sonos metadata features

Hi @jhl88 

Thanks for your post!

And thank you for your feedback! We absolutely do care, and have been working on some changes - changes I can’t really talk about at present, as we do not, as a rule, comment on future features or products. Your experience is important to us, and we have been listening to feedback - it’s just that some of these changes are, well, big, and take some time to implement and test. They will take more time yet.

It should be noted, however, that some of the things you mention are indeed not under our control. I don’t know if things like release dates are supplied in the metadata, but I can see how some users would perhaps want that info available in the search results if it was.

Your point about searching and selecting high-res tracks is well taken. I've marked this thread as a feature request and it will be seen by the relevant teams for consideration.

I hope this helps.

SMAPI data does not include most of the items you are wanting:

Release date is only included for podcasts, and the apps will display that when the music service provides it.

Lyrics are in theory handled by the app, but I am not aware of any music service that actually sends lyrics data.

Lossless is in the metadata, and my app on Windows (see profile) does show which tracks are lossless before you play them, see the stars:

Qobuz displays the album release date in browse / search.

@Corry P Thanks for the reply… look forward to future app updates.

@controlav @Corry P I’m not familiar with SMAPI, but both Apple and Spotify have external facing APIs. Here they are:

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/applemusicapi

https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/web-api

What is the technical limitation for the Sonos app to connect & pull data from third party APIs like these? For Apple Music specifically, appears you can request an Album “object” that returns all of the data I mentioned (except lyrics):

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/applemusicapi/albums/attributes

Spotify has a similar album API call option:

https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/web-api/reference/get-an-album

And there’s a lot more data that can be pulled about artists, songs, etc in both APIs. Apple also has an “audio variant” response that details whether it’s atmos, lossless, or other formats.

About lyrics, I found this API service:

https://developer.musixmatch.com/documentation

There’s probably an extra cost to use it, haven’t researched it thoroughly. But if other music apps can display scrolling lyrics, I don’t see why the Sonos app can’t.

What prevents the Sonos app from connecting to API services like these? I understand it is a lot of coding work for each service… beyond that I’m not understanding what the tech issue is. 
 

Thanks,

Josh

That would be nice if Sonos went through the Apple/Spotify API.  It doesn’t.  It’s the music services who code their UI using the Sonos API.  That’s what allows Sonos to support over 120 music service worldwide, when other streamers only support a half dozen or so.  

It’s also why, aside from things like local libraries or Sonos Radio, your beef is with the music services.  They are in charge of the look and feel of their implementation in the Sonos app.

Why was the decision made to put the onus on the music services? It seems to me it should be the other way around. I agree with your point about sonos being the most open platform, but that shouldn’t prevent more tailored custom integrations with the biggest music services. 

Because Sonos didn’t want to write and maintain code to 120 different APIs. They started down this path (with Rhapsody and Pandora which each had their own APIs) but it was simply not scalable, so SMAPI was born and the onus moved to each service that wanted to play, and most have done so.

Because they wanted the easiest way for music services to join, with the least amount of effort on Sonos’ part.  So instead of Sonos maintaining 100’s of different implementations of individual music service API’s, they maintain one, and the music services get autonomy over which features they wish to incorporate in their implementation.  It’s what allows them to support 120+ music services, whereas competitors are lucky to support 1/10th of that.  

Bottom line is, if you wish to see a feature, lobby the music service. It will be far more effective in getting features you wish than lobbying here, because Sonos couldn’t make the changes even if it wanted to due to the terms of use for SMAPI.  

I think it’s worth noting as well that although users see search results through the Sonos app, the app isn’t actually doing the search as I understand it, the Sonos devices are. That limits the size of software to do searching, but also means you can do voice control searches, and the device can more easily report back  what it’s currently playing.  I suppose that could be changed so that the Sonos app does it’s own separate, more advanced lookup using the music services API when available, but that adds a lot of complication.

I think lyrics might be hard feature to accomplish, if you want the lyrics to display in time with the music.  That would require the speaker to constantly/regularly send lyric data to the Sonos app.   I guess it already does this though, as you can get current runtime data from the Sonos app at any time.  Anding lyrics wouldn’t be much different, assuming you can get lyric data from the streaming source.

Not all of the 120 different APIs would need to be custom integrations. I’m specifically talking about the biggest services that most customers use. An example of punting the ball to bigger companies, which of course have little to no interest coding custom integrations for Sonos when they would prefer users to stay within their own ecosystem. What motivation do they have? I’m surprised that Spotify made the effort. If Sonos values their customers, they need to do the extra legwork to code on their side, find a way to partner instead of severing ties, etc. The fact that I’m on this forum arguing about features just goes to show how poorly managed their business is. They don’t even bother responding to direct contact emails, forcing people to use these crappy forums.