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the Music Library “fix”


I, like every other Sonos user, lost access to my beloved local music library curated from my personal “hard copy” musical collection and playlists when the new app was released.  However, I was a lot better of that most because I had an old iPad with the “old” S2 app which was still able to play from my library.  Every time it offered to update I refused point blank for that very reason.

Today however it appears that a device update has rendered the old app useless because it is now no longer able to control my Sonos speakers.  I consider this an almost underhand and sneaky way to “force” me to use an app which no longer serves the purpose I originally intended it for and renders my expensive speakers a lot less attractive than they were.

A fix for this was hinted at being available “mid June” but still no sign.

 

PLEASE, PLEASE, when will this be fixed?  And if the answer really is never, please come clean so I can attempt to offload my speakers on to someone who doesn’t need it want the facility I bought them for in the first place!

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I’m on the 80.07.05-release+20240825.fd7bb7c version and I managed to add my music library from my Synology NAS.

It plays well, but no album art at all, either when browsing the library nor in the playing mode.

Also, I have a strange behaviour when listening to radio, when stopped, the artwork is correctly displayed but disappears when I start the radio; it comes back as soon as I hit the stop button. Anyone else having the same behaviour?

Update for the fun : I have a small app that I wrote for the fun in Javascript using the upnp api, and it shows the album art perfectly when on the official app no luck 😕

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I’m on the 80.07.05-release+20240825.fd7bb7c version and I managed to add my music library from my Synology NAS.

It plays well, but no album art at all, either when browsing the library nor in the playing mode.

Also, I have a strange behaviour when listening to radio, when stopped, the artwork is correctly displayed but disappears when I start the radio; it comes back as soon as I hit the stop button. Anyone else having the same behaviour?

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Am experiencing exactly the same with this latest release which was, for me, nearly 4 weeks after the last update and not the stated bi-weekly.  I did see some article today that stated Sonos were moving to 4 weekly updates, but I can’t find it now. 🙄

I keep my Windows app updated and it’s all working fine, so I’m not too concerned there.  But it’s a much longer process to fire up my desktop that uses the Android app.

Why the app can’t instantly connect to the system as it did pre-May update is anybody’s guess.  I put this mess down to pure incompetence in Sonos at the very top for releasing the untested app in May.

I can’t understand why, when I delete and re-install the Sonos app on my Android device, it isn’t picking up the music library settings from the Sonos system which is working fine with Windows.  I installed the application on a (second) Windows laptop and it picked up the configured music library immediately.  This is obviously an issue in comms between the Android app and the Sonos system, and I would expect any competent developer to have fixed such an issue in a matter of days.

 

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Our Android app is now on version 80.07.05-release+20240825.fd7bb7c. No progress with regards to our music library, though. It hasn't shown up yet in that app version. Playlists are still not available on the home screen, either.

Opening the app can result in anything between showing the correct status of our devices to not recognising our system at all and asking us to "get connected". It's as if no configuration information is retained between app runs. 

The Windows controller app was updated recently, too. Luckily it still works fine and recognises our music library and plays our Sonos playlists.

We're getting increasingly worried that this is already the end of the line for the Android app, and that it won't get any better and further than this. We're dreading the day when the Windows app is upgraded to this new platform or discontinued, and we lose access to our music library and playlists forever.

Despite all the explanations and apologies from Sonos we just don't understand what's so difficult adding support for an SMB file share and playlists to this new app design. Is this because it's being developed with a tool or programming language that lacks support for these protocols? Is it lack of knowledge or experience by the developers? And why does the Android app not remember the configuration and network settings between app runs? How can this have gone so wrong and gotten so bad?

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@marner We're still stuck on the app version 80.06.04-release+20240801.4ae19ff. Our music library appeared only once in this app version, and we haven't seen it again for the last three weeks.

The app seems to recognise an existing playlist that we loaded into the queue of one of our speakers. It shows the playlist's name, and in the queue view it displays the songs with title and contributing artist(s), not album artist (which could be the reason for the messed up indexing), and no album art, either.

We're still using the Windows app to manage everything. The Android app is only good for pausing and resuming playback, and adjusting volume.

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@The Krollmanns @essenby @RadicalDad There’s another release available today, but: “Customers can check for updates in their iOS / Android app store and download the latest version of the Sonos app once it's available to them.”  It’s not available to me yet (3 weeks after the last release, no cadence of 14 days there).

