Enthusiast I

Answered

Spotify artist search not working

288 replies
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Desktop and Android app have started telling me "spotify returned no results for _____ in artists. Please try a different category or a new search term" this morning. Has replicated on multiple devices. Only happens for Spotify and only in "artists", albums and playlist search still works. Any idea if I changed a setting or if something is wrong on their end?

I’ve reset the speakers and restarted the apps.

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Corry PAnswer

Sonos Staff

Hi @conor et al

We believe this issue has, again, been resolved and we can no longer reproduce it in our own testing. If you do continue to see this issue, however, please get in touch with our technical support team to report as much. Thank you.

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein

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106rallye

Sorry, this is a Sonos issue. Their link with Spotify is a core function/dependency of their business model. Sonos is peripheral to Spotify. Unless Spotify is deliberately blocking Sonos (which they of course are not), it is the responsibility of Sonos staff to resolve, rather than passing off the problem to their customers (reinstall this, reboot that, contact Spotify it’s their problem…). Please sort this out Sonos - it is your responsibility. Personally, I spend my much of my time at work resolving problems caused by others. When I get home I want the luxury items I’ve invested hard-earned cash in, to just work, so I can enjoy them and relax, rather than having these things present problems for me to solve.

We just do not know. As I understand it Sonos’ API opens up it’s systems to Spotify - that is responsible for connecting to the API. So we do not know who needs to resolve this. Sonos says both parties are working on a solution though……

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rob17117104

Contributor I

FYI Y’all

Workaround suggested (S1 on Android) to use double quotes around artist name works for me. Thanks for that.

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rob17117104

Contributor I

Sorry, this is a Sonos issue. Their link with Spotify is a core function/dependency of their business model. Sonos is peripheral to Spotify. Unless Spotify is deliberately blocking Sonos (which they of course are not), it is the responsibility of Sonos staff to resolve, rather than passing off the problem to their customers (reinstall this, reboot that, contact Spotify it’s their problem…). Please sort this out Sonos - it is your responsibility. Personally, I spend my much of my time at work resolving problems caused by others. When I get home I want the luxury items I’ve invested hard-earned cash in, to just work, so I can enjoy them and relax, rather than having these things present problems for me to solve.

Well said!

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rob17117104

Contributor I

@Sonos - What appalling comms to treat your customers with. ’No time frame to share right now for a resolution’… thats basically giving all your customers two fingers & telling us you dont give a *

““I apologize for the inconvenience you are experiencing, and I'm here to provide you with the help you need. We are aware of this issue, and we are actively working with Spotify to find a solution as soon as possible, there is no time frame to share right now for a resolution. As a workaround you can use Spotify connect to connect the Spotify app with the Sonos speakers.”

*Moderator Note: Modified in accordance with the Community Code of Conduct.*

Airgetlam

How exactly does Sonos demand a time frame on when a bug that exists in Spotify’s servers is going to be fixed, and present that data to you? Sonos engineering isn’t writing or fixing the code, that’s the responsibility of Spotify’s engineering team. Sonos wouldn’t even have access to the server, I would expect.

Bruce

Ken_Griffiths

I thought the Sonos search worked for artists if you put quotes around the search term “Red Hot Chili Peppers” was one example I saw as the current workaround till things get fixed by Spotify 🤔?

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LuxuryBeast

Contributor I

I have the same issues. Live in Norway.
Works on my phone, but not in the S2-app in Windows.

controlav

Lead Maestro

How exactly does Sonos demand a time frame on when a bug that exists in Spotify’s servers is going to be fixed, and present that data to you? Sonos engineering isn’t writing or fixing the code, that’s the responsibility of Spotify’s engineering team. Sonos wouldn’t even have access to the server, I would expect.

Actually I have a theory that the Spotify SMAPI endpoint, and only theirs, is actually coded and run by Sonos. It lives on ws.sonos.com which is their general web-services subdomain. I can’t prove it though. You are right that time frames for bug fixes is not really a software engineering thing, though in this case they fixed it once last month so should be able to fix it again pretty damn quickly.

Author of the leading independent Sonos apps for Android, MacOS, iOS, Windows and Xbox.

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smithnyc

Contributor I

I recently posted about this issue including screenshots.

I have an updated on my findings:

Using the Spotify App on Android, Artist Search works as expected
Attempted to wrap the search terms in double-quotes returned some results, but they don’t work (screenshots below)
All the data comes from Spotify. So, if the Android app can use the Spotify data to return Artists Search Results, then it is a desktop bug that the same exact search fails
The fact that adding quotes alters the outcome (though doesn’t fix) says “very bad input sanitization”. Like a SQL Injection vulnerability from 2002 when such things were prominent.

Dear Spotify Devs: Have you heard of this API tool called Postman? It let’s you browse the results of API calls in real time, perhaps, you know, to adjust your code to consume the returned data.

As an API developer, I can suggest this bug out to take a week at most if you put a couple people together and let them work on it. My guess is the scrum manager has been told to build new features ahead of fixing bugs.

Searching for “black keys” does not return results, but this artist is definitely on Spotify.

Adding double quotes (“) around the search term affected the results.

Clicking the returned entry for “Black Keys” does not give expected results, they have many albums you’d expect to see at least a few of them hear. The mobile version of Sonos was only two taps away from listening to “El Camino (10th Anniversary Edition)”.

You would expect “Black Key Radio” to start with a Black Keys song and then go into other similar music, perhaps Artic Monkeys or Led Zeplin. Instead, it plays a very random track that is neither what I was just listening to, or related in any way to Black Keys. My previous listening was Killer Mike’s MICHAEL album.

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smithnyc

Contributor I

How exactly does Sonos demand a time frame on when a bug that exists in Spotify’s servers is going to be fixed, and present that data to you? Sonos engineering isn’t writing or fixing the code, that’s the responsibility of Spotify’s engineering team. Sonos wouldn’t even have access to the server, I would expect.

If it was the Spotify API, then this same exact function would not work on the mobile version of Sonos app, it would be broken the same way everywhere.

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