Feature Request: Export and Import Sonos Playlists

  • 25 February 2013
  • 216 replies
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Like many users, we use Sonos in two different houses. We have two NAS's of music that I'm planning on keeping synchronized with RSYNC. What doesn't sync or cant get exported are Sonos Playlists. It would be great to be able to ad-hoc export them and then to import them as well. Using the UPnP interface, I've noted a Java program that can export playlists, but importing them is a bit troublesome. It would be great to have this feature.

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I just want to chime in here amongst all of the negative comments to say I love my Sonos and even without the playlist export feature it is one of the most used and enjoyed appliances in my home. One of my sonos components did crash a year ago. I thought I had lost the many playlists that had been created over the years. I was ecstatic to find the play lists are stored on each component and Sonos support helped me retrieve all of them. That was a great feature! So while the export would be great, I have no problem waiting for it. I am a developer myself and I understand how difficult it is to keep up with all the features of the compatition and at the same time attend to all the many requests of individual customers. I tip my hat to Sonos and the great work of the Sonos team!
Just adding my voice to the request to be able to export playlists for both backup and use on other Sonos systems.

Back up is the single most important reason. At the moment I maintain online back ups, so for example if I add a track from Spotify to my Dining playlist then I first add it to a Dining Playlist in Spotify and do the same with tracks from Google Music and Soundcloud, that way if anything happens I should be able to rebuild them quickly but doing this every time is a bit of a pain.

This Christmas I'm going to take a Play 5 to my Mums and it would be great to be able to take our Sonos playlists with us. I know we can still access individual service playlists but after using Sonos for a while you soon start to collect tracks from lots of different sources and being able to have them in one easy playlist to transport would be great.

Adding my voice as well.  Very strange that SONOS would not act in a timely manner on this.  Seems like a very easy request to implement.
Agreed this should be implemented, if only through the PC/MAC client. Until it is however there is an excellent application, WPF:

http://blog.travelmarx.com/2011/05/wpf-application-to-save-and-import.html

available at:

https://github.com/travelmarx/travelmarx-blog/tree/master/SonosWpfApplicationV5

which works well and will export and import playlists for any zone within a Sonos system in text and/or M3U formats.

I should add that I have no connection to 'TraverlMarx' but have been using this code without issue since it became apparent that the recent software revamp(s) from Sonos would not be addressing the issue (Win7/8.1). 
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Agreed this should be implemented, if only through the PC/MAC client. Until it is however there is an excellent application, WPF:

http://blog.travelmarx.com/2011/05/wpf-application-to-save-and-import.html

available at:

https://github.com/travelmarx/travelmarx-blog/tree/master/SonosWpfApplicationV5

which works well and will export and import playlists for any zone within a Sonos system in text and/or M3U formats.

I should add that I have no connection to 'TraverlMarx' but have been using this code without issue since it became apparent that the recent software revamp(s) from Sonos would not be addressing the issue (Win7/8.1). 


Well done. To me this shows how Sonos is letting its customers down, as playlist management is concerned.
I'm adding my voice to support requesting this playlist ex-/import and backup feature as well. I lost some nice playlists, because I had to reset my sonos-players (either being asked to or because an update) without any notifications. Sonos, it's about time that you listen to this request and start to respect the time and work users have spent to customise and personalise the system...
We seriously need online backup of our Sonos Playlists.
Come on Sonos this really is not hard to implement. I have done a quick network trace and can see a few simple SOAP calls are all that is required. The standard PC controller already has the code to do this so why not a simple option to export the list? I would estimate that a developer with access to your APIs and could do a basic solution in a couple of days. A more sophisticated solution which saves the list in a user friendly format and can resolve relocation of the music library should be possible with a little more effort.
This is a ridiculous flaw.  I'm mostly happy with Sonos, but things like this keep me looking for the next big thing.  If Sonos will not provide simple and demanded functionality someone will.  Probably pretty soon.
I have an even better idea: what about automatic online sync of playlists with Sonos' servers? This would solve the problem with two separate Sonos systems. Add automatic backup of the playlists.
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Great Idea Sonos Cloud, as long as it has enough capacity and is fast enough !!

Or Sonos makes a deal with Google drive and/or iCloud
Every problem I have with sonos is related to storage and size, it can't even support saving a 30000 song queue Let alone handle my 200,000+ song library.  I have 5 different models now so converting to something that can handle a larger library would be rather expensive.  I hope they do listen to these problems. (and they are problems)
Every problem I have with sonos is related to storage and size, it can't even support saving a 30000 song queue Let alone handle my 200,000+ song library.  I have 5 different models now so converting to something that can handle a larger library would be rather expensive.  I hope they do listen to these problems. (and they are problems)

What possible reason could there be for the average person to need a 30,000 song queue? Assuming each track is 3 minutes long that is something over 60 days of continuous music. Even if there was some obscure situation where this makes sense it certainly is not practical for normal listening.
As Sonos seems to continuously ignore this basic request, I got intrigued by Mike Petonic's (the orignal poster) idea of using the UPnP-Interface to help ourselves.