If any of you get the Music Library working fully, please post a message saying so.

I did see the Music Library and its folders once in the Android app, briefly, about a week ago.  I couldn’t believe it, so I backed out of the app and went back in.  I’ve gotten the usual “something went wrong” ever since.  Here’s hoping there’s some music library fix in the update, but we’ll see.

@RadicalDad totally agree with a lot of what you write. I’ve been a software engineer for over 40 years now and the blurb from Sonos is laughable.

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The local music library is still hopelessly screwed up. Mine is on a Synology NAS, where it is always been, and is properly set up as SMB 3. 
 

The music library regularly disappears from the iOS app. Sometimes it will reappear on its own, but that is rare. It usually sticks around for a day or two, then I have to re-add it to get it to come back. 

Indexing in the new app is ridiculously slow compared to the old S2 app and the S1 app. Sometimes when I re-add the music library, it seems that the system knows about its existence or somehow reconnects with its original database as the indexing is lightning fast.

As with everyone else, compilations don’t index correctly. I get individual albums for all the tracks if I’m lucky. Sometimes these individual tracks will play, but most often they won’t. Most of the time the compilations (including orchestral albums which often have different composers, or conductors, or sometimes different orchestras) have multiple album entries comprised of one track each. All of the entries have the same track.  If they play (which they usually don’t), all of the single tracks in the multiple albums show that they are all playing simultaneously. 

These are repeatable results. Happens every time I have to re-add the library and the albums & tracks that are screwed up are always screwed up in the exact same way. As a former software engineer, I know that this pattern indicates that the code, while flawed, is stable. There isn’t some random process that needs to be hunted down. The code just needs to be rewritten by someone competent. I also suspect that the database gets so corrupted by the flawed code that the system simply gives up on the database and asks that it be added again in an effort to reindex what is already there. 

This certainly shouldn’t cost $30 million or more, unless one starts counting lost sales, carrying costs for inventory that isn’t selling, lost EBITA, and similar costs that aren’t tied directly to the recoding effort. Sonos claiming such inflated losses, while also complaining that they can’t reproduce the errors in their labs, is pure gaslighting. Spence needs to be fired, along with the head of software development and anyone else in the chain that created this mess. 

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I guess one option for people to try here is to use the IP address of the NAS/PC/Mac that hosts the library, and then to fix that IP address by either a DCHP reservation or using a manual address *outside* of the DHCP range on your router. 

By putting the IP address in instead of a name, it helps remove any discovery issues from the equation. 

So…

//192.168.1.240/mymusic

for example.

The other question I’d ask is do you let the PC/Mac hosting any libraries go to sleep, or power off? Wondering if the ‘new’ Sonos discovery methods mark local libraries as off-line if they can’t periodically contact them? If you leave the PC/Mac on, do the libraries still disappear?

We haven’t had name resolution issues, but it won't hurt to configure a static IP address and use that instead. It doesn't seem to improve the availability of the music library in the Sonos app, though.

Our library still appears and disappears with no recognisable pattern, despite its file share being hosted on a permanently docked Windows tablet that's always on (enforced with a custom power profile).

@The Krollmanns as mentioned above I’m now experiencing the issue of the library no longer appearing, despite no app upgrade or change to my system or music library settings so far as I’m aware. I’ve no idea what’s going on.  I’ve tried with IP address and NAS name.  No matter what I try, when the music library was present and I clicked any option, all I got was “Something went wrong”.

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@The Krollmanns If your music library (not settings) does appear again, can you inform us if you can use it please?  i.e. Select and play something from Artists, Albums, Folders, etc.?

In the brief time mine was visible for me I can confirm that I was able to select and play individual tracks,  However, I didn’t try to use it hat much becasue of the absolute mess it had made with the indexing (compilations etc)

Thanks @essenby I really appreciate the information.  No matter what happens on my mobile, unfortunately I always get the helpful “Something went wrong” message when I click any of the music library options.  Hopefully this gets resolved soon now.  Let’s see what happens in the next release.
BTW, the music library option hasn’t appeared in my app for a few days now, even though the music library settings are still available and set correctly. 🤣

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The other question I’d ask is do you let the PC/Mac hosting any libraries go to sleep, or power off? Wondering if the ‘new’ Sonos discovery methods mark local libraries as off-line if they can’t periodically contact them? If you leave the PC/Mac on, do the libraries still disappear?

