Ken 354, your suggestion for people to write the chairman of the board of directors is excellent. Thank you. Below is his name and address.

Julius Genachowski

Chairman Board of Directors

Sonos Corporation Inc.

614 Chapala Street

Santa Barbara, CA 93101

I seem by accident to have found an easy workaround. I have a Sonos Roam normally used outside in the garden. My music is stored in my iMac music folder. If I switch on the Roam and play anything in my music folder library by ticking the Airplay box in Music, I can play anything… albums, songs, playlists etc on the Roam without using the useless Sonos app.

But i then discovered that my other Sonos speakers were also playing the same music as the Roam because at some point in the past I’d grouped a couple of them with the Roam. And I discovered that the useless Sonos app on my iPhone does actually correctly indicate what I’m playing.

 So now I’ve completed grouping all speakers (using the Sonos app on my iPhone) and play anything everywhere directly from my own Library without it being added to the Sonos app … for which we wait with bated breath for Sonos to allow us to do.

it seems my Play One speakers even though old are compatible with Apple Airplay … which surprises me. I also get the occasional brief sound drop out while playing. Odd but not critical.
 

But I can’t see anyway of making them play music from library without first switching on the Roam. Anyone any idea how to do that ?

Terrible service from Sonos, They should bring back the old app now. There was nothing wrong with it. This update makes their products useless. It’s a disgrace. I can’t see any album artwork from my local library, basic features are missing and people can’t even play their music.

I did not read all posts, so maybe this is double.

For everyone who has this problem, and has his music on a Mac, here’s how I worked around it with a second (borrowed) Mac.

The thing I noticed in other posts of people with Windows machines who got everything working again, is that network access seems to possible. So I shared the folder that contained my music (not the standard Apple Music/iTunes folder, but I don’t think that should make a difference). I then created the same user account on the borrowed Mac as on my own machine. Logged into iCloud and everything, and installed the Sonos app. After installing that, it turned out that it had taken all preferences etc. from the Sonos app on my own Mac (the one with the music folder).

I then checked in Finder on the original machine what the path to my music folder was. That will normally be ‘your computer’s name>Users>your account name>Music>iTunes>iTunes Media’. In my case it was different, but you should still have a path that starts at your computer’s name. If you navigated to the folder with your music, but can’t see the path, hold the option key whilst clicking the last folder and you should see it in the bottom of your Finder window.

Now that you know the path, go to the Sonos app on your borrowed (or your own second) Mac, choose ‘manage>Music Library Settings, and click on the + to add a Networked Device. Then type the path to your own Mac containing your music, but with 2 backslashes in front, and backslashes where Finder showed you > arrows. So for most that path would be \\your computer’s name\Users>\your account name\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media.

The Sonos app on the second computer then should add the music folder, which can take a while (in my case 20 minutes for a 85GB folder over a 1GB network). After it is added, all Sonos apps in my network (on my own Mac, on my iPhone and my iPad) all updated to the new music library path, and I was able to play my own collection again.

Lastly I deleted the Sonos app, and then all my computer account info from the borrowed Mac.

It’s working, and hopefully will continue to work when Sonos rolls out an update… It’s a disgrace this happened, but I hope I can help some more ppl out.

I also found a way to listen to my Sonos speakers with files that were in my Sonos Windows Library.

The latest version of itunes works as a player.

Yes, the latest version of itunes with my windows computer communicates with my Sonos devices.

First, I copied all my music files from the hard drive on my computer to itunes.

Then, I clicked the small icon located top center leftish on itunes which allows me to see my Sonos speakers in a window.

I’m able to use the new crappy sonos app to group all speakers and adjust volume etc.

The itunes app also works to group all speakers and adjust volumes.

The SonoPhone app also works well as a controller.

One thing to keep in mind is that I’m using a Windows 11 computer and an iphone 13.

Not sure if other devices will work the same.

Updated by Tooting Jools: Update: I have found that my “iTunes Remote” app on my iPhone gives me full access to my music library in my W11 laptop via iTunes. So I have full access to my music on my laptop using my phone as a controller without using the Sonos app

I hope others are able to enjoy music again using their Sonos speakers.

so is there an fix for the itunes library issue? 

I use a macbook

My thanks to everyone who has offered Mac solutions

I did get there in the end

The important thing was getting the “NAS” share path right even though I’m using it as a workaround for the Mac’s hard drive

In case it’s not mentioned earlier, if you’ve given access to a particular folder then your share path will be the computer share name as shown in the sharing drop-down where you gave file sharing permission followed only by the shared folder and not “users/account name/“

once I’d worked that out, my music was back in operation.

For a good few years I had the pleasure of being a Sonos Beta tester. I and and my fellow testers picked many a hole and weeded out many a bug.

If I had had the opportunity to test this series of updates there is much that I would have railed against.

I seen some lack of thought in operation, but this takes the biscuit!

Okay, this thread has gotten long, I had to spend way too much time figuring out mine, and there seem to be multiple possible solutions that are getting buried and harder to find.  So I’m going to try to list links here and pin this as a group best answer.

All of these have to be done on the desktop software.  There is no option to add a music library folder in the app that I’ve seen.

Also, please remember that Sonos seems to be moving things into the cloud, without extra security like multi-factor authentication.  I am not an IT person but I think there could be security risks depending on how your computer has sharing set up (for example: if you give Sonos more than “read” access, or if you give the Sonos software a computer administrator password, or if you make your computer visible on a network but don’t have your file sharing password-protected).  Other more IT-experienced people might be able to say more about that.

