Creating new playlist in Sonos app from Android

  • 9 January 2020
  • 19 replies
  • 4633 views

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I recently purchased a Sonos 1 and downloaded the Sonos app onto my Android phone.  I am having a hard time creating and saving a new playlist and need detailed steps to do this.  I had (thought I) created one playlist, then tried creating a second, which did not work.  Then when I tried going back to my original playlist it disappeared and I now do not have any playlists.

Is their anyway of importing my playlists from my Android phone?


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19 replies

If the music is stored in the default location on your phone then playlists created in your music app should appear in Sonos under Playlists within 'on this device '.

You cannot create Sonos playlists from tracks stored on your phone. 

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I have 2 playlists stored on my phone, in the default spot. Neither one is showing up on the Sonos app.

I have been trying to create playlists with the Sonos app without any luck.

Are you trying to create Sonos playlists using tracks stored on your phone. If not, from where?

And where are you looking for those two playlists?

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All my music is stored on my Android Phone.  I have also installed the Sonos app on my phone.  The Sonos app discovered all my music on my phone, but unfortunately the playlists, stored on my phone, did not transfer over to the Sonos app.

Thru the Sonos app I have been trying to create playlists, but I have not been successful.  Should I be able to create a playlist in the Sonos app which is located on my phone?  If so how would I do that?

You cannot create a Sonos playlist from tracks stored on your phone. Stop trying. It cannot be done.

 

Also, please answer my second question about where you are looking for the playlists you had created on your phone? You won't find them in Sonos  Playlists. 

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So all I can do is select albums to play and enter them into the que.  There is no way to save the que as a playlist.

So all I can do is select albums to play and enter them into the que.  There is no way to save the que as a playlist.

Correct if tracks are stored on your phone.  You should however be able to see the playlists you have created on your phone,  but not under Sonos Playlists. 

i can confirm this still does not work.

no matter which music app i use to create the playlist and no matter where i store my playlists on my Android phone sonos never sees the playlists.

 

are there detailed instructions on how to get this to work?

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I have a Samsung phone, and Samsung Music Player app worked for me. You can create play lists in that app.

thanks for the quick reply.

i have a s20 FE arriving next week so I'll give that a shot.

 

on my non samsung phone i can't ever see tracks.

 

black player is my favorite mp3 app and the playlist names sometims show in the sonos app... but no tracks.

google music shows nothing.

 

I've looked around the directory structure to no avail. a step by step by sonos would be a big help. funny how tech these days requires community support to get it working!

 

i have to say after years of trying to get Amazon speakers and Google speakers to do what i want sonos is better, but the apo could use some UX/UI help.

 

i wish i could cast anything from my phone to the sonos! maybe someday

Can some one direct is to a DETAILED step by step in a list numbered 1 2 3 4 5. Seems no one on the internet knows how to do that for this problem. 

Create Samsung music playlist to transfer or share to SONOS playlist!

Anyone??

Still no step by step anywhere. Wtf. 

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Hi folks,

Thank you for reaching out to the Sonos community and letting us know about your concern. Let me share some information with you.

Audio files downloaded to your Android device can be played on your Sonos system using the Sonos app. When playing tracks from your Android device, it needs to stay powered on and connected to your network. If the device goes offline, other Sonos apps will show an error message if they try to play Android tracks that are still in your queue. If that Android device is no longer available, clear out its tracks from the queue to prevent any further errors. As @John B mentioned, 

Correct if tracks are stored on your phone.  You should however be able to see the playlists you have created on your phone,  but not under Sonos Playlists. 

This feature is not available in Sonos and we don’t have information to share at the moment. What I can do is to pass along your interest to our engineers. if you have any further questions, additional feature requests, or concerns, please do not hesitate to reach out. We are always happy to help out.

