. Again, I'm trying to play podcasts from an RSS automatically in the morning. So what I'm looking for is at 6am, for the latest podcast in the series to be played as an alarm.

When I try to add the .xml RSS link, I just get an error from Sonos saying that the music isn’t encoded correctly.

Hi folks,

@castalla, thank you for your assistance. 
@philippompili, thank you for reaching back to the Sonos Community and letting us know about your concern. 

Can you please walk me through on how do you add the RSS on the Sonos app for us to assist you?

We'll wait for your reply.

If you need help with any other information, please be sure to let us know.

Hi Rowena, thanks for reaching out. So I am adding the feed in the following manner.

1. Open the Sonos App on macOS
2. Drop down menu Manage
3. Add Radio Station
4. URL is https://www.cbc.ca/podcasting/includes/hourlynews.xml
5. When I attempt to play the RSS via Tune in Radio, I get an error saying that the music isn’t encoded propery.

This feed (just an example) provides hourly newscasts in the form of podcasts (mp3). I’m trying to have the latest podcast (the link always takes you to the latest one) play as part of a morning alarm. Basically, we are trying to wake up to the morning news.

Thanks,

Hi @philippompili, thank you for your quick reply and for walking me through the steps. Let me help you with this.

Your steps are correct. The reason that you're getting an error adding the URL because it's an XML file. 

You need to add the streaming URL. Before you can add it, you need to verify the correct URL, you may need to contact the CBC station.

Once you have the URL, you can do the same steps to add it to the Sonos app or you may check out this article Adding an Internet radio station to Sonos for your reference.

Let us know how you get on with the advice above.

Hi Rowena, thanks for your quick reply as well. Just so I have my terminology straight, I am trying to add an RSS. The RSS should give me the latest version of the podcast in question everytime. So when I click on their RSS link, it takes me to the .xml file.  When I do click on the RSS (bringing me to the xml) I do see the latest mp3 in the file.

Just so I know what I am looking for, what does the URL need to end in?

Thank you,

Phil

It can be anything, it is the MIME type of the url that is important.

Common extensions are .mp3, m3u.

XML files will not work.

If you use the F12 feature of your browser you can usually use the Network tab to see the streaming url as the browser loads it.

However none of this is likely to solve your original question: you want a dynamic stream to be attached to an alarm. I know of no way you can do this without writing some code yourself.

Thanks for the response. Yes, I'm looking to simply play the latest podcast as an alarm. Basically to be able to wake up the the latest podcast in any given series.

Unfortunately I'm a long way from a code writer. Maybe Sonos could add this as a feature?

Hi @philippompili, thank you for your response.

It would be great if you can add the RSS link to the Sonos app. What I can do is send in a feature request to make this available in the Sonos app. We don't have the timeline on this but you can check our announcements when this feature becomes available. 

If you need help with any other information, please be sure to let us know.

We're here to answer any further questions you have.

Thanks, I'll check back from time to time to see the status of the feature request.

I’m surprised to find this doesn’t exist, as I’ve also wanted to add RSS feeds for podcasts that happen to not be indexed by TuneIn. It sounds like one can do it by adding yet another service, but how many parties need to be aware of what podcast I listen to when? A timeline/tracking issue for this feature would be helpful.

See also this old thread; apparently the capability existed and was removed many years ago.

https://en.community.sonos.com/music-services-and-sources-228994/why-can-i-not-add-rss-feeds-4590346

Very sad. This does not strike me as something that is terribly advanced. Google Home does this quite well. Maybe I'll try to line-in to my amp from a Chromecast. Still sad that this can not be done as is.