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Spotify artist search not working



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Seems to be related to special characters. Can only return artists that have special characters in their name, only when there are no spaces, i.e:

 

AC/DC

A-Ha

P!nk

M.I.A

K$sha

 

But not:

 

Wu-Tang Clan

Jean-Michel Jarre

Dr. Dre

Panic! At the Disco

A$AP Rocky

 

You also need to search the full name, i.e. AC/D returns nothing, but AC/DC returns the result.

very interesting indeed, I tried AC/DC and it does return a result but other searches like Phil Collins or Tesla etc are also full name searches but nope !!!

 

The search seems to only work with these three conditions (though there may be more symptoms I'm missing):

 

- There is a special character in the artist name (/.$!)

- There is no white space in the artist name, i.e K$sha will work but A$AP Rocky won't

-You search the full name, i.e K$sha not K$sh

 

So Phil Collins doesn't have a special character and there's also white space.

If I search for ”<artist name>” and spell the artist name correct it seems to work. Like ”Elton John”, but extremely annoying

If I search for ”<artist name>” and spell the artist name correct it seems to work. Like ”Elton John”, but extremely annoying

Interesting. Different symptoms to me then; nothing returned for (correctly spelt and capitalised) Elton John on my app.

If I search for ”<artist name>” and spell the artist name correct it seems to work. Like ”Elton John”, but extremely annoying

really strange “Tesla” worked indeed 

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Have the same problem in Sweden. Have re-installed ”everything” but problem persist. Spotify search for everything except artist works. 

Reinstalling isn’t going to help this, its a problem with the Spotify SMAPI service.

Have the same problem in Sweden. Have re-installed ”everything” but problem persist. Spotify search for everything except artist works. 

Reinstalling isn’t going to help this, its a problem with the Spotify SMAPI service.

@controlav , apologies if this has already been covered, but can you explain how it’s a Spotify issue? It’s not a problem for me within Spotify, only when trying to search Artists in Spotify within the Sonos app. Thank you in advance for your explanation for a non-tech-savvy user! 

@controlav , apologies if this has already been covered, but can you explain how it’s a Spotify issue? It’s not a problem for me within Spotify, only when trying to search Artists in Spotify within the Sonos app. Thank you in advance for your explanation for a non-tech-savvy user! 

 

Each service is responsible for their own implementation using the Sonos API (SMAPI).  Regardless of what  is or is not working in the Spotify app, Spotify is in control of all content shown, and how it is shown, inside the Sonos app. 

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Asked a person in IT who got it to work again by putting a quotation mark, followed by the search name and then another quotation mark eg “Coldplay”. Until they fix it, it has to have the double quote marks “ ... “ either side of the search word.

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Sonos tech support says this is a Spotify issue. I’ve been messaging them through facebook on the page SpotifyCares. Please go on and message them about this issue. Maybe we can get it resolved quicker if everyone contacts them. Thanks!

Are we sure this is a Spotify issue? I posted a screenshot of the mobile app a few posts back and the new search didn’t return results for Apple Music or Sonos Radio either (red exclamation marks on those services as well). 

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Are we sure this is a Spotify issue? I posted a screenshot of the mobile app a few posts back and the new search didn’t return results for Apple Music or Sonos Radio either (red exclamation marks on those services as well). 

That’s what Sonos IT support said

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Asked a person in IT who got it to work again by putting a quotation mark, followed by the search name and then another quotation mark eg “Coldplay”. Until they fix it, it has to have the double quote marks “ ... “ either side of the search word.

Thanks, tried that and it won’t work for me.

Yes, we are sure that is is a Spotify issue. If you read through the the Sonos partners page, you’ll find that all Sonos does is send what you have typed, and merely displays the content they get back from the Spotify server, without any modification. 

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Hi All,

There have been some changes made, but as we are unable to reproduce this issue, we need your help in understanding if these steps have fixed the problem or not. Could a couple of people please reboot your speakers/players, test searching for Artists on Spotify once more and let me know if they still have problems doing so? Thank you.

Desktop and Android app have started telling me "spotify returned no results for _____ in artists. Please try a different category or a new search term" this morning. Has replicated on multiple devices. Only happens for Spotify and only in "artists", albums and playlist search still works. Any idea if I changed a setting or if something is wrong on their end?

