Bring back the ability to search music library

Personally, I have decided to go in and review my numerous pieces of now useless Sonos Hardware from the sites I have purchased them from.  Hopefully it will prevent others from investing in speakers in a company that doesn’t listen to the folks that buy their equipment.  

I have several thousand albums and have upgraded from S1.

I’m amazed (actually frustrated) that you can’t search by artist or album or track or in fact anything.  To add to it the list of albums is now in a long vertical list with NO alphabet scroll.   Finding an album is pretty time consuming now as you have to make about 100 swipes to get to the letter R for example.

Move fast and break stuff.   Move fast and lose your customers.  Sonos are the dominant player and are capitalising on it like many do.  Customers don’t matter any more.  Watch out it wont be longe before someone else knocks you off.

Come on guys, do you use the app yourselves?  Do you care?

SONOS has suggested that people use Plex Server on their NAS and add the Plex service to Sonos.  So essentially you are streaming to yourself...in some sort of round-about way that requires an internet connection 😦, versus simply a NAS on your local network that continues to work regardless of internet connections.  It seems a bit fiddly and occasionally a track will not play - “broken pipe” says Plex - probably that crack pipe Sonos been hitting.  But if you immediately click on it after the error, it will play. It is fiddly and kludgey, but free. That’s Sonos’s suggestion. Or you can use the SonoPhone app for $3 on iOS which supports search if you don’t want to mess around with Plex. It’s kind of a DIY system now.

After researching the functionality, I’ve spent £3,245 on this eco-system over 3 years to use my own NAS to play FLAC and other hi-res music across my local network. It is a breach of contract that the search functionality and other aspects that make Music Library usable being withdrawn in an effort to push users towards chargeable music services.

I have submitted a formal complaint outlining this and I am seeking a full refund.

Who told you the bolded?  If that were the case, then why would Sonos ever state the search facility for local music was coming back?

https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/the-new-sonos-app-and-future-feature-updates

Coming soon

• Continued improvements to navigation for visually-impaired customers: mid-June
• Adding to queue and playing next: early June
• Sleep timer: mid-June
  • Use the Sonos app for macOS or Windows or Sonos Voice Control to set sleep timers today.
• Local music library search and playback: mid-June
• Update WiFi settings: mid-June
• Snooze alarms: TBD

Yep.  Local music is a declining thing, less than 10% of Sonos usage back in 2017, certainly less than 5% today.  However, the nonsense about them removing the ability to play local music because of some moustache twirling evil plot to force people onto streaming services (that Sonos make no income from) is silly.  It’s just not a priority, and as such, a half-baked app that never should have been released had less prioritized items in the half that was not baked. 

https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/the-new-sonos-app-and-future-feature-updates

Coming soon

• Continued improvements to navigation for visually-impaired customers: mid-June
• Adding to queue and playing next: early June
• Sleep timer: mid-June
  • Use the Sonos app for macOS or Windows or Sonos Voice Control to set sleep timers today.
• Local music library search and playback: mid-June
• Update WiFi settings: mid-June
• Snooze alarms: TBD

Hello,

I am no lover of the new app. When I spoke to Sonos support they said the inability to search NAS libraries was a bug/flaw that was being rectified, I hope this turns out to be true. I also find the new app less intuitive, the volume bars are harder to use and you have to hit apply for some reason. I’d be happy with the older app back but we all know that isnt about to happen.

I also have an issue that Amazon Music doesnt play, seems to let you select the album then it just skips each track, does anyone else find that?

Looks like it is - https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/the-new-sonos-app-and-future-feature-updates

A bug/flaw? That local library ability is the main reason I’ve spent so much money on SONOS hardware over the years and I am appalled by their casual indifference. I can’t see me ever recommending them to family/friends in the future and am considering alternatives to use myself...

Scheduled to be fixed in mid-June.  Perhaps Sonos will release it early, like some of the fixes today were.  That should give the mob something to complain about - “Sonos didn’t release this the day they said they would!” (Don’t laugh, I’ve seen this actual complaint about something released early).