Radio skipping backwards - BBC radio repeats

Sorty Bruce but since I don't have this problem streaming to other devices your unhelpful remark is not particularly constructive. In that sense it kinda matches the response from sonos (thus far). 

Understood. There has been a long history, documented across many threads in this forum, of the BBC not working well with outside partners. And the simple fact is that they have a separate server to feed the Sonos stream from other streams would be why your other streaming sources aren’t experiencing the same issue.. But I do hope you’re able to resolve the issue, it is indeed an unfortunate circumstance. 

Hi Bruce,

Thanks again for your reply. 

What is frustrating about this is the refusal of sonos to accept any responsibility, even if the problem might originate elsewhere. 

The initial response to this thread was to blame customer's wi-fi set-ups. Now the finger-pointing has switched to the BBC's use of a dedicated, but apparently malfunctioning server, for its sonos stream. If true that isn't an issue to be fobbed off onto customers. It makes your products (and from my experience ONLY sonos products) perform sub-optimally and hence it should be a major goal for sonos to reach out to the BBC in order to resolve the problem. No?

The determination to blame customers hardware set-ups or third party stream.providers is extremely frustrating and highly damaging to the Sonos reputation. You should be able to see I have been a long time and loyal customer owning a beam, a sub woofer, 4x play 1's  2 xplay 3's and 2 x moves. I used to be a strong advocate of the brand but the determination the company has to fob this problem off onto everyone other than sonos is appalling. Please help me restore my faith in your brand. Unless you do I will be left with no alternative but to switch to competitor technologies and to stop recommending Sonos to others. 

Yours in hope rather than expectation.

A disappointed and very frustrated long time customer. 

Note, Sonos products are not my products. I am an end user, not affiliated or paid in any way by Sonos. 

I agree it’s a very frustrating issue. I do wish that the BBC was more transparent in their discussions regarding third party sources, but they continue to be focused on their own products, and give only cursory thoughts, imho, to other streaming companies, like TuneIn or Sonos. 

In my past, I’ve done some licensing work for streaming specific pieces of music, in a game, for international use. My experience was that it’s a complex and frustrating issue, and not only occasionally expensive, but sometimes impossible, depending on the license holder. It’s entirely possible that the BBC chooses not to engage in that aspect of business, instead focusing in their own products, which seem to work only in the UK, which assures that they get the necessary fees to support what they choose to work on, I honestly don’t know. 

But I am familiar with the Sonos business model. Sonos has zero control over what a streaming company chooses to present via the Sonos controller. Sonos has written an API that a company applies to the server of their choice (not a Sonos server), and the the Sonos process running on the speakers point to that server location. Sonos pays nothing to any streamer, so there is no financial incentive for the streamer to listen to voices coming from Sonos, other than the fact that those suggestions may represent some percentage of their listening audience. The reason many/most streamers use different servers/ports is so that they can track how large that particular audience is. That adds to the challenge, as you cabin play from another app, or even a web player, and get the same content, but from a different source/server/port. Most of this can be derived by reading the Sonos partners page.

As a Sonos customer, it sucks. But equally, we need to be aware of whom should be complained to. If this was indeed a failure on Sonos’ part, I’d be delighted to join in the chorus of complaints. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be their responsibility, so I made my complaints to the BBC. Being a citizen of the United States, and not paying the license fees that provide their income, I don’t imagine my complaint carried much weight, as evidenced by the length of time it’s been since I registered my displeasure. I’m at the point now where if I expect to hear the full range of offerings by the BBC, I would have to break laws, use some sort of VPN/masking software to make them think I was in the UK, and then install their own apps and use AirPlay 2 to send that signal to my Sonos devices. 

I understand your frustration, hell, I share it. But I don’t think it’s in Sonos’ power to affect this change. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that on several occasions, Sonos reps have reached out to the BBC about the issue, and been rebuffed. But that’s just a guess on my part. Ultimately, the content and quality of the stream presented to your Sonos devices is up to the streaming service, and your network. Sonos doesn’t touch that data until it reaches the speaker and is played. With the exception of Sonos Radio streams, at this point. 

Hi Bruce,

Thanks for your detailed reply. I do appreciate your effort to describe what you think the issue might be. 

The mere fact that you have had to do so reinforces my disappointment with Sonos's customer service. If this really is an issue with the BBC's hardware/software then why was the initial response to this thread an inference that it was customer's wifi systems at fault?

The bottom line here is that Sonos has not provided a solution for a problem that appears to be commonplace in one of its biggest markets. It is extremely disappointing. 

As I'm based in the UK I will try your suggestion of downloading the BBC app to my ipad and then airstream that to my Sonos systems. My sense is that the best solution will be to replace Sonos hardware with a competitor offering that does not require that I reach out to third party organisations to ensure its functionality. 

Once again many thanks for your efforts. I will let you know if airplay via a BBC app solves the problem but good god...I thought I was buying a market leading system that would provide problem free quality music streams. How wrong could I be. 

Sorry I'm 100% with Andy on this. Its shockingly bad service from SONOS to just tell the common laymen with no experience of the technical issues to try and sort it out with the BBC engineers. It happebs on SONOS products only and they need to have a dialogue. This is yet another instance of poor customer se4vuve from SONOS. I think I've had three issyes previously they blamed on my broadband router and it turned out to be internal issues. Starting to regret investing thousands in thrm.

Hi - I’m so pleased we’re not the only ones with this problem, as hopefully Sonos or BBC Radio 2 will take a good look to see why this is happening. We listen to BBC Radio 2 and Virgin Radio and it only happens with Radio 2 but, very often = many times a day, so like others say above, it’s really annoying. We have 5 x Play 1’s, 3 x One SL’s, a Boost and a Beam. Sometimes the system goes off and then none of the One SL’s come back on. They each have to be turned fully off and tuned back in..!  This has only been over the last few months.  Hope you can find a remedy - thanks.

BBC Radio will do nothing unless the right tech people ar SONOS liase and Sonos has shown known sign in supporting us on this.

Having same issue with Radio 5 Live. 

@Xander P is sonos doing anything about this? The almost complete silence from any sonos representatives on this tread is unacceptable. Its clear its a sonos issues and not a user issue. I've been a huge fan of sonos for years but I'm starting to feel let down. Get your finger out!