I’ve reset the speakers and restarted the apps.

Having the same issue for the past three days. Sonos any suggestions? 

Typing artist name with double quotation marks works for me, too. Thanks @Bejanss

Still, am I the only one who is flabbergasted that SONOS doesn’t seem to undertake any action to fix this with Spotify, or provide any communication to their users? Regardless whether this may be a Spotify issue, it creates a bad user experience with the SONOS app and a lot of customer aggravation.

Spotify is by far the most important music provider to the platform. Yet, SONOS doesn’t seem to care whether or not you can play music over their system and their IT support tells people essentially “not our problem, sort it out with Spotify yourself” (based on some of the input above) 😕

If there’s a problem with the Google Maps connection in a car’s navigation system (due to Google, not the car manufacturer), I assure you the car manufacturer makes it a top priority to get in touch with Google and informs their customers they’re working on it - with apologies. No way they would say, “Why don’t you sort it out with Google yourself?”

Typing artist name with double quotation marks works for me, too. Thanks @Bejanss

Still, am I the only one who is flabbergasted that SONOS doesn’t seem to undertake any action to fix this with Spotify, or provide any communication to their users? Regardless whether this may be a Spotify issue, it creates a bad user experience with the SONOS app and a lot of customer aggravation.

Spotify is by far the most important music provider to the platform. Yet, SONOS doesn’t seem to care whether or not you can play music over their system and their IT support tells people essentially “not our problem, sort it out with Spotify yourself” (based on some of the input above) 😕

If there’s a problem with the Google Maps connection in a car’s navigation system (due to Google, not the car manufacturer), I assure you the car manufacturer makes it a top priority to get in touch with Google and informs their customers they’re working on it - with apologies. No way they would say, “Why don’t you sort it out with Google yourself?”

I think the issue is Sonos have not been able to reproduce the issue - and admittedly I’m not suffering with the problem either, as the artist search seems to be working okay here (I’m in the UK) and it’s not Sonos suggesting you contact Spotify, it’s other users here that are suggesting that. It appears it is a Spotify issue with just some accounts, or some regional areas, affected perhaps? - either way it makes sense for their own customers to report the matter direct to them. If nothing else it may make them prioritise the matter. It does seem to the case that only some customers are experiencing this issue.

In fact, another Spotify issue has reared its head recently with some customers seeing the Sonos categories in a foreign language and I have seen that issue myself and reported it both here and direct to Spotify and that matter has been escalated by Spotify customer support. So I do suggest that people contact Spotify customer services too, if they are experiencing problems, as it is ‘likely’ down to their engineers to fix this.

Maybe the Sonos engineers should look at the problem from a different angle. Many countries, like Sweden, have another character set (including keyboard) typically securing letters like å,ä and ö. English speaking has a ”standard” character set

Maybe the Sonos engineers should look at the problem from a different angle. Many countries, like Sweden, have another character set (including keyboard) typically securing letters like å,ä and ö. English speaking has a ”standard” character set

Sonos publish an API for the MSP’s to link their services into the Sonos Apps - if it was an issue with character sets on their side I would think all the other music services would be having the same issue too with the Artist search - so it’s ‘more likely’ something on the Spotify service side of things.

So, in short: We see this issue only with the “old” search? In the desktop app for MacOS, for example, there is only the old search, so it doesn’t work.

I managed to get some results with the “” trick.

Hi All,

There have been some changes made, but as we are unable to reproduce this issue, we need your help in understanding if these steps have fixed the problem or not. Could a couple of people please reboot your speakers/players, test searching for Artists on Spotify once more and let me know if they still have problems doing so? Thank you.

I rebooted my speakers and it didn’t help. Using the MacOS Desktop app, version 15.5. All speakers on 15.5 (build 73042060)

Same problem. For several weeks Spotify does not appear in the search dialog

 

Having the same issue - within the desktop app, in a Spotify search the “Artists” tab does not work, all the other tabs work and produce results Albums/Songs/Playlists.

 

All I get when searching within the ‘Artists’ tab is:

“Search returned no results for ‘Madonna’ in Artists. Please try a different category or a new search term.”

Switching from the old search to new search (on the Android app) resolved this issue for me.

I have the same problem here in Canada for a couple of weeks. No search by artist possible on Spotify.

Frustrating. Sonos please advise