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sj0509
Contributor I
March 17, 2022
Answered

Sonos plays music on its own

Hello,

I recently (4-5 months back) purchased a Sonos Arc and Sub (Gen 3) to add to my existing system of Play 1’s and Sub (Gen 2). Prior to buying these 2 new sonos products, I never had the below issues, but since connecting the Arc to my Living Room config (TV + 2 Play 1s + 2 Sub), there have been several instances when Sonos has started playing music on its own in the middle of the night, or sometimes early morning.

And atleast 2 times now, while watching Netflix on TV via the connected playstation, the system randomly connected to Youtube (disconnecting from Netflix), and started playing a youtube video. The first time was a couple weeks ago, but the second time just happened a couple hours back, and I then went ahead and generated the Sonos diagnostics.

I had to do it twice since the 1st time I may not have been connected to the home wifi. 

# 1279716390

# 654016055

 

I briefly researched this on google the last time it happened, and saw some posts about spotify etc being the culprit for those users. I had Youtube music and amazon music added to my account earlier, but I removed those from my account after the last incident a week or so ago. Since then I have not had an issue with the music, but this is the second time that Netflix has been switched out for YouTube.

 

Help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

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    Corry P
    Corry PAnswer
    Sonos Staff
    March 17, 2022

    Hi @sj0509 

    Welcome to the Sonos Community!

    The last thing that the Arc played was initiated from the Spotify app. This may not have been your Spotify app, or even a Spotify app running on a device in your home - it could literally be any device logged into your Spotify account, anywhere. Does anyone else have your Spotify account details? If so, you may want to change the password (via spotify.com) and then reauthorize Spotify on Sonos (Settings » Services & Voice » Spotify » Reauthorize Account).

    As for Netflix and YouTube, that has nothing to do with your Arc. Someone on your local network is using the Cast button on their YouTube app (or embedded video in a webpage) and it’s telling your PlayStation to play, regardless of what it’s currently doing (the YouTube cast receiving service will run in the background on the PlayStation). I’m not sure if this can be disabled. The app doing this will need to be told to disconnect, or it may play every video through the PlayStation.

    I recommend you have some choice words with the kids.

    Incidentally, your Wi-Fi router is repeatedly trying to shift your Arc over onto 5GHz Wi-Fi (band-steering), which it is not willing to do (it needs its 5GHz radio to chat to the 2x Subs and 2x Surrounds). I highly recommend you separate the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands on your router by changing the name of the 5GHz WiFi SSID (name) to include “-5” at the end. Don’t tell Sonos about the change, and the Arc will stay on 2.4GHz, making it’s connection much more stable. If you don’t know how to do this, share the details of your router and we’ll see what we can do to guide you. Or, get in touch with our technical support team, who have tools at their disposal that will allow them to do it for you (they’ll need remote access to a computer).

    I hope this helps.

     

    "Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
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    3 replies

    Corry P
    Corry PAnswer
    Sonos Staff
    March 17, 2022

    Hi @sj0509 

    Welcome to the Sonos Community!

    The last thing that the Arc played was initiated from the Spotify app. This may not have been your Spotify app, or even a Spotify app running on a device in your home - it could literally be any device logged into your Spotify account, anywhere. Does anyone else have your Spotify account details? If so, you may want to change the password (via spotify.com) and then reauthorize Spotify on Sonos (Settings » Services & Voice » Spotify » Reauthorize Account).

    As for Netflix and YouTube, that has nothing to do with your Arc. Someone on your local network is using the Cast button on their YouTube app (or embedded video in a webpage) and it’s telling your PlayStation to play, regardless of what it’s currently doing (the YouTube cast receiving service will run in the background on the PlayStation). I’m not sure if this can be disabled. The app doing this will need to be told to disconnect, or it may play every video through the PlayStation.

    I recommend you have some choice words with the kids.

    Incidentally, your Wi-Fi router is repeatedly trying to shift your Arc over onto 5GHz Wi-Fi (band-steering), which it is not willing to do (it needs its 5GHz radio to chat to the 2x Subs and 2x Surrounds). I highly recommend you separate the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands on your router by changing the name of the 5GHz WiFi SSID (name) to include “-5” at the end. Don’t tell Sonos about the change, and the Arc will stay on 2.4GHz, making it’s connection much more stable. If you don’t know how to do this, share the details of your router and we’ll see what we can do to guide you. Or, get in touch with our technical support team, who have tools at their disposal that will allow them to do it for you (they’ll need remote access to a computer).

    I hope this helps.

     

    "Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
      sj0509Author
      Contributor I
      March 22, 2022

      Hi Corry,

       

      Thanks very much for the detailed response. And apologies for the delay in writing - somehow I missed the notification earlier, and got another one today when the answer was marked best answer.

       

      This is quite perplexing, because I dont have a spotify account, and neither does my wife. (I just checked by trying to log into spotify). Secondly, no spotify account is linked to Sonos. (Settings » Services & Voice). I had Youtube music and Amazon Music linked earlier, but removed those when this incident happened the last time, to make sure that those 2 services were not the culprits. 

       

      Also, our wifi networks are already separated. We have an _5G network. Should I try and reset the network settings for the sonos system ? If so, instructions would be great.

       

      The only other thing I can think of to report here, is that we live in an apartment building. The building wifi is provided by XFinity. While I have secured my 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, I find that quite a few times a month, my phone has lost connection with our SSIDs and is instead connected to the generic XFINITY SSID (which appears to be a feature for Xfinity if you are an account holder and have the app I believe). When I see this, I then manually disconnect from XFINITY and connect to my own SSID.

      Is there a chance that something like this might be happening with the Sonos Arc as well, and it has somehow connected to XFINITY when there’s a blip in our network. And now a neighbor might be causing this ? If so, what is the best way to troubleshoot / fix this ?

       

      Thanks again for your help.

       

      Corry P
      Corry P
      Sonos Staff
      March 28, 2022

      Hi @sj0509 

      Sorry for the delay - I’ve been off for a week.

      This is very strange. It’s definitely a third-party music service app that is initiating playback, but I can now see that the only music service you had installed was Sonos Radio.

      I don’t think this is related to your network - your Sonos system only knows how to connect to one WiFi network - “SJ0509”.

      If it happens again, could you please take a screenshot of your Sonos app’s Now Playing screen while the music is still playing and post it here, along with another diagnostic number? Thanks.

      "Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
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