Hi, i have the sonos play 1, i use sonos app on my samsung galaxy note 20. I have playlist setup on my phone using samsung music app which i can see on the sonos app but i have recently updated my playlist on my phone but on the sonos app doesn’t show the new songs which i have added in to the playlist, i have uninstalled and reinstalled the sonos app but it only shows the same songs when i first installed sonos app originally. Is there anyway that i can get the sonos app to show the new songs i have added to my playlist.

 

Thanks

Nav

I noticed on a thread with narkor and John B that the latter mentioned playlists working with the Samsung Music App. Bob95235 mentioned here that it worked for him as well. I have a pixel, not a Samsung phone, but I was able to download the Samsung Music App and create playlists, and the Sonos app was able to pick them up. I tried a few other music apps first, creating playlists, but those were not picked up by the Sonos app. I don’t think the Samsung Music App is all that great, but I just wanted some simple playlists for music on my phone that I could play on Sonos.

 

I will add my opinion to narkor’s and others that it is extremely frustrating that I was not able to create a playlist with music on my phone through the Sonos app that Sonos could play. If Sonos can access music on my phone, and access playlists created by a certain application (but not by others), why can’t it give me the option to create a playlist, store that playlist on my phone where it looks for them, so I can then play them in the Sonos app when using my phone? It seems really stupid I had to go download a very specific 3rd party app to create a playlist, just in order to play it on my sonos.

So, the Sonos system stores the playlist on the speaker, so that anyone that has access can play that playlist. 

If that playlist contains music that is stored on your phone, what will the Sonos do when the phone isn’t reachable by the Sonos system in ipprder to play that music? What will your significant other, children, roommate, etc, do? They’d try to play that playlist, but nothing would play, because the phone is gone, and the music isn’t accessible. 

Rather than programming a system that constantly checks to see if the music source is available, Sonos has chosen to block using storage of music on mobile devices, and only allow music in playlists that are on ‘permanently’ attached storage, so that any playlist is accessible at all times, to any user of the Sonos system in your home, whether your phone is there or not. 

When I figured this out, when I first purchased a Sonos, it was puzzling, until I understood the Sonos system was designed for ‘all’ users in my home, and not just me. It was fairly easy for me to sync my phone’s music to a computer, and set up the Sonos to read that library. At some point, I then moved the library from the computer to an NAS, so the computer didn’t need to be turned on all the time. 

I get that it isn’t working the way you want it to, and I’m sorry there was a misunderstanding when you purchased the system, but I hope this explanation makes it a little more clear as to what is going on, and why. 

I think I figured it out!  My issue was my music is stored on my SD card, NOT internal storage.  SONOS apparently can read music from the SD card but not playlists.  I used Samsung Music for creating my playlist, which has an option to "export playlist" to your internal storage.  It immediately showed up in SONOS after I exported it.

Within Samsung Music:

Open Playlist --> 3 dots in upper right corner --> settings --> Export My Playlists --> in SONOS app Update Music Index Now

Keep in mind your phone must be connected to the same network as your SONOS for it to keep working (i.e. if you leave the house with your phone and someone tries to play that playlist it won't work)

Hope that helps!

@_006 .  I am sure the ‘export playlist’ will be useful, but there are a couple of rather confusing (confused?) points in your post.  

  1. ‘Update Music Index Now’ has no bearing on playlists created in a music app and played on Sonos within ‘on this mobile device’.  It only affects the Sonos Music Library.
  2. These playlists are never available to select by anyone else, whether the phone is present or not.  They can only be played from the device on which they are stored (although I think some operations are possible on the active queue using other devices).

@John B I just purchased my first SONOS system last weekend, so I'm still getting used to the functions.

 

For point 1 - most of my music was via streaming, thus why I'm used to "Update Music Index Now".  To your point, may not be necessary.

 

For point 2 - I *only* use my phone with SONOS and have all my personal music on my phone.  I know there is a setting to allow other devices to control your music thus why I mentioned that point; however, you may be correct that it applies to queue and not stored playlists.