using NAS with Sonos

It’s difficult to give exact figures, as it’s down to the number of tracks and the amount of store used by each track. So even though I only have about 38k tracks on line, I run out of Sonos store as many of those tracks are classical (which often have longer file name and more tag data).

There are ways around these limits, but none are ideal. Sonos caters more for streaming, not for local NAS access.

Sonos app is what you need (music library) there is also aMy Cloud Home service that you can add to Sonos.

As Belly M said, the Sonos app is used to play music. However, if you’ve attempted to index all your files, then you’ll need to see what you’re missing.

I’m currently using the Sonos 2 app on my iPhone and iPad. And I went into Services & Voices and downloaded My Cloud Home (signed into my cloud account. It is in my Browse section along with all my other apps (TuneIn/Spotify/etc). When I open artist/albums/etc up there is nothing. It says No selections are available. Again, in my Music Library Setup MyCloud shared folder is listed. Am I missing something here? Amun what do you mean by attempting to index all your files? Try to pull up my music files on the My Cloud Home app?

Ignore the My Cloud stuff for the time being. If you’ve successfully indexed your music via the Sonos app, then from the Sonos app you should be able to use the browse option - the top option is Music Library. If you choose this then you should see a list of the ways that you can look at your music - e.g Artists, Albums etc. These use the tags in your music files, so will on’y be as accurate as the info in your files. I always use the Folders option at the bottom, as it shows be my (well organised, IMHO) folders on the disc. The folder view will show you the share that Sonos is using and clicking on that shows your folders. It’s a way of checking that the indexing has worked properly.

You add your NAS as a music library

 In the Sonos App

 click on settings, then system

 then scroll down to “Music library”

 then “Music library set up”

Then “Add shared music folder” and find the folder on your NAS where you’ve stored your music

I’m currently using the Music Library to access music from NAS. Simple. Don’t know why I didn’t look at that before. I assumed I needed the My Cloud Home app in order to stream music from NAS to Sonos. So what is the My Cloud Home app used for? Do I need it? Obviously it shows no music in there. So now that most of my music folder/files are in my WD NAS and on my Sonos app I don’t need to keep almost 1TB of music on my Windows laptop or old MAC anymore? I can delete them to open up more space on my drives? I have my NAS for storage/streaming and for backing up those files. I’ll also have my portable external hard drives for my music files as an extra protection? So can I access my Sonos and NAS from around the world to play music while I’m not home? 
What can you tell me about Plex? Or Twonky? That’s my next project. Lol. 1 step at a time. I have both apps in my WD My Cloud. I heard nice things about Plex. Do I need it? 
Thank you again Amun, BellyM, Ken Griffiths and bockersjv for your help. Much appreciated. It just took some patience and investigating to get it up and running. 

You don’t need Mycloud. Plex is a big worm hole. I’d get used to NAS drive favourites first. 
one thing I’d recommend is MP3Tag software. Helps sort all your tags and great for adding album art. 
Your NAS is your NAS, Sonos is just using it. If you want to access it adding the world then there are solutions to do so. These include cloud services. 
 

Personally i looked into all these. I ended up buying a dedicated music player that takes SD cards and regularly copy the NAS music directory to the SD card. Even 200gb cards are quite cheap.
 

I use Odroid HC Units which are similar to Raspberry Pi units.  Cheap and fun to configure and learn. 

Dcgman#1,

The SONOS library can include up to 65,000 tracks, however, if your Metadata (Album name, Track Title, Composer, etc.) is lengthy, you may run out of index space before reaching 65,000 tracks. Space is an issue because the index is stored in the SONOS players and they have finite RAM available. The SONOS library supports up to 16 segments. There is no need to delete any music files from the NAS. One solution for track overflow is to partition your library into multiple folders. For example you could have ‘music/Christmas’, ‘music/Halloween’, etc. and include only the folders appropriate for the season. Note that you have no control over the index build order. If the indexer terminates early, due to reaching a limit, and you try again, the list of tracks included will probably not be identical.

I don’t know how you built your library. While using the SONOS App to play music through the SONOS system, it is possible that nothing or very little will be listed in the Artist, Track, Composer, etc. sections of the library if there is no Metadata present in the track files, however, you will be able to see all of the tracks in the Folders section of the library.

If you have not already done this, disable the recycle bin of your NAS. Since you have no control over the library build order and the indexer will not process duplicates, you may encounter situations where changes to the Metadata will be ignored if the recycle folder is scanned first.