Mixcloud connection lost

@Rowena B. 

I’ve searched through a large number of posts regarding the Mixcloud connectivity issue and see common responses from Sonos Staff stating it’s some kind of user error, as you’ve implied in your response. 

This is not a user error. This is a breakdown in the communication protocol between Sonos and Mixcloud. Even if there is no good solution, please stop trying to pass the buck. 

That said, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the Mixcloud issues that people seem to be experiencing is a result of their move to a paid / tiered service. As a free user, when playing through the Mixcloud app I receive warnings about the number of times I can play tracks in a 14 day period. If that warning is a part of the connection / handshake process and hasn’t been accounted for in the Sonos app, I can see how that would throw a wrench in things. If Mixcloud changed something in their API, someone at Sonos probably needs to review how the Sonos app connects to Mixcloud. 

I’m going to try one or two things to see if it changes anything. First I’ll try buying the “Select” plan for a specific artist in Mixcloud. If that doesn’t work then I’ll try going “Premium” instead. I’ll report back here with an update either way.

The artist I wanted to test a “Select” plan with is not a Select artist, so I skipped that and went straight to a premium subscription. 

Unfortunately, that made no difference and I’m still unable to play tracks from Mixcloud through the Sonos app. I can still play a track through the Mixcloud app and stream it to my system over airplay, but that is a far less than ideal solution.

Hi @ratedblue, thank you for reaching back to the Sonos community and we appreciate all your effort that you have done and for sharing your feedback on this. 

There are no announcements from Mixcloud that there are changes in their API. If there will be any changes or updates, I'm sure that they will inform their customers about it.

Performing basic troubleshooting will isolate the issue if the problem is with Mixcloud or with the Sonos app or if it's a network-related issue for us to provide a solution. 

We really appreciate the time and effort you've spent doing all the troubleshooting steps, and it would be best for you to continue working with us over the phone to expedite the process. I recommend contacting our Sonos Customer Care support to remotely access your device and perform some tests on Mixcloud music service to provide the best option for you.

Please feel free to reach out in the future if you have any other questions. You're always welcome here.

@ratedblue

I’m a paid member at Mixloud. It’s not a free membership issue.

Either Mixcloud is not encoding their stuff exactly to spec for Sonos or something is broken in the protocol between Sonos and Mixcloud. 

@Rowena B. 
While I appreciate you taking the time to respond here, you and the other members of the Sonos support staff are not listening to us. 

SO LET ME YELL IT :)
THERE IS A PROBLEM WITH THE CONNECTION BETWEEN SONOS AND MIXCLOUD AND NO ONE IS LOOKING INTO IT OR REPLYING TO THE ACTUAL ISSUE.

Please stop saying that it’s our internet, our equipment, etc.

I can see what’s happening here and am able to use EVERY OTHER THING on my network and plenty of the other music services on Sonos. This issue is really specific and you’re just replying with the standard set of Sonos responses. And THAT is why I will stop buying products from your company as soon as there’s a viable option.

Between my houses and three offices that I set up / equipped, I’ve probably bought 50-60 Sonos products over the years. Not to mention the amount of evangelizing I’ve done for pretty much as long as you’ve been around. It’s all going in the other direction at this point.

 

Any update?

I still can play any mix cloud mixes.

Very occasionally over last few weeks it worked, but now not for days.

Please help

I am also having the same problem for many, many months and it drives me insane as I listen to quite a bit from Mixcloud.

My Sonos system is wired to the router - i.e. no wifi is involved.

Everything else on Sonos plays perfectly, Soundcloud, Spotify, TuneIn radio, private library.  The problem is 100% specific to the way Sonos is interacting with Mixcloud, it needs to be way more resilient when it hits a glitch and recover the connection correctly.

There have been a few characteristics that I’ve observed - (1) if the problem occurs and you have a bunch of other Mixcloud tracks queued up, they will all fail with the issue.

(2) Pausing a Mixcloud track and unpausing it seems to bring this problem on more frequently.

(3) If the problem happens then to make it go away I find I have to play from a different source, e.g. TuneIn or Spotify and then when I switch back to Mixcloud it starts to work again, I’m guessing the module/subsystem is reloaded / reinitialised and then gets rid of it’s bad state.

Sonos please treat this a real problem and not as an environmental one to users configuration.  The fact that so many people are experiencing this problem clearly points to a software issue.

I’ve raised a ticket with Mixcloud about this saying the following. 
“Hi guys,
Just making you guys aware that a lot of SONOS users are having big problems listening to Mixcloud via SONOS.  It's an ongoing problem that is with SONOS, see last post there from today but their engineers aren't giving it any attention.  
https://en.community.sonos.com/troubleshooting-228999/mixcloud-connection-lost-6849606?postid=16487066#post16487066

You might wish to get in touch with them as it reflects really badly for your users who listen via SONOS even though it's not your fault.”

Perhaps people here could do the same - especially those with paid Mixcloud accounts?

I recently logged a ticket with Mixcloud, with regard to Live Stream, they were responsive and did say they were currently working with Sonos on some issues:

https://en.community.sonos.com/music-services-and-sources-228994/mixcloud-live-stream-6850442?postid=16486757#post16486757

As the Live Stream is not currently working with the Sonos Music Service, I’m using airplay from Macbook to Sonos as workaround, I havn’t experienced any dropouts.

@craigski Ahh, I didn’t know about the way the SONOS music API works, interesting that it now seems to an issue on the Mixcloud side of things rather than SONOS

Same problem here, very irrittating