@Mike: Do you mind making your Java-Program available?

Arnulv
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I find it rather baffling that some type of system backup still hasn't been implemented.
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I just upgraded from Spotify to Deezer Elite which is great but my Sonos Playlists seem to be linked to Spotify and so don't work any more.

I see from this thread that Sonos have known about difficulties manipulating Sonos Playlists for a long time and it seems that Sonos has done nothing.
Am shocked that this feature isn't available - I don't want to spend a week copy pasting data so I can listen to it at the gym!
This thread is 2 years old and we're still unable to export a playlist? Sonos -- are you listening?? We really need this basic feature implemented asap! I've discovered so many songs on Deezer and other music services, and it would be a real shame to lose everything.
today i lost my all playlist which i have been collecting so long.  i'm really sorry you let me down. 
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I've been working on my playlists recently which are mostly from my Deezer subscription.  I am concerned now that I have no way of backing them up!!

Sonos, please can we have this feature looked at?  This is another thread that is well over two years old with maybe 2 or 3 comments from Sonos staff.
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I've been working on my playlists recently which are mostly from my Deezer subscription.  I am concerned now that I have no way of backing them up!!

Sonos, please can we have this feature looked at?  This is another thread that is well over two years old with maybe 2 or 3 comments from Sonos staff.

Hey Stuart,

We've made sure to pass the desire for this over to the development team, we do that with just about every request posted here. It's a good suggestion, but it's tricky based on the way things are done currently. Considering that playlists (along with all other settings or favorites) are stored on the players only, having them backup can be difficult. Not that we aren't up for the challenge, but it'll require some work.

There's also been the suggestion here that we simply release another application which can copy the list from Sonos players, an external application. We try to keep everything simple and that sort of release starts a slippery slope into needing more and more software just to run Sonos. Simplicity makes it easy for everyone to use, and great for anyone to just pick up a controller and have music playing. That's always what we strive for.

If you find yourself using only one music service when making playlists, most will support making playlists within the Sonos software. Deezer has an "Add to Deezer Playlist" option for tracks. The Deezer playlist would be available on Sonos, and any other device. It'll also be backed up on the Deezer servers.
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today i lost my all playlist which i have been collecting so long.  

Sorry to hear you lost your playlists, I know just how frustrating that can be. How did you lose them?

Playlists will usually only get lost if the players are factory reset, or get added to a new system, thereby overwriting their data to match the new system.

We strongly recommend against factory resetting players in most situations; as a troubleshooting step, it doesn't do too much. If you have trouble we're here to help.
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I've been working on my playlists recently which are mostly from my Deezer subscription.  I am concerned now that I have no way of backing them up!!

Sonos, please can we have this feature looked at?  This is another thread that is well over two years old with maybe 2 or 3 comments from Sonos staff.

Once when your tech team was helping me with a problem, they sent me a tool that backed up my playlists and another that restored them. So why is it tricky? Your tech team apparently already has the very thing that everyone here is asking for.
I've been working on my playlists recently which are mostly from my Deezer subscription.  I am concerned now that I have no way of backing them up!!

Sonos, please can we have this feature looked at?  This is another thread that is well over two years old with maybe 2 or 3 comments from Sonos staff.

Alternatively you could open up an API - I heard rumors about this happening. Or just add it to the services exposed on port 1400.
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I've been working on my playlists recently which are mostly from my Deezer subscription.  I am concerned now that I have no way of backing them up!!

Sonos, please can we have this feature looked at?  This is another thread that is well over two years old with maybe 2 or 3 comments from Sonos staff.

There are some ways this could be done, but currently we don't have any news right now. The development team is aware of the request and we'll let you all know as soon as there's something to share.

@Daniel, if you're referring to the tool I think you are, it was designed to handle some very specific cases and only works on certain versions of the software. It was never written for wide scale release or use.
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I've been working on my playlists recently which are mostly from my Deezer subscription.  I am concerned now that I have no way of backing them up!!

Sonos, please can we have this feature looked at?  This is another thread that is well over two years old with maybe 2 or 3 comments from Sonos staff.

Hi Ryan,

Thanks for the reply.  And yes the Deezer playlist definitely helps me out although it doesn't help others who have playlists from multiple subscriptions or local music.

It also begs the question, if Deezer can create a cloud solution to backup stuff .....why can't Sonos??