The machine hosting the library being on or off is unrelated to the ‘Music Library’ being shown in the app, so library behaviour and access looks to be the same as the old S2

App —> Speakers catalogue | Speaker os mount —> Library

I switched my server off an hour ago.

The app still browses the music library presented by the devices and is blissfully unaware of the music server.

During browsing there is no cover art because that is loaded on demand, by the speakers as far as I can tell, from the server as you browse rather than trying to store copies on the devices.

Trying to play, the play button spins and then eventually times out. The device I was trying to play to then just showed ‘No track’ but the items were added to the queue.

It makes sense for that behaviour not to have changed. For the app to check the library server existence and share access it would need an smb client building into the app.

At the moment based on behaviour I’ve tested my only realistic suggestion for it appearing/disappearing would be if the speaker the app has connected to doesn’t actually have the music library correctly configured in it. Unfortunately the “associated product” info has been removed from “about my system” so it’s no longer possible to see which speaker the controller app has connected itself to 😒
 


 


 

 

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I guess one option for people to try here is to use the IP address of the NAS/PC/Mac that hosts the library, and then to fix that IP address by either a DCHP reservation or using a manual address *outside* of the DHCP range on your router. 

By putting the IP address in instead of a name, it helps remove any discovery issues from the equation. 

So…

//192.168.1.240/mymusic

for example.

The other question I’d ask is do you let the PC/Mac hosting any libraries go to sleep, or power off? Wondering if the ‘new’ Sonos discovery methods mark local libraries as off-line if they can’t periodically contact them? If you leave the PC/Mac on, do the libraries still disappear?

We haven’t had name resolution issues, but it won't hurt to configure a static IP address and use that instead. It doesn't seem to improve the availability of the music library in the Sonos app, though.

Our library still appears and disappears with no recognisable pattern, despite its file share being hosted on a permanently docked Windows tablet that's always on (enforced with a custom power profile).

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I guess one option for people to try here is to use the IP address of the NAS/PC/Mac that hosts the library, and then to fix that IP address by either a DCHP reservation or using a manual address *outside* of the DHCP range on your router. 

By putting the IP address in instead of a name, it helps remove any discovery issues from the equation. 

So…

//192.168.1.240/mymusic

for example.

The other question I’d ask is do you let the PC/Mac hosting any libraries go to sleep, or power off? Wondering if the ‘new’ Sonos discovery methods mark local libraries as off-line if they can’t periodically contact them? If you leave the PC/Mac on, do the libraries still disappear?

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@The Krollmanns If your music library (not settings) does appear again, can you inform us if you can use it please?  i.e. Select and play something from Artists, Albums, Folders, etc.?

In the brief time mine was visible for me I can confirm that I was able to select and play individual tracks,  However, I didn’t try to use it hat much becasue of the absolute mess it had made with the indexing (compilations etc)

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@The Krollmanns If your music library (not settings) does appear again, can you inform us if you can use it please?  i.e. Select and play something from Artists, Albums, Folders, etc.?

@marner Will do.

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@The Krollmanns If your music library (not settings) does appear again, can you inform us if you can use it please?  i.e. Select and play something from Artists, Albums, Folders, etc.?

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@The Krollmanns 

Unfortunately my app is on an iPhone and iPad and currently the latest version is 8.06.03.  In that version the library path shows as //{nas-drve}/{path} and despite it being accessible from my desktop Windows app and the web based controller Music Library is conspicuously absent from the Home screen of the apps 😢

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The latest Android app update (80.06.04 from 1-Aug 2024) is now showing the UNC path to our existing music library, which is what we were hoping for (that it would reappear)....

We'll take that back. This morning our music library is gone again, like in earlier app versions. It appears to have been a fluke that it was shown yesterday.

@The Krollmanns Absolutely no offence guys, I know how frustrating this is, but you’d cry if it wasn’t so ridiculously funny.  This morning the Sonos app on my phone took ages to connect to my system.  Never experienced that before. 

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The latest Android app update (80.06.04 from 1-Aug 2024) is now showing the UNC path to our existing music library, which is what we were hoping for (that it would reappear)....

