I have just transferred my personal music library from Google Play Music to YouTube Music. After adding YouTube Music to my Sonos app I was horrified to find that I can no longer play my personal music library unless I am prepared to use the ‘Premium’ version of YouTube music. What is going on here and who’s responsible? I had no problem playing music from my personal music library from Google Play Music on my Sonos.
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Youtube music on sonos is absolutly horrible. Its a mess. Your uploaded tracks are all in alphabetical order in the artist section. You can’t listen to any particular album by an artists if you have multiple albums by that artist. The best music app for sonos is Amazon. EVERYTHING is in alphabetical order, All my music ithat I own is on my hard drive so I’ll just use the sonos app for that. I hate YOUTUBE MUSIC. I cancelled my subscription. Spotify only shows albums and not artist on Sonos.
Well whoever made the decision it wasn't a good one. I can be cajoled into something but forced - never. Just as well I can still stream my personal library from my Synology NAS to Sonos.
I have exact same problem, I’m not too fussed about a streaming service as i physically buy my music, but the idea of uploading it into GPM and then having access to it via my Sonos is exactly why i bought into it.
Now that GPM is closing, i too have transferred my library over, and i don’t like the YouTube app, to get to your artists you have to click Library > Artists > Uploads, where as GPM, you load the app and the artist button is on the main page once its loaded!
I then attempted to add it on my Sonos app, and like you, says you have to be a premium member! I understand it isn’t Sonos placing this restriction. Just means i need to investigate alternate ways to get access to my library. which is Ok, but i just wanted to keep things simple, which GPM is! I love it! so sad to see it go.
Been experimenting with keeping my music offline on an external hard drive plugged into the back of my BT hub and so accessible to all devices.So far seems to work.
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Lets get real here: Google are an advertising company, period. They were losing money on Google Play Music, and it didn’t do anything for their ad revenue, so they decided to kill it, and send folks to YTM which does generate ad revenue.
The number of ways of playing your personal connection from the cloud has been tending to zero over the years, as it costs money to run the service but no-one wants to pay for it. There was Groove, Amazon, Google, probably others. All gone now.
Sonos can’t do any more about this than they can get Spotify to order their playlists sanely, or Apple to include every album under My Music. In fact less than this, as at least Sonos can ask them to fix these things: Sonos can hardly be expected to ask Google to not delete Play Music.
If you want to play your personal music files on you Sonos, do it locally, there are many ways of doing that.
Look at it this way. How much influence does Apple or IBM (do they still make PCs?) have on Google’s choices? Sonos is a hardware maker. They provide an API for other companies to use the platform to connect to their services, but Sonos doesn’t charge anything, nor pay anything to provide those services. Check Sonos’ annual report, you’ll see the only income and expenses are based in Sonos, and not any agreements or income from other companies, other than licensing agreements from those who have attempted and failed to steal the patents (see Denon and BlueSound).
In fact, Sonos is currently suing Google for patent infringement, and Google has countersued, for whatever that is worth.
But Sonos only makes their money from selling you hardware, not by any subscriptions or free services that they connect to. So, Sonos is motivated to make their platform as diverse as possible by allowing as many companies as possible access to the API, so that the stream will play on they’re hardware, so more people will purchase their hardware. On the other hand, since there is no payment occurring between Sonos and any of the providers, they’ve got no particular leverage in how that company decides to monetize their user base.
At most, I assume they go to the company and say “hey, we represent X number of streams to your service annually, and a small percentage of people in our forums are complaining about the fact that you’re getting rid of free access’. To which the management at Google probably says ‘reduced costs for free stuff is good, more revenue for subscriptions is better’. But Sonos has zero control over that process. And generally speaking, individual users feedback carries more weight than the more random and not verifiable feedback from a company like Sonos.
I would love it if I believed Sonos had any input into these decisions, but I don’t. Much like when I worked for a game company who provided Facebook games. Other than following the API provided by Facebook for account interaction, they had zero input in to gameplay.
But, this is merely my perspective, from years of business experience in related industries. I don’t work for Sonos, nor am I in their corporate decision making process. But I do think your complaints will be more effective when made to YouTube/Google, than it ever will being filtered through the lens of Sonos.
…..but I really am struggling with “run your music from there”.
You load your music onto the NAS device, which is usually powered on all the time. You use the controller to tell the Sonos hardware what to play and it streams it from the NAS device. You don’t need internet access for this or for any third party provider. It is totally under your control what’s available.
…..just wants to listen to music, around the home, easily. I guess the mistake was getting Sonos in the first place.
I don’t see why - this is exactly what Sonos is good at
That would be a choice made by Google, who owns YouTube, and not Sonos.
I’m in the same hole. Can’t play music from my iPhone or iPad, GPM is discontinuing and I don’t like YouTube music and don’t want to pay £150 a year just to keep on using the Sonos speaker in the kitchen. Thinking that the Sonos will go in the bin.
Oh don’t put a Sonos in the bin! You could get a NAS and use it to store and stream your music. Or if you have a wifi router, depending on the router capabilities, you might be able to connect a cheap external hard drive to the router and use it as a NAS. Worst case, you should have no problem selling the Sonos.