• The simplest option for Windows:  Trying to share your music folder on a PC with Sonos listed as a windows user account in the settings.  @HelpingIsKind and @Scrubbrush posted about how to do that:

• If the simplest Windows option didn’t work, or you don’t have Sonos listed as a user account: The first way didn’t work for me even though I had Sonos listed as a user.  I have no idea why.  But it is possible to share your music folder on a PC with any windows user account, and then trick the Sonos desktop software into thinking it is looking at a networked drive. @press250 wrote about how to do it and I wrote about what I did on my computer in other threads:

• If you have a Mac: @ECS3, @m-m-i, and @salami slices wrote about how to do it:

• If none of these work: From what I’ve read, Sonos stopped supporting SMB1 for file sharing and maybe that has something to do with it. @peterlip mentioned how to check it in Windows and @Chlorine suggested another way to start looking at it for a networked drive:

• If it still doesn’t work: That really stinks, but there are a lot of helpful people here who can maybe offer more ideas if you keep posting.  Plus I think Sonos needs to keep hearing it.

Did not work for me on my iPhone SE and Windows 10 Pro

Tidepooler: nice summary. 
for me, upgrading my old router (which is my NAS mount) to a newer model that supports SMBv2 solved the problem. Still acts a bit strange, but my original library plays from desktop and app. Only tweak was the new router required complex password, so desktop and Sonos had to be told the new password. 

B Tuffbeard: Thanks for your workaround. I have the exact same system as you, and your fix works! Very disappointed with Sonos on this, and it colours my opinion of them, to the point where it will take a huge  apology from them, along with an easy-to-implement solution, for me to ever recommend the product to others, or to ever invest in additional speakers or Sonos products.

Thanks for the write up but it failed to work for me on my iMac with my hundreds of albums either. Furious customer who doesn’t need to burn hours of time trying to fix Sonos’ software issue. I put in the admin password, I’ve now giving Everyone read/write access to my music folder, yet the new & improved app on my iPhone or Mac now has locked me out of listening to my music on my $$$$ Sonos equipment.

Running Sonoma 14.5 and iOS 17.4.1, all latest updates. Old Sonos S1 controller was just fine. No issues.

Where is the announcement about a fix since you have now hit everyone with this. Roll us back or fix it already!

 I was unable to schedule my level 2 support call because naturally that link also didn’t work, why would it, the only thing that now consistently works are the adds for the new headphones.  I called customer service again and after an hour and fifteen minutes on hold I spoke to a rep who after another half hour found me a level 2 support.  If you can get to level 2 they definitely know more.  All my playlists were missing, couldn’t see any.  What he had me do was delete my connection to Amazon, the service I used to create my playlists on Sonos.  I had already deleted and reinstalled the Sonos app but never thought about deleting and reinstalling my Amazon app.  This did bring back my playlists so I’m happy for that.  I still have all the problems with my playlists everyone else has but at least I have playlists again.  A broken playlist is better than no playlist…
 

So if you can’t see your Sonos playlists you created using Amazon Music try deleting and reinstalling the Amazon app., worked for me.  

So for anyone desperate for a permanent solution, Sonos still works with Plex without needing the dumb permission settings.  So I transferred my entire Music Library to my Plex.

I wrote four hours ago that my playlists were all restored on the app after talking to level 2 support.  They are all gone again.  Such an amazingly horrible app and company.  

I put this on another thread ….

I finally got this to work as changing the file sharing properties alone didn’t work and I was still left with the 913 error.

What I did was create a new music folder on C:drive then transfer all my content into that folder and delete the old one then followed the above steps  re file sharing properties     thanks to

• Scrubbrush

and it worked.

My 2 hours with Sonos support confirmed two things:

1.) You need to use the network drive option, even if your source folder is on your local machine.

2.) There is an issue if the folder for your Music Library is attached to a cloud service.

In my case, my files were stored on OneDrive. Once I copied the songs to a folder on my desktop, they were able to sync once again. 

12:22am 5/30/24:

I went into my laptop and downloaded the Windows desktop software from the Sonos support download site

I mapped a network drive to my Synology NAS drive and verified that my destination folder was in good shape

I had to ascertain the file path to my NAS drive and then type that all out verbatim in the desktop app for Sonos

(Following ten years of stable architecture, I found that the file path to my music library was straight up missing today)

Following successful connection, it updated for 20 minutes and now my music library is listed as a source and I can access it on my phone, my desktop app, and my web app, and my wife’s phone, but the navigation is spotty 

,

Could have sworn that Music Library was available as a standalone icon in the new app as recently as Friday, but that wasn’t there this evening? It was a tile last week, now it’s a source. I pinned the access folder and I hope that it sticks around tomorrow

So today I received an email escalating me to Level 2 support and a link to schedule an appointment.  Only appointment until end of year was 7:30 on June 13.  Now gone and nothing available.  I looked months into 2025.   ROTFL at Sonos.

No album artwork displayed on my app. Disappointed in Sonos. 

As of this morning (6/2) I was able to add my external hard drive to the Sonos desktop app without getting the error code. 
 

hopefully Sonos is on the road to fixing the issues that have plagued us for months. 

The problem we are wrestling with was created either by a Sonos plan to only support music streaming services or a bungled software development project that did not know that self-hosted iTunes libraries is a major requirement for many customers or a failure to do adequate regression testing. Sonos may not understand how infuriating an hour long help desk wait is only to be told that there is no fix. I recommend writing to the Sonos board of directors chairman to make your voice known. His name and address are below.

Mr. Julius Genachowski  

Chairman Board of Directors

Sonos Corporation Inc.

614 Chapala Street

Santa Barbara, CA 93101

I came up with a Mac solution:  I bought a set of HomePods from Apple and gave up on Sonos.  Smart move, Sonos.

I posted an article with workarounds on medium.com

Basically - use the Plex Media Server until they fix this (who knows when).