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Sonos access to OneDrive Music Folder

  • 14 December 2019
  • 38 replies
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I revised things recently when my old computer died, which we used as a local server, including a Music folder that we accessed via SONOS. When we got a new computer, we canned the server idea and placed all our files, including our music folder, onto Microsoft OneDrive. Is it possible to stream from OneDrive? What about some other online repository? Or must it be local?

 

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Best answer by MiDi 12 May 2020, 00:06

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The only “cloud” services Sonos supports are those already in the Sonos “services” tab, and I don’t believe OneDrive is there. In terms of NAS style support, it is local files. 

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So Google Music Free (max 50.000 songs) could be an option....

Userlevel 7
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Microsoft Groove supported direct Sonos playback from OneDrive, which was awesome. They cancelled this a few years ago :-(

controlav, is there a standard API for accessing “cloud” content, or does each service roll their own?

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There is a standard API called SMAPI, and each service has their own implementation (but Sonos only have to use one API, which was not the case back in the early days but quickly became impractical).

The API is documented at https://developer.sonos.com/reference/sonos-music-api/

 

Perhaps, with the conversion to a single SMAPI, Sonos might have implementation on its roadmap somewhere...but I shan’t hold my breath, I’m fine with NAS for now.  

Userlevel 2
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Maybe the Sonos developers could see how the Cloudbeats app for IOS does it. If a tiny outfit like Cloudbeats can get it working pretty well, Sonos can. They might have to do a one-off, but for a major cloud service like OneDrive, it would be worth it.

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The issue is not technical: the issue is legal. if you stream music over the internet then you had better have all your lawyers lined up. I didn’t work on the Groove integration at Microsoft but I knew several who were, and I heard some of the horror stories. A company the size of Sonos wisely stays away from the licensing and legal issues of serving music over the internet.

The only way to do this is a workaround. Im using android and my phone is ROOTED. I use an app that works only if the phone is rooted, callef AIRAUDIO and send all the audio from my phone, to the sonos speaker in my room. I go and open then OneDrive on my phone and play the music I want. End of story. 

 

   Ps. I rarely do it. I preffer to move the music to a usb stick connected to my router which acts as a nas in this way. And sonos gets the music from there. But my only problem is that I listen to my own music and as ot gets updated (created) it has to be added one by one to my usb stick from my one drive....so ...I do wait for the dag when sonos will have One Drive implemented with Sonos. 

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Recently ran into this myself and put together a small app to connect Sonos to OneDrive directly.

Take a look at https://michaeldick.me/sonos-onedrive/

Cheers

MiDi’s solution works!

This should be stickied or something.

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Worked for me too except it will not play my FLACs (they are greyed out), only MP3s.  I can play the same FLACs all OK from my music library and the Cloud Player app on my Android phone casts them to the Sonos too but I would love to resolve this and be able to use the actual Sonos app with my laptop turned off.

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I contacted MiDi and he very kindly released an app update.  This now works with FLAC  :)

@MiDi thanks for this. Massively improved my user experience with sonos. No more having to turn the pc on. Had almost paid for a nas but don't need it now so saved a packet as well. Most grateful.

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This is awesome! Nice job @MiDi

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Sonos and their partners have made it difficult, if not virtually impossible, for those of us with large music collections to play via Sonos.  As a note, many of us were big Sonos users and supporters before all the streaming services were available.  I have Sonos in two homes and two office and I would like to share my music library, which I have uploaded to One Drive, between them.

I tried Google Play but the sorting of music sucks.    I have so much music that YouTube music, which is the replacement for Google Play, only shows artists whose names start with A and B.

I have been a Sonos user for 15+ years.  If I didn’t have such a large investment in Sonos speakers and amps I would replace my 4 systems.

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Sonos and their partners have made it difficult, if not virtually impossible, for those of us with large music collections to play via Sonos.

If you were really a user before streaming services than you are already using a PC or Mac for your local collection, and that still works as well as it ever has.

There is an unofficial OneDrive solution, have you tried that?

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Yes but I moved all my music to one drive and don’t keep it local.  I plan to try the unofficial onedrive solution.  Unfortunate we have to revert to that.  But I do hear that it works.

 

 

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Yes but I moved all my music to one drive and don’t keep it local.  I plan to try the unofficial onedrive solution.  Unfortunate we have to revert to that.  But I do hear that it works.

 

 

Then blame Microsoft, they are the controlling factor in this. 

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I used Michael’s fix.  Works great!

 

Michael - I sent you and email thanking you but also want to do it publically - Great job - Thank You.

 

Also, I’d like to better understand - why is the blame on MicroSoft?  Data is going to the cloud, I would think Sonos would support this.  Michael’ developed a way to make it happen - why couldn’t / wouldn’t Sonos?

Michael - Thanks again.

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Microsoft stopped the ability to stream music from your one drive when they dropped Groove and move moved to Spotify as a partner. It was a real shame as it seemed a great solution. I presume it was part of the deal with Spotify for them to remove the ability to stream users own music. 
 

Google did much the same thing. I am just hoping that Sonos never removes the Local music service as I’m old school and still buy CDs as i like to own the music I’ve bought. 

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Thank you.  That was helpful.

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Microsoft stopped the ability to stream music from your one drive when they dropped Groove and move moved to Spotify as a partner. It was a real shame as it seemed a great solution. I presume it was part of the deal with Spotify for them to remove the ability to stream users own music.

The Spotify deal was to sweeten the deal, it did not drive the decision to cut Groove. The deletion of Groove was indeed a bummer, but it just wasn’t financially viable, especially given the differing laws regarding streaming in different countries. Technically it was solid, produced by a smart team in Paris.

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MiDi’s app works very well.  I can access all my music but it can be cumbersome to wade into all the folders to get to a song one at a time.  Haven’t found how to access a playlist.

Has anyone been able to link directly to OneDrive to access their iTunes library to use as Sonos’ “Music Library”?  It updates if I leave my PC on all the time as the path to OneDrive goes through the PC. But I want to be able to turn the PC off and have Sonos get the update for the Music Library directly from OneDrive.  Accessing a “shared music folder” under system settings appears to require a path that includes the “Computer” the library is shared from. 

Now that MiDi’s app gets us access to OneDrive, is there a “Path” that will link directly to OneDrive in the folder where my iTunes library resides? 

Thanks much for any help on this.  JJ

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@MiDi’s solution works but I lose it.  Not sure if its when my computer sleeps.

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