SONOS are you reading this? Please put the controller queue function back how it was!

  • 12 September 2016
  • 353 replies
  • 15976 views

Userlevel 4
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I've downloaded version 6.4 of the app. What a mistake. To anyone who is about to do it, DON'T DO IT IF YOU LIKE YOUR QUEUE.

Sonos please put it back how it was. This new app is so awful I am considering selling my entire Sonos rig (6 pieces!) and walking away from you, after what was until this week, many happy years.

Touching on a track because I want to play it, or add it to the queue (the queue that I DID WANT), does not mean I want to delete the whole queue and replace it with the entire album (which I DON'T WANT) which the newly added track comes from.

If I wanted to delete my queue, I would delete it. If I wanted to add the whole album, I would add it using the play all function.

You've just taken something intuitive and user friendly which worked so well and turned it into a worse than hateful mess.

PLEASE UNDO THIS AWFUL, HORRIBLE CHANGE.

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353 replies

Userlevel 1
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Sonos, I was wondering if your next update please could be one where everything is exactly the same as in the last update. In fact, if you could do that for all future updates, at least for the next year or so, that would be awesome. Thanks.
O man I thought I was the only one that hated this feature. I lost over 1000 songs from my queue so damn frustrating. My last saved playlist only has 300 songs damn you update.
Sonos have been quiet on this over the last few days so hopefully they are seeing sense as they have pi55ed off a lot of loyal long term customers.
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It's a shocking, ill conceived mess of a feature. It took me nearly an hour to get through to speak to Sonos customer support (presumably because every other person who's bought Sonos) was also on hold to ask how to fix it. Their reply: the App upgrade can't be reversed when you've done it, so all you can do is post about it in the community, as I've done herewith, in the hope that Sonos listen (before they alienate all of their customer base). So people, if you want the current cr@p undone and put back to how it was before when it was good, the only chance is for all of us to post our objections here in the community and use people power to persuade Sonos that if it ain't broke (which it wasn't), don't try to mess about and fix it for the sake of it. Over to you fellow Sonos users, if you hate this update and hate losing your queues for no reason, shout long and loud on here and get your friends to do the same. It seems to be our only chance!
Lots of loyal long time users are not happy about the queue changes. Possibly Sonos listening to the blogs, who have been saying the UI is "clunky" because it doesn't work like the awful iTunes UI. It wasn't clunky at all, of course, it did it right. Hope Sonos realizes this was a blunder.
Userlevel 6
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It can be very frustrating.
Userlevel 1
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Isn't I just the same as Spotify? Click on the dots and tell it what to do? I'm a new user so I find he track queuing and Playlist building fairly intuitive.
It wipes out your carefully crafted queue by default, very bad behavior.
Userlevel 1
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Yes I can see that's what it does, exactly the same as Spotify app. Click on a song in a different Playlist ad it will automatically jump to that new Playlist or album.
Someone else mentioned this, and I think it is a key point. Apps like Spotify, Deezer, iTunes etc are generally used by individuals. The Sonos app is much more likely to be used by a group of people. I think shared queues and personal queues are different beasts and should be treated differently. So I think that Sonos makes a mistake by trying to make its shared queues work like individual queues in other apps.
Userlevel 7
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Thanks for all the feedback everyone. We've been reading all your comments and are passing them on to the team, so thanks again for sharing.

We know there are some huge changes here and will continue to be listening for the future. There aren't any plans I can give you a sneak peak into but we are always looking to improve Sonos for everyone.
Userlevel 7
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Answer isn't roll back it is Sonos having next update cater to improvements to protect queue for queue users. Current release focused on individual user. Next update need some love for multi user multiroom (you know that thing that has made Sonos so successful in the past).
Thanks for all the feedback everyone. We've been reading all your comments and are passing them on to the team, so thanks again for sharing.

We know there are some huge changes here and will continue to be listening for the future.

One glaring "huge" change is that you appear to have rushed a beta release into production knowing that it broke things for existing customers.

ie. abrupt termination of currently playing tracks, due non-intuitive tap exposures
and unwanted queue destruction due to the UI making incorrect guesses about what I want
and the replaying of the old queue, when I just asked to play something new

It is seems to be generously assumed here that you will complete your new options, which I am sure have been welcomed by many, by restoring normalcy for existing queue users. ... But these shortcomings, and incomplete behaviour modifications, were well discussed in the public beta, and probably prior to that also.

So why piss everybody off by rushing the job? ... that's a bit of a "huge change" isn't it? ... and an unwelcome one too IMO.
Userlevel 5
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Sometimes you just need to leave well enough alone!!! The thread discussing the changes while in Beta I thought would have made that pretty clear.
Sometimes you just need to leave well enough alone!!! The thread discussing the changes while in Beta I thought would have made that pretty clear.

