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John Von
Contributor I
March 5, 2020
Answered

Unable to import all my previous iTunes playlists into Sonos Imported Playlist

Unable to import all my previous iTunes playlists into Sonos Imported Playlist.

I have read a great deal about how to do this, so please do not direct me to this information, I need info of what to do when it does not work.  I have imported some playlist from My Music Library location but are missing some playlists. I have also in Apple Music exported Playlists to a .m3u file then directed Sonos to that file in Sonos’s Controller on my Apple Mac not forgetting to Update the Music Library. Nothing works in that I do not see all the playlists that I see in Apple Music. I have restarted the Sonos app and the MAC computer, still no joy. Any further relevent help would be much appreciated. Thanks very much.

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    John VonAnswer
    Contributor I
    March 9, 2020

    I have done some further investigation and found a solution to this problem, please read on.

    The reason not all playlists can be seen is because your Mac/PC or IOS device has not downloaded all the songs in each playlist from Apple Music. When this is done a folder entitled with the name of the Artist will be created and populated with the downloaded songs on the devices storage. The Playlists file just contains pointers to the artist folders and its tunes on the devices storage and if they are not on the device the playlist will not be listed in Sonos, because Sonos cannot access a song that is not on the devices storage.

    So now:

    In Apple Music do

    For each playlist download all the songs, you can do this for all songs in the playlist at a time.

    In the Sonos Controller do

    Manage, Update Music Library Now. This will probably take a few minutes.

    Now if you look at the imported playlist you should see all of them there and be able to play each song with the Sonos app.

    Assuming you now have all Playlists in Sonos, your Mac/PC will send them to iCloud which will then make them available to all your other Apple devices, assuming in Settings they allow the Music app to connect to iCloud.

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    wellandm
    Lyricist II
    May 30, 2020

    Hi @Adam S 

    When you ask ‘which format you are referring to?’ I’m not sure I understand what you mean?

    I’m using an iMac desktop computer running MacOS Catalina (10.15.5) which uses the new Apple Music App (v 1.0.5.14) that is the app which Apple replaced iTunes with in the latest MacOS.

    As mentioned in my post, the new Music app, no longer saves the music library in a .XML format but in a new format called Music Library.musiclibrary

    If I open the package contents (by right-clicking and selecting ‘Show Package Contents’) it appears to be made up of .musicdb and .plist files (see screen shots)

     

    To be clear, Sonos can still read my Music Library, but what I can’t do is get it to import my Playlists from the Music App, in the same way that I could from iTunes.

    Anonymous
    May 30, 2020

    Thank you for the clarification. I misread the .musiclibrary point.

    I would be happy to note your feedback for adding additional library formats. I would be happy to list the current workaround although it seems that you are well aware of this unfortunate circumstance.

    Current workarounds for playlist support on macOS Catalina include:

    •  Using Airplay 2 to cast the respective playlists from the new Music App to Sonos.
    • Use iTunes on Windows to share music library to Sonos. 
    • Do not update Mac OS to 10.15 Catalina,
    • Subscribe to Apple Music and add as a service to Sonos.

    We appreciate the feedback and although I cannot guarantee that the request for additional library formats will be implemented. I am happy to forward this feature request 

    wellandm
    Lyricist II
    May 30, 2020

    Thanks @Adam S 

    Not many of the options for a workaround work for me, perhaps #1

    • Airplay to cast - might be my only option
    • iTunes on Windows - doesn't help because I’m on a Mac and I’m not buying a PC to move playlists
    • I’ve already upgraded to MacOS 10.15 Catalina so that’s too late
    • Pay for Apple Music on subscription just to add the service to Sonos??

     

    It’s a real shame. When I first started using Sonos around 8 years ago, I thought they were the future, but Sonos don’t seem to want to go the extra mile to support their customers in the way that other services do (including the threatening email last year about older Play 5 devices no longer being supported, which led to a backlash on social media).

     

    I think my relationship with the Sonos brand will probably result in me mothballing my speakers and moving on do a different, more forward-thinking solution. The irony is, that’s always who I thought Sonos were. A real shame. I hope that Sonos wake up to customer experience more in the future and come back to being the cool forward-thinking brand that they once were.

      wellandm
      Lyricist II
      June 24, 2020

      I’ve figured out a way around this. You can still create a manual XML export from Music as follows:

      Open Music and choose File > Library > Export Library....
      Screenshot_2019-10-29_at_15.35.16.png

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