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Web Radios have stopped working overnight

  • 10 September 2020
  • 21 replies
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Hello

Overnight a lot of the radio stations I listen to have just stopped working.

examples. would be:

NTS live 2 (NTS live 1 works)

SomaFM - cliqhop and various others

These were working fine yesterday but no longer work

I can access them via chrome without any issues.

is there a way to check what the issue is?

Thanks

 

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Best answer by controlav 13 September 2020, 16:22

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21 replies

Userlevel 2
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I have the same problem. Most of my radio stations have stopped working. They worked yesterday during the day. They no longer worked yesterday evening (UK time). I’m in UK. The BBC radio stations still work. Nearly all of the foreign radio stations have stopped working. One or two work intermittently. One radio station has gone into “loop mode”, i.e. it plays for a minute or so, stops, and plays the same music again.

I do most of my listening using tunein. But when I try Sonos Radio instead, the same radio stations work / don’t work.

There has always been an intermittent problem whereby I got the error “tunein cannot connect” or words to that effect. This time the symptom is different. On my phone, I tap a radio station and nothing happens. No error message. In the windows app, when I dbl-click a radio station, I can normally see progress messages (first “connecting”, then “starting”) before the radio station starts playing. This time, I dbl-click and the run/play button (triangle/square) immediately goes to “play” (triangle). No progress messages. No error message. Clicking play doesn’t help. The play/run button changes to a square for a second or so and goes back to a triangle.

I’m getting the same thing - click the triangle and it just doesn’t play.  

very annoying!

 

Probably has a lot to do with the ruling in the link provided by controlav in this thread:

https://en.community.sonos.com/ask-a-question-228987/regional-restrictions-6847988

I've been in touch with one of the providers that linked to the same case. 

Seems like they have been adding adverts and not paying the artists with the revenue.

There seems to be a work around - you can add the direct links and you should be able to play the stations. 

Userlevel 3
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Sonos radio not such a cool feature if I can't listen to radio stations from outside the uk. One of the main attractions of it is to explore different stations and music from regions that I have traveled through, and hope to travel through in the future.

Userlevel 2
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As I’ve protested in https://en.community.sonos.com/ask-a-question-228987/regional-restrictions-6847988?postid=16471940, Sonos is showing scant regard for its customers. They should have seen this coming, warned us, told us what they’re doing to fix it, what to do as a workaround.

I’ve found two workarounds:

  1. As thegoatboy writes above, add radio stations manually. Here is one place where you can find the streaming URLs of thousands of stations: http://fmstream.org/country.htm
  2. Use another radio streaming service, such as radio.net. It doesn’t have as many stations as tunein, but it has all the ones I wanted.

I’ve noticed that, when I go to the tunein web site, all the non-UK radio stations have disappeared from there as well. When I use VPN and pretend to be in a different country, they’re all there.

What seems strange is that radio.net, as far as I can judge, does the same thing as tunein did until 2 days ago. And gets away with it. But let’s not give the lawyers any more ideas...

Sonos has zero control over the content that is streamed by third party companies such as TuneIn. It’s like blaming LG TV’s for the content that isn’t playing on HBO. 

Userlevel 3
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Yes but Sonos has control of Sonos radio its their radio service after all .

I wonder if we can get an official line on this. I predominatly listen to SomaFM channels as I work from home, they are my life. I now cannot play any of them - I can stream them through a browser but cannot add them manually to Sonos app because they “Already exist” - yet they simply will not play.  I’ve just attempted to play SomaFm Groove Salad through TuneIn on my Google Nest Hub and I am getting “This station is not available in your country” - so I’m off to SomaFm for further information, however I’d really like an official line on some of the other user’s chanenls mentioned above - are we seeing a Radio Caroline repeat??

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Sonos has zero control over the content that is streamed by third party companies such as TuneIn. It’s like blaming LG TV’s for the content that isn’t playing on HBO.

 

Internet radio is an integral feature of the product that Sonos is selling. 60,000 radio stations from around the world. It’s part of the promise. How they deliver that promise (TuneIn, Sonos Radio, ...) is their problem. If a major feature of the product breaks, they need to fix it. 

 

So here is what happened, it was TuneIn who decided to block hundreds of popular Internet Radio stations -

“TuneIn has removed SomaFM and other non-UK stations from their directory listings for UK listeners. We did not request this and have not blocked our streams. We just added this link below, which has info on how to get access to SomaFM streams where they're no longer available on TuneIn:

https://somafm.com/listen/uktunein.html

Sorry about this, but we had nothing to do with it. But you can still receive us.”

I am going to have to go to TuneIn for their official line on this but I am not holding my breath. I’ve already complained to Sonos that they should be offering TuneIn Radio Streaming alternative plugins to their app - forgive me for expressing this opinion publicly, but this is exactly the control American and Chinese companies should no longer be imposing on the arts.  This is another Radio Caroline, history repeating itself!

Thanks jan_buelens - having re-read your reply above, I have now resolved this using Radio.net as an alternative music source on Sonos - I revoke my statement above regarding alternatives to TuneIn on Sonos - I’ve now got to convince Amazon and Google to do the same!

