sonos metadata features

Do you know if Sonos has attempted to? Or do they just assume they won’t get anywhere? 

They have stated in the past that although they pass along requests, the best way to lobby for features is to lobby the music services directly.  They’ve also repeatedly stated there is no financial exchange by either party for integrating a service into the Sonos app, so they have no leverage.

All right, I looked through the Sonos API docs:

https://devdocs.sonos.com/docs/playback-objects

https://devdocs.sonos.com/docs/soap-requests-and-responses

https://devdocs.sonos.com/docs/create-hero-views

https://devdocs.sonos.com/docs/smapi-object-types

If I’m understanding correctly, the only parameters available via the playback object SOAP requests & hero views are these:

Artist

-Name

-ImageURL (artist photo)

-ID 

-Tags (only option is to display Explicit or not)

Album

-Name

-Artist

-ImageURL (album cover photo)

-ID 

-Tags (only option is to display Explicit or not)

Track

-Name

-Track number

-Artist

-Album

So even if a music service wants to display other types of data, whether it’s Apple or not, they are restricted to these parameters. Correct? Again, here are some parameters that I think would be nice to have but don’t appear to be included in the Sonos API:

-Album release date

-Album description or review

- Album credits (producer, band members, etc)

- Audio quality (Atmos, lossless, etc). There is an Atmos “badge” on a track once it starts playing, but no option to view before playing. 

- Artist bio

- Release type (album, single, live, compilation etc). There is an option to create container lists of these on an artist object, but once viewing an album type, it doesn’t display any info about it.

- Direct link to artist from album. There is a link buried under “more” in the sub menu, but it takes some effort to find that.

- Track lyrics

Maybe some of these can be passed via a generic container type, but that seems to be restricted to a list format, not text.

I also took a quick look at integrations with Tidal  / Amazon, they are a bit better at the Artist level with container lists of most popular and release types. Spotify connects directly to the app, but then Spotify doesn’t provide Atmos or lossless.

Anyways, I’ll follow up if there is any response on the apple support forum. None so far.

Your metadata list is reasonably accurate, but SMAPI does expose lossless tracks when enumerating (Sonos app does not display this, mine does), and SMAPI includes lyrics support (though I’ve never seen a music service that generates it). There is also a Description field for podcasts (only).

The Atmos badge (and the other “high-res” badges) are only displayed after streaming has started as the system has to determine what quality it can play over the transport, that data is not in the metadata (but in the stream).

Thanks, that clarifies the atmos hi res badge display issue. However, from a user experience perspective, I would like to see at a glance whether or not an album or songs are intended to be in Dolby atmos / lossless or not. If the Sonos app badges don’t officially confirm the format while playing, then that is a problem to troubleshoot the hardware & software setup. It just seems to me that the approach is backwards.

I think apple has three audio quality categories: Atmos, Hi Res Lossless, Lossless. Couldn’t this text or flags be passed to the Sonos API for display of icons or text? It would require a separate parameter in the Sonos API, if I’m understanding it correctly. Yes, it’s important to verify technically exactly what the audio quality is while streaming on specific speakers. But why should that prevent categorizing the intended audio format(s) in the Sonos app as well? 

PS - Is there a direct link to dev info about lyric support? I’m not able to find it. 

Interesting, all mention of lyrics support has been deleted when they redid the site a few months ago. You can still find it in internet caches, it used to be here (in May 2023 at least):

https://developer.sonos.com/build/content-service-add-features/add-lyrics/

Here is an old copy of the docs:

http://web.archive.org/web/20230330182814/https://developer.sonos.com/build/content-service-add-features/add-lyrics/

With obvious exceptions, companies try not to throw other companies under the bus and publicly share information about their private discussions. It tends to look petty and foster a bad relationship. As an example look at how the Google/Sonos relationship is going.  A different situation, for sure, but neither company is winning over customers with the public disputes.  So no, I would not expect Sonos to report back about their conversations with Apple.  They’ll just let Apple talk to their own customers.

As far as the idea that it’s Sonos job to talk to Apple on behalf of their customers, it seems pretty obvious that a feature request directly from an Apple customer would be seen and possibly hold more weight than one passed through a 3rd party.   Especially when it seems that the customer is more likely to drop Sonos than Apple if the issue doesn’t get addressed. Why would Apple care if you’re threatening to ‘punish’ the wrong culprit?  Even more so if the threat was, “if Sonos doesn't fit this, I’m going to go buy a homepod”

At the end of the day, Sonos should be very concerned with the end-user experience within their own app, especially if their users are now required to use it. Setting aside Apple for the moment, many of these metadata requests are missing across all music services within the Sonos app. 

I’ve used Sonos for a long time, and I always used the Sonos app only as a “remote control” for grouping speakers and used Spotify Direct instead. That was fine enough. The problem is that Dolby Atmos and spatial audio have thrown a wrench in that kind of setup. I recently purchased the new Era 300 speaker, and the only way to listen to Atmos music is through the Sonos app. And the Sonos app experience is not good for browsing and music discovery, finding Dolby Atmos music, lyrics, and so on. I think many would agree with that. What I’m hearing here is that the only way to improve the Sonos app experience is for customers to lobby their music service of choice to do a better job of integrating with the Sonos API. Or wait for Sonos to improve it, and who knows if or when that might happen. I hope that a great app update is on the horizon, but I’m not holding my breath. 

Going back to Apple specifically, I posted a support topic with the same requests. There are no replies so far. If there is a direct way to submit Apple Music feature requests, I haven’t been able to find it. Here’s the link again if it was missed:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255131988

For those here who agree with the requests, please click the “me too” button or comment on it. Then it might start gaining some traction.

Thanks!