New Sonos app: Where are my custom radio stations?

The workaround of adding stations does work but not for the station i want to add.  Through the old TuneIn app, it will play but through the new one, it refuses to play it saying that regional restrictions are in place.  That is a restriction that tune-in have decided themselves because the radio station has its own app (coast fm Canary Islands) and they let you listen to that anywhere in the world.  Sonos need to get this sorted out with tune-in!

My understanding is a lot of this came about due a court case bought by some of the record companies (I seem to remember Sony & Warner being involved) against TuneIn to do with music licensing. The argument being overseas radio stations don’t have the licence to play music in the uk. To be honest I find it pathetic, detrimental, and extremely lacking in any thought about the people it affects - but when does that ever bother corporates.

You will find that other things like Radiogarden - the website and app where you can explore internet radio using a map of the world - will pop up a message that stations outside of the UK are restricted. This is again due to the legal case and subsequent ruling.

It affects radio tuning services - TuneIn, Radiogarden, myTuner - but by small mercies not direct URL’s.

What Sonos could do for their customers is have a content service you could optionally enable which allows you to simply add direct URLs - or even better when you’re in Sonos Favourites just have a handy button that says “Add custom streaming URL“ or similar.

Back to the UK-only thing - it’s frustrating that I can’t simply find & play my favourite chilled station which originates in the US, that I have to jump through unnecessary hoops to listen to it, but it must be extremely frustrating to anyone who listens to overseas internet radio because they have links to that location, perhaps because those stations broadcast in their first language. Note this doesn’t just affect Sonos, which is a premium brand, it affects any internet radio where a tuning service such as TuneIn is used - that’ll be most home speakers, streaming hifi, radio apps etc.

I think Sonos could do a lot more to alleviate these frustrations for their customers. By having a facility to easily add custom streaming URLs to a local system, owned by private individuals, I can’t see how they could be seen as providing a radio tuning service.

Ps I'm starting to get suspicious that the new phone app is in fact just an interface to Sonos web. I could be wrong, I’ve not tested this theory, but if so it’s all very much a step in the wrong direction.

Thank you for taking the time to compose such an interesting and revealing reply.  it does make a lot of sense now that you have explained other things that have gone on in the background.

i agree that there should be an option to add a URL streaming link direct into the Sonos app. I have managed to still access this radio station through the direct URL link but i’m sure that will probably be the next thing to be closed down!.

Btw my custom stations are also gone from my iPhone app, but they’re still visible and working in official MacOS app:

So there’s indeed a hope they will be brought back into the phone app too.

has there been any official statement from SONOS on when or whether Custom Services and URLs will be added back to the controller?

The plot thickens with Tune-in.  I’d reverted to using the windows PC app and selecting the custom station from the old tune-in app but yesterday i noticed that the old plug-in had disappeared from the list on the PC.  (i thought it was something that i’d done so i just re-added it).

put the computer on today, went to select the custom station and found that the old tune-in app had disappeared yet again!.  i’ve re-added it but they are really trying their hardest to get this old app away from sonos!

Are there no third party apps that control sonos and let you add a custom station?

Just adding my vote to this massive issue. Adding custom URLs via TuneIn has always been a hack and the SONOS app should have a mechanism to add these directly instead. Good thing I was able to down-grade to the old app for now to preserve playing custom URLs.

Any idea when the future update is coming? In the meantime, I pay for the other service that I listen to on my Sonos speakers. No point in paying for a music service that you can’t use on your speakers while we wait for Sonos to figure this out.

You can ad custom url’s in the TuneIn app, though I have not tried this.

Unfortunately they didn't tell me that. I also can't find any mention of it on the official page that lists coming features and enhancements (https://support.sonos.com/nl-nl/article/the-new-sonos-app-and-future-feature-updates).

I'm paying for the use of these custom radio stations as well. I can still listen to them using airplay, but I chose Sonos years back because the speakers can stream audio without the use of a phone.

That selling point is gone for custom radio stations.