Agreed pezz 18. As I stated in my previous post you can access you library if you have a Chromecast device. However, it does mean having your TV switched on and something like my Sonos Playbar connected to it. By far the easiest solution is accessing your library through a NAS. In my case that’s Synology. This method works flawlessly. Trying to force consumers into subscription services is a retrograde step in my opinion and only serves to drive people away from a platform. It also reflects badly on companies such as Sonos who have had enough bad press of their own lately.
Sonos has no ability to influence Google in this matter. Sonos merely provides a conduit by which you are able to reach other companies stream. But they are not part of the decision making process by any other company as to what to provide, or whether it is free or not.
I mean send it to Google too.
Looks like there is a ‘Submit feedback’ option at https://music.youtube.com
Airgetlam has asserted above that Sonos has no ability to influence Googe as fact whereas I believe this is just an assumption - unless I can see what it's based on.
To believe two such companies with such interdependencies don't talk or have ANY influence on each other is rather naive in my eyes.
I’m a music lover, not a tech lover, and I must admit that most of the solutions I have seen described look intimidating. Other than WD My Cloud Home, but then that kind of looks like I’d be over-spending maybe? And then what happens when Sonos remove that from their services list/WD withdraw it?
For local music, just use any suitable NAS (it must support SMB1) and run your music from there… It partly depends on how much music you have - if you don’t have much then it could fit onto a USB stick that you may be able to plug into your router. Or, if you need more space, then a USB hard drive could also be plugged in to your router. Obviously, there could be an impact on performance, so a NAS is the better solution. I have other NAS devices available for my main data and as backups to my Sonos NAS, which is a fairly cheap LG device. This has been running 24x7 for over nine years so far - so the overall cost has been about £10 pa.
Sonos are unlikely to remove local access support, but they haven’t improved it for years.
Personally, I don’t use streaming services and only use local music, and lock down my system so that Sonos can’t accidentally ‘improve’ it and thereby mess something else up.
I just transferred my GPM library and was shocked to see that premium is required for YouTube Music, so no thanks.
Also just read that YouTube Music only streams at 128, with 256 option for premium.
I’ll stick with my Amazon Music HD, but sucks that I won’t be able to play local library via GPM after this year.
I agree wholeheartedly with your sentiments. I will revert to streaming directly from my Synology NAS to Sonos and most other devices.
Even with the Premium version YTM is garbage. Prior to using GPM I had two NAS devices that both died in less than 24 months each so I moved everything to Google. What model Synology are you using and do they last?
Yeah, I switched over to YouTube Music because I was told Google Music was ending-- I had uploaded my whole library to Google Music and used that service when using Sonos. Now I have to pay for YouTube Premium? Not happening. Very disappointing and, unfortunately, I am not interested in a complicated work around. A real shame, but I can see that I will be using my Sonos a lot less now.
You may want to send that feedback to Google, I don’t think they have reps in the Sonos forum.
I did send feedback to You Tube Music, which is owned by Google.
It is unfortunate that Sonos has no say in these decisions, I’d certainly agree. It’s also unlikely that anyone from Google/YouTube reads these forums.
You can solve this problem one of two ways:
- Use the iBroadcast solution. Works in the same way as GPM you upload your music, it indexes and you have Android apps etc to play your music on. The file handling and cover/track manipluation is very good, plus it is free.
But the big plus is that it is supported by Sonos, you might need to search in the development section to pick this up in the Sonos desktop app but it is all documented if you search.
If you use Google Home it does not support direct play, iBroadcast tell me they are not being offered the SDK by Google to develop this, no surprise there (Bad Google).
- The other way round it is to use a router that supports a USB memory stick so you can share files on the network. I’m doing this for my father to keep it simple. Again the Sonos library can be pointed to this USB and you can copy all your music to the USB from your PC etc. Done this as well all working great, listening to router/USB stored music on sonos as I type this.
Found another workaround for this irritation. I can cast from the YouTube app to a chromecast device then play the music through the Sonos Playbar. 
I've just found the same thing. I have my entire music collection on my PC to stream to Sonos, but sometimes I liked having the albums I'd bought on GPM and Amazon Music available to stream without switching my computer on. Now I find the (luckily only) six or so albums from GPM are no longer going to be available. I'd hoped I'd found an alternative to Amazon for buying albums, but looks like Google have shot themselves in the foot as far as me parting with any more cash is concerned.
I’m in the same hole. Can’t play music from my iPhone or iPad, GPM is discontinuing and I don’t like YouTube music and don’t want to pay £150 a year just to keep on using the Sonos speaker in the kitchen. Thinking that the Sonos will go in the bin.
I stored all my music on an NAS, no monthly charges. Used to use my computer’s hard drive, but I found I preferred to shut down the device occasionally.
Hopefully both Sonos and YTM will (or already have) realise it's in both their interests to allow Sonos and Google to carry on as before and allow users to stream their own content to their speakers and they'll have some dialogue to resolve this.
Don't dismiss the power of individual feedback either though.
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