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Multiple Sonos accounts on one Sonos system

  • 19 January 2022
  • 10 replies
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F
Userlevel 2
Badge +2

Fairly new to Sonos, and just discovered that my family members must log in with my Sonos account in order to use our home system. Kinda reeling from the discovery. Means:

  • I have to share my Sonos password with each family member who wants to use the system.
  • Each personal Spotify and other service account gets listed in Sonos for everyone.
  • … (more problems and inconveniences I can't come up with right now)

I guess my main question is: REALLY, SONOS?

Who else has run into this? What are workarounds? Who wants to cheer and vote for the feature request Support is logging for me to make multiple Sonos accounts possible on the same system?

Edited to add: And it gets worse. To mitigate the impact of this issue, I've renamed my own Spotify service in the app to my own name. But in the music library, the service is still listed as 'Spotify’. So it's not even possible to visually distinguish our Spotify accounts.

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Best answer by John B 20 January 2022, 14:51

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10 replies

106rallye
Userlevel 7
Badge +17

If I remember correctly, you do not have to be logged in to the Sonos app to perform basic tasks. And you can rename Spotify accounts once you’ve added more accounts to Sonos - I’ve four of them added, all named in the following convention: Spotify - “name of family member”.

F
Userlevel 2
Badge +2

If I remember correctly, you do not have to be logged in to the Sonos app to perform basic tasks. And you can rename Spotify accounts once you’ve added more accounts to Sonos - I’ve four of them added, all named in the following convention: Spotify - “name of family member”.

Thing is: I have renamed my Spotify account. It still presents as 'Spotify’ in the Android UI, so there doesn't seem to be much point to renaming. And yes, you can use basic functions without logging in, but A. that blocks the cool features like adding services (having everything in one system is a major benefit) and B. the app keeps nagging to sign in.

106rallye
Userlevel 7
Badge +17

You must trust your family members. Why not trust them with your password to Sonos?

The Sonos app not remembering name changes for Spotify must be a glitch or an Android thing. As said it works perfectly on my system (iOS app).

F
Userlevel 2
Badge +2

You must trust your family members. Why not trust them with your password to Sonos?

The Sonos app not remembering name changes for Spotify must be a glitch or an Android thing. As said it works perfectly on my system (iOS app).

Not sharing passwords/accounts is not just a matter of trust. It's also a matter of privacy (my teenage son doesn't want us to nose through his playlists), avoiding mistakes (everyone can mess up each other's data, or accidentally do something they shouldn't), and usability (everyone sees a long list of everyone's services).

And perhaps even more importantly: sharing passwords/accounts is always a bad idea, security-wise, and I want myself and my family members to internalize that fact. 

Glad to hear the name change thing works perfectly on iOS. Can't say that makes much difference to my situation though. It's not that the name change isn't remembered; it's saved fine, but the changed name isn't used anywhere except in System - Services & Voice, where I also go to change it.

And if Sonos architecture is tied irreparably to a single Sonos account, then Sonos needs a Netflix-like setup, with multiple user profiles after login. Doesn't mitigate the shared password issue, and it still allows all family members to sign in online under one member's name. But at least then everyone can have their own content setup.

And there's one more reason why it makes little sense to me to have a single account for the family,: it makes one family member the “boss”: the person whose email address is attached to the account.

And all of this can be fixed by having multiple Sonos systems in the house, of course, but that's madness. It would mean either a tremendous expenditure in extra devices, or would put control of the audio in shared spaces (living, kitchen) in the hands of just one of us. When I'm away, my wife wants to play music downstairs. And when we're both away, my kid wants to invite friends and play music in the living. Seems to me that multiple Sonos system defeats the primary advantage of a Sonos system: a single, flexible audio system for the entire household.

106rallye
Userlevel 7
Badge +17

If it's just Spotify you family members are playing from there's no need for the Sonos app at all: they can just use Spotify Connect - my kids do.

You obviously feel more strongly about this than i do. To me a feature like this would be more “nice to have” than “need to have”…..

F
Userlevel 2
Badge +2

It's not just Spotify. It's the whole concept of having a single app for all media streaming, and being able to, for instance, select music from multiple sources (library, Spotify, etc) into a single Sonos Playlist, or even more basic: searching for music and finding both local media and Spotify content. Using the native Spotify app defeats that purpose.

J

I can see that this is not exactly as you would like it, but i think you have got one or two things wrong here, and that this is not really the problem that you are presenting it as.

First, you can stop thinking about this as being ‘your’ Sonos account and ‘your’ email address and password.  Think of them as the Sonos account, email address and password.  You can create an email address specifically for this purpose, with a password different from any you use for other accounts.

This does still leave you in the position of a sort of administrator, but you can choose whether to share that password with other family members (in which case they would be able to alter system settings) or not (in which case they could still use the system to play their music.

Multiple music service accounts can be added to the Sonos system, so everyone can have their own Spotify account, for example.  The accounts can be individually named in the Sonos app (iOS or Android) and each person’s controller can be set to default to their own account.  Yes, anyone could go into others’ accounts if they actively try to do so, so you just have a family rule that nobody does this.  If that rule is broken then it’s an issue of family discipline, is it not?

There must be countless families managing their systems like this without problems.  It seems perfectly acceptable to me. 

F
Userlevel 2
Badge +2

Hi @John B , thanks for your response. I suppose I'll have to learn to think of it that way, if this is the way Sonos currently works. But I can't agree that it's a good way, especially since the service name change doesn't present in the UI at least not in the Android app as far as I can see. And setting a specific service account as default is a feature I haven't found yet.

J

Hi @John B , thanks for your response. I suppose I'll have to learn to think of it that way, if this is the way Sonos currently works. But I can't agree that it's a good way, especially since the service name change doesn't present in the UI at least not in the Android app as far as I can see. And setting a specific service account as default is a feature I haven't found yet.

https://support.sonos.com/s/article/3624?language=en_US

F
Userlevel 2
Badge +2

Ah, that clarifies a great deal. Thanks!

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