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It certainly created a mess.

The alternative is to add radio stations to your sonos manually or pick a different radio directory service.

BUT: sonos needs to cleanup their act too, now I have to look under Sonos Favorites, Sonos Play Lists and in Radio by Tunein under My radio stations.

Can we please have one menu entry for this!

Userlevel 1

I’ve just posted this on the Regional Restrictions thread, but thought others in this thread might also like to read it!

I live in the UK and for the past few days I’ve been having the same problem in not being able to stream any non-UK radio stations.  It’s been driving me crazy trying to find a resolution (rebooting routers, rebooting all my Sonos gear, etc) as my wife has been very upset at not being able to listen to her favourite American old time radio programmes.  Like others, most of our radio listening is to US and non-UK stations.  Finally, after much internet searching (including Sonos and TuneIn) I have found this thread and now understand the reason why.

However, as many others have said, this is totally unacceptable.  Sonos should have told us this was coming and offered alternatives and support - as others have said, they are quick enough to tell us to upgrade to the latest OS and sell us new gear we don’t need!

Like others I suspect, I have spent thousands of pounds over the years on building up my Sonos system and now it’s (almost) useless.  I bitterly resent having to upgrade every time I add a new piece of equipment as I’m not able to download (and re-use) any version of the OS - I had to ditch 3 perfectly serviceable CR100 controllers and now use an Amazon Fire tablet instead - but it’s not nearly as good.  I don’t need (or want) to speak to my system, or do lots of the fancy things it now supposedly does - I just want to be able to listen to internet radio stations, play CDs and records and listen to my TV through the system.  Is that too much to ask?

Come on Sonos - start listening to your (many disgruntled) customers and think about them for a change - without us you’re nothing!

Userlevel 7
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I don’t think Sonos actually knew this was coming. In fact TuneIn don’t seem to have admitted this themselves, even now.

However, it has been a couple of days now and Sonos’ silence on the subject is unacceptable.

Userlevel 7
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Lets try and move everything to a single thread: https://en.community.sonos.com/music-services-and-sources-228994/tunein-blocking-foreign-radio-stations-in-the-uk-master-thread-6848128

I’ve just posted this on the Regional Restrictions thread, but thought others in this thread might also like to read it!

I live in the UK and for the past few days I’ve been having the same problem in not being able to stream any non-UK radio stations.  It’s been driving me crazy trying to find a resolution (rebooting routers, rebooting all my Sonos gear, etc) as my wife has been very upset at not being able to listen to her favourite American old time radio programmes.  Like others, most of our radio listening is to US and non-UK stations.  Finally, after much internet searching (including Sonos and TuneIn) I have found this thread and now understand the reason why.

However, as many others have said, this is totally unacceptable.  Sonos should have told us this was coming and offered alternatives and support - as others have said, they are quick enough to tell us to upgrade to the latest OS and sell us new gear we don’t need!

Like others I suspect, I have spent thousands of pounds over the years on building up my Sonos system and now it’s (almost) useless.  I bitterly resent having to upgrade every time I add a new piece of equipment as I’m not able to download (and re-use) any version of the OS - I had to ditch 3 perfectly serviceable CR100 controllers and now use an Amazon Fire tablet instead - but it’s not nearly as good.  I don’t need (or want) to speak to my system, or do lots of the fancy things it now supposedly does - I just want to be able to listen to internet radio stations, play CDs and records and listen to my TV through the system.  Is that too much to ask?

Come on Sonos - start listening to your (many disgruntled) customers and think about them for a change - without us you’re nothing!

There is a work around!

SomaFM have updated their page to show how you can still stream their services, which will probably work for a lot of other stations

https://somafm.com/listen/uktunein.html

you just need the *,pls link.

You can then add the stations like this:

https://support.sonos.com/s/article/260?language=en_US#:~:text=Select%20Manage%20and%20Add%20Radio,added%20station%20will%20be%20listed.

It’s not just Tune in. I have tried to set up directly with the URL (SOMA Thistle FM), as well as trying to access through SOMA radio, without success.

It’s not just Tune in. I have tried to set up directly with the URL (SOMA Thistle FM), as well as trying to access through SOMA radio, without success.

I listen to soma stations most of the day and I can confirm they are working. I just tried the cliqhop feed I use the most about a minute ago and it is playing without issue

Once you have added it as per the instructions above, you need to follow this step and not use the existing links: 

  1. From the Sonos music menu, navigate to Radio by TuneIn > My Radio Stations where the newly added station will be listed.

So on the app click the music note icon on the home page, which shows the browse page with sonos radio and any other apps you have installed.

Click on tunein radio, and my radio stations and play it from there. it won’t have an icon like the ones on your home page.

it will play.

From this page, you can then add it to your home page to play from there - again it won’t be listed with the station icon. 

I had this when i first tried it, its just a case of launching it from the right place. 

Hope this helps

 

Thank-you! I added MyTuner Radio and it worked immediately..

 

Very much appreciated.

 

Mike