I think you are misunderstanding the purpose of the beta and of this release. It is important to the Sonos vision for users to migrate to the newly announced voice control strategy as soon as it is available. A good way to motivate people to make the switch is to make the current controller less familiar and intuitive so there won't be any reluctance to move on to voice control. The only purpose of the beta was to gauge that the feedback was sufficiently negative to ensure they had accomplished their goal.

It is also important for Sonos to drive as many new sales as possible to the Amazon Echo before Google Home is released even if it means cannibalizing Play1 sales by making the Sonos app too complicated for new users to operate. In the long run the lost customers will be recovered when they are ready to step up to a multi-room Sonos system that can be voice controlled by their existing Echo but if they are lost to Google Home they wouldn't need Sonos to build a voice controlled multi-room system and would be gone forever.

So you see, everything is proceeding exactly according to plan.
Yeah, Right! :rolleyes:
Voice control is the new '3D television'!
Userlevel 5
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The key issue I have with the new queue changes is that the "play now" button seems both inconsistent across apps when you want it to be, and then does the wrong thing in an attempt to be consistent. Firstly, the default behaviour of "play now" seems to fluctuate between "replace queue and play" and "insert into queue and play". Given the differences between iOS and desktop apps you now need to learn what the button does. Far worse though is the annoying consistency of the "play now and insert" feature eg. for playing an album:
1. When you're playing music then fine, play now plays the new album, inserts those songs into queue, then continues with whatever was in the queue.
2. When the music is stopped (eg. queue holds yesterday's listening session), hitting "play now" inserts the new album into the queue (after current stopped song at position 2), then continues with whatever's left. This is quite literally the "play this album followed by tracks 2-10 of what you were listening to yesterday" button.

Am I missing something? Is this really how anyone would want something as basic as the "play" button to work?

Losing the queue is not a big deal (you can always save it), and I can work around this by always replacing the queue until this is hopefully fixed in a few months, but really Sonos - what were you thinking?
Userlevel 5
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Sometimes you just need to leave well enough alone!!! The thread discussing the changes while in Beta I thought would have made that pretty clear.

I think you are misunderstanding the purpose of the beta and of this release. It is important to the Sonos vision for users to migrate to the newly announced voice control strategy as soon as it is available. A good way to motivate people to make the switch is to make the current controller less familiar and intuitive so there won't be any reluctance to move on to voice control. The only purpose of the beta was to gauge that the feedback was sufficiently negative to ensure they had accomplished their goal.

It is also important for Sonos to drive as many new sales as possible to the Amazon Echo before Google Home is released even if it means cannibalizing Play1 sales by making the Sonos app too complicated for new users to operate. In the long run the lost customers will be recovered when they are ready to step up to a multi-room Sonos system that can be voice controlled by their existing Echo but if they are lost to Google Home they wouldn't need Sonos to build a voice controlled multi-room system and would be gone forever.

So you see, everything is proceeding exactly according to plan.


Reading that was actually equal parts amusing and thought provoking. Thought provoking because I did stop to consider that this change might in fact be part of a larger strategy with voice control featuring in there. Amusing because seeing it written in this way is quite funny.

Ryan can you confirm on behalf of Sonos??? Are you guys trying to annoy the hell of us for "strategic reasons"???
Userlevel 7
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There is a strategy I believe and that's marketing. Theynfor some reason felt making Sonos more familiar in its operation to the. Stice apps would rive sales and make the Sonos app more familiar to new users. And they probably have some new developers who are used to that method and don't particularly understand what made Sonos great in the first place.

Downside - that method is not particularly well suited in a multi room multi user environment
Userlevel 7
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... and there are users who like the new method. Probably ones that own a couple speakers and use the controller by themselves. Somehow their voice was heard over many others as we just need to better understand the controller and get used to it 😞
Userlevel 7
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As I've been told many times
This software update is a disaster. Far too easy for the queue list to get wiped out. AWFUL. Please revert to the old behaviour. This is the first time I have every complained.
Userlevel 7
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Ryan can you confirm on behalf of Sonos??? Are you guys trying to annoy the hell of us for "strategic reasons"???

I'm pretty sure this is rhetorical but I'd be happy to deny it on behalf of Sonos. I can confirm that the intent was to make playing music easier and perhaps more familiar for those used to some of the most popular music playing software out there.

This was in testing for a long time, and we even made a change in the middle of the public beta in response to the feedback received. We're still gathering feedback and will continue to look at the best ways to improve Sonos in the future.
I can confirm that the intent was to make playing music easier and perhaps more familiar for those used to some of the most popular music playing software out there.

I think that may be the problem. "Those used to some of the most popular music playing software out there" are listening to music on their phone using ear buds. They are not "Listening Out Loud".