Parental Controls

Welcome.

Is there a button that controls whether Explicit songs are played or not?
No, there isn't.

Is there a button that controls whether Explicit songs are played or not? When it is off and you're listening to an album or playlist, the explicit songs are skipped. That way you can still listen to your favorite album or playlist when more impressionable members of the family (kids / parents) are around.

Some music services allow you to filter songs, but there is no Sonos specific setting for either services or your local library.

Sonos does not respect the filter set from the music source. Apple music as an example will continue to play explicit music via Sonos after parental controls have been enabled. Sonos' response is that they want you to listen to the music as the artist has written it.

This is unacceptable in my opinion. Radio edits exist for a reason and my children should not be exposed to inappropriate content. Both Apple and Sonos need to work to build a solution here.

Where did you hear that "Sonos response is that they want you to listen to the music as the artist has written it"? Nowhere have I seen or heard this from Sonos. In fact, other music services allow the explicit filter to carry over to Sonos enabled accounts, so in no way is this a philosophical limit imposed by Sonos.

So we are back to Apple's implementation being at fault.

Both Apple and Sonos need to work to build a solution here.
Have you asked them to do that? And if so, what was their response?

Response below is from Sonos (Jack G, Customer Care)

The reason for explicit control not being available through your system is that our speakers are sold to a vast amount of customers who want to listen to the songs as the artist has written it.

Response below is from Sonos (Jack G, Customer Care)

The reason for explicit control not being available through your system is that our speakers are sold to a vast amount of customers who want to listen to the songs as the artist has written it.

Sounds fishy. At the very least, you should ask why they allow explicit filters via Pandora and Google Play Music Radio.

Response below is from Apple

Upon further review, I found that at this time it isn’t possible to enable filtering of explicit content with Apple Music on Sonos. Filtering explicit music on Apple Music is done on each individual device and this feature is not currently available on Sonos.

Response below is from Sonos

Response below is from Apple
Thanks for sharing this.

Hi everyone, I'd just like to clarify a bit here. For services where explicit content isn't filtered, it isn't by any active decision not to include the feature, it's usually a lack of coding in the software integration being used. If tracks are only tagged at the service level, they may have trouble getting filtered at the device level the way Sonos connects.

We know that a lot of homes have kids and a number of other reasons to desire explicit content filters so we've made sure to pass on the interest for you to the development teams. While we don't discuss future development possibilities or timelines, we'll let you know if there are any details which can be shared on this request in the future.

While we do believe strongly in the sound quality of the artist's intent, we also know it can be important to keep inappropriate content from unintended audiences.