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Music library keeps disappearing

  • 7 February 2021
  • 13 replies
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I changed from itunes because all the songs in the playlist would not appear.  Also, my music library from itunes kept disappearing.  On Sonos recommendations, I changed to having sonos directly access the songs on my hard drive. Couple of days later my playulists that I set up in sonos playlists disappeared. I was told to upate my music library again. My playlists reappeared. Today, I open up sonos on my computer. My Sonos music library indicates no selections are available when I open sonos under artists and songs. Sonos is not allowing me access my music library. Yet, my playlist is there and it allows me to play songs.

I have large quantity of songs in my music library. So updating my music library now takes 25 to 35 minutes. I had never experienced my music library disappearing for seven years. Now it is a regular occurence.

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Best answer by byrd50 25 February 2021, 18:25

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13 replies

Full disclosure: I’m not an iTunes user.

Where is your music stored? Are you experiencing the same issue with a phone/pad controller? How did you export your iTunes library? iTunes stores metadata (Artist, Composer, Genre, etc.) separately, SONOS stores this data inside each track file. The iTunes export must be aware of this. Finally, if you are using a NAS drive, disable the trash folder for your music share. A NAS trash folder can cause a bunch of vexing, intermittent issues. If you think that you may need some tracks currently in the NAS trash folder, save a copy in another share or on another drive until you get your SONOS library straightened out.

I am not using itunes. Sonos had me eliminate itunes and access music directly from my NAS drive. My NAS recycle bin is empty. Since I originally posted message aaboe that my playlists are there but my music library is not. Before if I did a music library update, my music library would update and reappear. Now the music library update indicates that the music no longer availabe network off or pathway changed. My computer shows the NAS connection, brings up my music library on my computer. I have not made any changes to the pathway. Sonos gave me some instructions

please try these steps:
 

  1. Launch the Control Panel by typing Control Panel in the Windows search box. image.png
  2. Click Programs in the list and then select Turn Windows features on or off under Programs and Features.
  3. Ensure there is a checkmark in the box next to both SMB 1.0/CIFS File Sharing Support and SMB 1.0/CIFS Server. smb.PNG
  4. Click OK and Windows will apply the change you made. Windows will require you to reboot the computer for the change to take effect.

Remove the Music library, and add it again

I tried recommendations. Responded back on Saturday that recommendations did not work. Have not heard back from Sonos. Responded today have not heard back to please contact me and get online on my computer. 

 

May I suggest you do the following:

On the PC app, on the Manage menu, click Music Library Settings.

Remove any filepaths currently there

Then Add the path to the folder on the NAS that contains your music (choose to link to a networked drive, then Browse to select your music folder).

Allow the Music Library to reindex.

(If this is what you meant by ‘Remove music library and add it again’, what precisely do you mean by ‘it did not work’?)

Note: if there are playlist files in there, these playlists would appear under ‘Imported Playlists’ in your Sonos Music Library.  These are completely different from any Sonos playlists you have created within the Sonos app.

If your music library is stored on the NAS, Windows is not involved. You don’t need to have the computer powered unless you are using the desktop controller. Even if you are using the desktop controller, you can shut down the computer after starting a Playlist because the SONOS players fetch directly from the NAS.

You can use the desktop controller to configure the music library, but the SONOS system will fetch files directly from the NAS while indexing.

If you are using the computer to edit music files on an NAS that supports only SMB 1.0/CIFS, then you’ll need to mess with Windows because the default in W10 is to disable SMB 1.0/CIFS.

In my experience W10 is very anti SMB 1.0/CIFS, but this shouldn’t be an issue while SONOS is playing from the NAS.

 

Interesting that music should play even computer is turned off if my music is stored on a NAS. My music is on NAS.   My pathway in the Sonos music library is directly to my NAS drive. Yet when I do the music update now in Sonos, I get the message 6Q etc. (name of my computer) /music is not found. Evidently Sonos is looking for my music on my computer first for the pathway though pathway that I have put in Sonos is direct to music on my NAS. I had my son in law ( a techie in the industry) who set up my system verify NAS working properly, and pathway was correct for Sonos last night. He set up same system for himself and his is working fine. Mine had worked fine for 6 to 7 years. He was baffled why Sonos system was not picking up the NAS pathway. Knowing now Sonos should pick my NAS pathway even if computer is off, there has to be a glitch somewhere that is causing Sonos to look at my computer for the music rather than my NAS pathway.

Note that the file names are embedded in each playlist track. If the music was stored on your computer as you built the playlist, each track points to the computer file. Simply copying the computer tracks to the NAS will not update the playlists. Sometimes SONOS will figure out the move and take care of things, but this is not guaranteed.

If your local hard drive is no longer listed in the library pointers in the Sonos software, there should absolutely no reason why your PC should need to be on. I’d be tempted to reboot each Sonos device, on the offhand chance there was some odd residual memory in the speaker that hadn’t been properly updated. Forcing each speaker to reboot should clear any errant memory left. 

Badge +20

Just for clarity please say how your NAS is connected and it’s make / model.

QNAP TS 228 connected through my network.

Badge +20

On the music library setup page within the Sonos app is there just the one entry pointing to your NAS?

yes only one listing pointing to the NAS

Badge +20

As Bruce suggested a reboot of all your Sonos devices is a good idea. Personally if this was happening to me I would factory reset them but it’s not normally a good suggestion as you loose all your settings and Sonos created playlists.

 

PS you can schedule a music library update during the night.

Thanks for your suggestions. My case was finally escalated after two weeks. My case was assigned to an individual who personally had the same NAS system. He indicated that the sonos browse for music library identified the music library but in not enough detail which in turn would allow music library to work sometimes and not other times. He manually typed in the detailed pathway which I now have for future use.

I had stopped using itunes because all my songs would not appear in my playlist. He thought that is may be an xml issue. He checked some of the songs that appeared in my itunes music library on sonos but would not go to my playlist. He indicated that there was no reason why songs would not go to the playlist as they were in format compatible to sonos and were xml. 

I inquired why sonos does not allow you to back up playlists. he stated that sonos is working on that to allow backup to the cloud.