Sonos app on Android: How to see my playlists?

You can use the Android app to command the Sonos system. I'd say that's Android suppport. And you can play to the system from your phone (just no playlists from a certain app) - that's more than some users with older devices can do from their iPhones…….. 

Doesn't  your phone have a native music player you could try?

To me playing music that's on your phone seems like a very old fashioned notion. Since your phone is mobile (and so can be lost) I suppose your music files are also on a computer. Couldn't you work with those?

@106rallye 

» Doesn't  your phone have a native music player you could try?

No. Android Play was discontinued and disabled by google years ago and replaced with youtube music.

» To me playing music that's on your phone seems like a very old fashioned notion.

Well… it is %60 supported by the sonos app...

» Since your phone is mobile (and so can be lost) I suppose your music files are also on a computer.

Yes they are

» Couldn't you work with those?

The sonos app on windows is a mess, and I have seen it fail to function on multiple systems, and make a mess on other systems. When it doesn’t work it is impossible to troubleshoot. And I don’t use my computer for playback for anything else, so it has no playlists.

So the answer is: Using the computer for music is not my use case. My phone is like a remote…. it is on the couch with me, and it is how I play music.

Hi @SamJones6 

Welcome to the Sonos Community!

If you haven’t found a solution to this yet, I recommend you get in touch with our technical support team who have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your Sonos system and what it reports.

@Corry P  Thanks!

Please review this thread. It sounds like you just threw a stock answer on the thread.

If I thought tech support could fix it, I would be happy to contact them!

But…. they can’t fix what isn’t there…

From this thread (and others), the bottom line is: Sonos on Android is just missing the playlist feature. It is very misleading, because the Sonos app on Android has a section for Playlists.

But it doesn’t work. Not because it is broken, but because the Sonos team chose not to fully build this feature on Android.

Again, please review my use case and the discussion on this thread.

Hi @SamJones6 

Apologies - as I had no ideas at the time, and as no-one else had suggested it, getting in touch with technical support seemed like the best path for you to take. 

I have now discovered that we are in fact aware of this issue and are looking into it. With Android, we pull from the Android built-in music library database rather than actually scanning the device ourselves, and at some point over the years this has stopped working for playlist importing - in certain circumstances. In fact, I checked my own playlists and they are all empty in the Sonos app too.

On my own device, I discovered the following: Moving an album’s folder and it’s m3u playlist file to the phone’s internal storage and rebooting the phone (which makes Android rescan media content and can take a while, with no progress being shown) did in fact allow Sonos playback of the playlist. Most of my playlist files just contain all the tracks of a particular album, so it was easy to test one album and playlist.

So, it seems the issue is only with importing playlist files from an SD card. I double-checked this by creating a new playlist in Samsung’s Music app referencing only SD Card-stored tracks and Sonos picked it up immediately and would play it (no reboot of phone needed). Unfortunately, this doesn’t actually result in the creation of a m3u file so doesn’t really compare. It’s possible that new playlists have a better chance of working if you don’t export them as m3u, and just leave them in the Android database (which is where I presume Black Player EX will store them otherwise). I don’t think moving only a playlist file to internal storage will work as the playlist usually (or at least mine, created initially on WinAmp do) reference the tracks relative to where the playlist file is. Moving only the playlist file would break this relative addressing.

So, if you have the space on your phone, I recommend moving your music library to internal storage, along with any playlist files, then rebooting the device and waiting 10 minutes or so after the reboot before testing playback of the playlists on Sonos - though I also recommend doing a quick test, along the lines of mine, first, if you have a lot of music just to test that it will work.

I can’t promise any results as I’m unfamiliar with Black Player EX, though I believe the plethora of music playing apps for Android all just interact with Android’s own database, so I think the chances are good.

I hope this helps.

@Corry P 

Corey, Thanks a TON for your detailed investigation of this issue.

The good news: I think we are all on the same page now. (Yeah!)

» So, if you have the space on your phone,

Ahhh, there is the rub. I don’t. My music library is LARGE (8000+ tracks, mostly flac), and doesn’t fit to any useful degree on internal storage.

If the Sonos app could evolve to digest the playlists (android-internal or m3u or both) in an SD card setting that would get us somewhere!

(As it is, I can’t use the Sonos most of the time, which is crazy, because it sounds way better than my bluetooth speaker… and heck, I have several Sonos speakers… that I almost never use as a result of this.)

Another possibility would be to abandon playing from your phone and store your music on a NAS drive, using the phone merely as a controller.  This was how Sonos was designed to play local content, and sits much better with Sonos architecture than playing music stored on the mobile device (which is no longer even possible with Apple devices).  I also found a NAS to be more robust than the phone source when playing FLAC across several speakers.  In operation it is virtually identical to playing from the phone, despite your earlier comments.

I apologise in advance if my attempt to provide a helpful suggestion irritates you as much as everyone else’s attempts seem to have done.

@John B 

» abandon playing from your phone and store your music on a NAS drive,

» using the phone merely as a controller. 

I am aware that this is a possibility, but it is simply not the use case presented on this thread. (Note, I asked how to engage a specific use case, not “what are alternative architectures.” I know there are other architectures, and it is clear that Sonos was not designed for the use case I present though that is not clear from the Sonos literature and user experience.)

My use case exists for a specific reason: I spend my days and weeks spread across three different locations (a house, an office and an apartment). Each of these has a Sonos (that I am largely unable to use due to the Sonos on Android limitation discussed on this thread.) My phone holds my whole music library so that it is accessible to me in the car, at the beach, when I travel, and when I am in these three locations.

The phone is my master copy of my music library for this reason.

And, it goes without saying, the playlists I have on the phone are heavily used (with such a large library, playlists are the only effective way to make the music accessible), and they work great when I am in the car/at the beach/in an airplane/etc. They simply do not work when I am at home/office/apartment where Sonos systems exist. (My workaround is to use bluetooth speakers that had to put next to the Sonos speakers… and try not to weep at the relatively poor audio quality.)

I did not expect this limitation when I spend thousands on Sonos gear.

I could raise a huge stink, but instead I have tried to constructively engage the topic here on this forum.

I hope that is an acceptable path of engagement.

@106rallye 

» You can use the Android app to command the Sonos system. I'd say that's Android suppport.

Your position would be correct IF in the Sonos app all I could do was command the Sonos system.

However, the Sonos app ALSO shows my local library, tracks, albums, artists, and playlists.

If it shows those things, it should be able to play those things (as there is a Play button right there…).

But, while it plays SOME of those things, it does not play ALL of those things.

IOW: Either: (a) The app is broken (e.g. it should play all those things, but is damaged and cannot); OR (b) The feature set presented (play all these things) is out of scope with the feature set Sonos actually offers (and in this case, the app’s presentation -- and the relevant product documentation -- should be updated to reflect this.)

I am not taking a position as to what the truth should be (‘a’ or ‘b’). That is for the Sonos team to decide. (I thought it was ‘a’, but that is just what I derived from the information and app presentation. Such things are decided by Sonos Product Management, not by me.)

I am just observing the issue and trying to collaborate with the Sonos org to move toward clarifying what the situation actually is.

A SONOS MOVE or ROAM would allow Bluetooth play from your phone.

Some routers accept USB sticks and behave as NAS drives that are accessible to SONOS.