Party Mode Idea

  • 23 December 2017
  • 24 replies
  • 2198 views

Userlevel 7
Badge +22
Making it as simple as possible and with all the ideas over the years .... if Sonos could do this I think there would be a lot of happy people and it would be a good selling point.

Call it Jukebox Mode - put a marketing spin on it.

In the More ... menu put an option "Jukebox Mode Enable/Disable". Make it very easy for someone to see it is enable or not and this would be best place vs. an icon in the queue. And not buried in settings menu.

When someone enables you can put a pop up box showing what the option does.

When you enable Jukebox mode ....

On all the selecting music screens clicking on either the song name or the ... button does the same thing. Brings up menu option that only gives option to Play Next or Add to End of Queue. Those are the only options people are given.

That would satisify 90% of needs when it comes to a party mode. Don't worry with disabling rooms, disabling volume control etc. Those aren't big deals. The big deals are people selecting play now, replace queue, one clicking (which is play from here) etc. Those options would be locked out.

When the menu with Play Next or Add to End of Queue come up it can spell out - this system is locked in Party Mode options are as follows. Have it look like the same pop up that comes out now that says queue has been edited. Except now it gives you Play Next, Add to End of Queue, Cancel. That's it. If you wanted to go real cool - where song normally pops up saying it has been added to queue. In party mode have that screen say "Your selection has been added to the Queue - your request is currently Song # ?" That would be cool.

People who would mess up queue normally aren't going to know where to go to actually look at and re-arrange queue. I can always go into the queue itself and re-arrange peoples requests at my leisure. Nothing else is locked - party goers could do that to if they wanted to and knew how its not a big deal.

This simple locking would be a terrific benefit to many people.

This topic has been closed for further comments. You can use the search bar to find a similar topic, or create a new one by clicking Create Topic at the top of the page.

24 replies

Userlevel 7
Badge +19
Hello there, Chris. Thanks for sharing your idea. The team is constantly looking for ways to add to the Sonos experience and make it better over time. I am happy to forward this request along to the team for consideration. Thanks again for the feedback.
Userlevel 7
Badge +22
thanks Keith
Userlevel 7
Badge +22
I'm bumping my Party Mode idea - - any one else on board.

.... as in really Sonos people .... get on board! Keith remember to forward to all your Co-workers, family and friends too. Just start deleting the queue on the executive floor at the office. I'm sure they won't mind and you will be the hero when you tell them how to stop it from happening!

🙂
Userlevel 7
Badge +22
I don’t think keith forwarded to all his coworkers 🙂
This is a great idea. At a party recently new users kept replacing the entire queue with one track or the playlist on their phones, wiping out everyone's lined up choices. Either that, or just make add to queue the default again or at least bring up a warning first.
Userlevel 5
Badge +11
I like the idea!
Userlevel 7
Badge +22
Take everybody's phones off them when they arrive and lock them in a drawer

Bah humbug!
Userlevel 7
Badge +22
I don't offer telling people to load it on their phone or giving my wifi password anymore. To dangerous. I mean I will if they particularly ask (amazing how many people already have the Sonos app on their phones already). But I primarily do all the song changes now where I used to just have my tablet on the bar and let people do what they wanted.

.... I do pretty good with it as long as I'm sober.
Every time I’ve had guests over, they love asking Alexa to play their favorites. They downvote a song by simply asking Alexa to play something else. Lots of interaction on song choices, gets the party started, quickly breaks the ice.
Userlevel 7
Badge +22
oh yea - Alexa throws a whole other monkey wrench into the whole thing.

If I'm having people over I actually normally disable the Alexa skill so that asking Alexa something doesn't duck the sound in the whole house.
I'm in.

I've been a Sonos user for a whole 22 hours, and one of my first thoughts was "How do I prevent other people from playing DJ Wars?"

I also want something like the equivalent of a 5-disc shuffle. I miss my old tray. I found some pretty awesome mixes, and I really don't want to have to create an entire playlist (lazy, much?).

I'm sure I have a lot to learn, and I'm reading up, but this is the first question I asked, and it looks like I'm not the only one who's disappointed by the answer.
Userlevel 3
Badge +4
I`m in too; this is by far my number one wished functionality. It would be awesome if this was supported. I love the way Framjam is describing this: DJ Wars ending up in half played disrupted numbers that really knock down your parties, happens everytime especially later in the evening 😠
I have asked the same question a while ago, maybe not in the way you asked, but this is the one thing from stopping me from buying more sonos products. Sonos needs a party mode or jukebox mode. A company that is mostly music should understand this.
https://en.community.sonos.com/controllers-software-228995/jukebox-6798146
Userlevel 7
Badge +22
Hasn’t stopped me from buying but has stopped me from sharing controller freely
I’m in... would like this option by August 25th please...party could do without DJ wars...
Unfortunally the functionality is still missing. We had a party yesterday and yes, DJ wars, songs cut off or simply overruled. (and whitout any nice crossover) Would be great to have this feature asap!
I would love this as well. If you ever used MediaMonkey - https://www.mediamonkey.com/information/free/ (software from back in the day) they had a "party mode" that would turn the computer into a jukebox looking thing (full screen and optionally locked so users could not switch to other stuff) where you can see what is about to be played and browse the library and add stuff to the queue. VERY awesome. We were just at a party the other night where they had three rooms of sonos and songs kept stopping in the middle because someone decided they wanted a different song, which is a REAL downer when everyone is dancing to the current song!!!
Userlevel 7
Badge +22
Hopefully with the new api someone comes up with a party app for Sonos.
Kind of piggbacking off of this idea, I rarely use the queue because i don't see it. That's mostly do to limitations on screen size for the app. It's much easier to see on the windows application, but that's not really that convenient for me.

So in this hypothetical jukebox mode, what if a controller code be set to be a read-only queue mode? Display what's coming next and which controller add the track to the queue. Better yet, since the Beam and Sonos Amp connect to TVs through HDMI, instead of showing the Sonos screen saver, show the current queue. Really, this would be an ideal place for showing the queue since it's the TV would likely not be in use at that time anyway. And not only would this be a useful selling point, but you'd get free advertising to everyone in the room.
Userlevel 7
Badge +22
Would be cool if Beam/amp hdmi screen could be used for now playing and queue. Terrific idea.
It does seem like something Sonos would have thought of already though. I mean the HDMI-ARC connection forced them to put something on the TV screen, and now playing/queue seems like a very logical choice. Makes me think there is sort of technical reason it wasn't done. For one thing, whatever colors and font they use, 50% of customers will think it's an absolutely horrendous choice.
Userlevel 3
Badge +4
A half year further down the road and still no jukebox mode.....so sad. 😥

Yeah would like to see a party mode. Have one / 2/3 / x nominated host “DJ” but a queue that everyone can request 

 

this is will be the difference in stepping ahead on the Bluetooth market vs WiFi speaker system

 

sonos has such an opportunity, but failing to take it

 

main reason why I don’t recommend this system yet 

Userlevel 3
Badge +4

I can even understand that Sonos wants to keep their apps pretty basic but I truly do not understand that no 3rd party has stepped into a party app since the developer program was opened up in 2018/

 

https://www.programmableweb.com/news/sonos-to-freely-open-developer-program/brief/2018/08/31