We'll take that back. This morning our music library is gone again, like in earlier app versions. It appears to have been a fluke that it was shown yesterday.

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We haven’t played around with any music library settings or content yet, but we’ll give this a go over the next few days 😬. Given what others have already posted (one album per track, usability issues etc.) we don’t expect anything pleasant yet… but we’ve regained a glimmer of hope.

If you don’t have auto re-indexing enabled I wouldn’t press the re-index button, firmware 16.3/16.3.1 makes a right mess of the index anywhere where the artist and album artist fields are different (and album artist isn’t empty...) This is usually seen most on compilations, but will also show up when you have guest artists on songs (correctly) tagged under artist too. 

IF you don’t need to re-index on 16.3 I would hold off until we get a fix, or life gets even more painful. Lack of queue editing really doesn’t help here either. 

Thanks for that, Ian. We indeed have many songs where the Artist and AlbumArtist tags differ, so we'll refrain from changing any library content or re-indexing it for now.

Makes you wonder who keeps making all these rookie coding mistakes, and what the frick went wrong at Sonos with these new apps. Feels like someone was given free reign who didn't know what they were doing.

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We haven’t played around with any music library settings or content yet, but we’ll give this a go over the next few days 😬. Given what others have already posted (one album per track, usability issues etc.) we don’t expect anything pleasant yet… but we’ve regained a glimmer of hope.

If you don’t have auto re-indexing enabled I wouldn’t press the re-index button, firmware 16.3/16.3.1 makes a right mess of the index anywhere where the artist and album artist fields are different (and album artist isn’t empty...) This is usually seen most on compilations, but will also show up when you have guest artists on songs (correctly) tagged under artist too. 

IF you don’t need to re-index on 16.3 I would hold off until we get a fix, or life gets even more painful. Lack of queue editing really doesn’t help here either. 

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@The Krollmanns Thanks for reaching out here.  I’ve also seen the Music Library picks up the path to the library, so a small step in the right direction.  However, when trying to access the music library options to play music, all I still see is “Something went wrong”.  Like you say, “a glimmer of hope”.

BTW, the Sonos release notes page shows version 80.06.04 was released on 6 August 2024.  Something not quite right there.  The version I have installed is also from August 1.

Might just be the build date of the latest app version, not the release date ... which could suggest that this version had been tested for at least a few days before it was let loose on us.

Not very encouraging what you've experienced so far - yet another "something went wrong". Ah well. Patience.

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@The Krollmanns Thanks for reaching out here.  I’ve also seen the Music Library picks up the path to the library, so a small step in the right direction.  However, when trying to access the music library options to play music, all I still see is “Something went wrong”.  Like you say, “a glimmer of hope”.

BTW, the Sonos release notes page shows version 80.06.04 was released on 6 August 2024.  Something not quite right there.  The version I have installed is also from August 1.

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@marner @jgatie @press250 @essenby The latest Android app update (80.06.04 from 1-Aug 2024) is now showing the UNC path to our existing music library, which is what we were hoping for (that it would reappear). We did NOT try to add it in the earlier version of the app. This proves that there was never anything wrong with our library, no HTTP or wrong SMB version or whatever theories were offered - the earlier app versions just didn’t pick up the existing library, which is what we suspected all along, given the slow incremental process we’ve seen across these successive app updates.

@marner @essenby We’d be keen to hear if you are able to see your NAS shares again, too, once your devices have installed this app version.

We haven’t played around with any music library settings or content yet, but we’ll give this a go over the next few days 😬. Given what others have already posted (one album per track, usability issues etc.) we don’t expect anything pleasant yet… but we’ve regained a glimmer of hope.

 

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“ . . .The rest of my system I was able to downgrade to S1 - working perfectly and totally reliable. . . “

And that really does take the biscuit doesn’t it 😡

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I have the same issue one Album for each track of a compilation album also I can only re index using the Windows Controller - the button on the Android App appears to do nothing. Scrolling through a large library of albums is a nightmare as the is no alphabetical scroll bar to the right. No add to queue. No moving tracks up and down the queue. No "add to Sonos Playlist. No Album artwork.

 

Really hopeless at the moment.

 

I am testing the new App using a single Sonos Roam and a Raspberry pi with Openmediavault set for SMBv2.

The rest of my system I was able to downgrade to S1 - working perfectly and totally reliable.

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