For other folks who may be reading this thread….there is no need to replace all 4 of your current speakers.  You would only need 1 speaker that is bluetooth compatible as a separate room that you then group with the room that you want to play the audio too.  I think this may actually work better than replacing all your speakers with bluetooth compatible ones since you won’t have to reconnect bluetooth to different speakers every time.  The potential downside to this plan is if your existing 4 speakers are physically spread out to the point that where you would have to move the Roam to the room you want to play music in so that your phone is still in range of the Roam.  I’m not saying this is an ideal solution for everyone, but one option that should work for a lot of people.

As far as indication that local file storage option is going away because of exclusion for search, as I stated before, upgrading SMB seems to show that they are still invested in the feature.  However, it’s clear that fewer consumers are using and are interested in playing local files.  At some point, it may very well stop making sense for Sonos to keep chasing after these smaller market.  It also seems like, just my opinion only,  the people most interested in using this feature are less interested in buying new speakers.  The same people who looked at other cheaper, less commercial multiroom options. 

To be clear, I don’t think Sonos is going to drop local file option anytime in the next few years. I don’t think it costs them much to maintain and the tech doesn’t change much. I’m just saying the trend isn’t good for those who like the feature.  Perhaps there will be a revitalization and people will start wanting to store local files more often, similar to the vinyl trend.

@RJSUK why not use one of the third party apps mentioned in this thread that will play so Sonos without using Bluetooth?

I could but it would involve uploading 1.3TB of music to a provider. I just tried with YouTube Music and a Hi-Res 500MB FLAC album took about 15 minutes, meaning uploading the whole shebang would take about a month of uploading 24/7 and, unless I sign up for a paid subscription, it means low quality (lossy) playback, which alone makes it a non-starter. I'm obviously not an audiophile (if I was, I wouldn't be using Sonos) but I do want to listen to my music in the quality it is ripped/downloaded to (FLAC).

I emailed Sonos and they did reply. It basically reads like "we can't be bothered" anymore, sign up to a subscription service. The bit about carrying phones from room to room when using Wi-Fi is a laughable excuse, especially as they're trying to sell Bluetooth as a cutting edge-technology with their latest range of speakers.

The hardline Sonos apologists who are more interested in the technology than its ultimate end purpose are seemingly welcoming these changes with open arms but when I invested in Sonos, one of the big selling points was being able to access your own music from mobile devices and not being wholly reliant on subscriptions services or third party platforms.

@RJSUK you are misreading the earlier posts, there are apps that will read the data stored on your phone and stream it to a sonos device, without the need for any cloud storage.

I don't use the apps so cannot provide much detail but as I write I am streaming some music on my phone to a sonos play3 using hifi cast and using the sonos app I have grouped that play3 to a stereo pair of play1s

Let's be clear that it's not Goodel's fault that the "On this Device" function was removed!

The real reason is that Sonos won the patent dispute against Google. As a result, Google would have had to pay you the sum X or Google had to remove the affected patent disputes (functions) from their OS. So the whole thing is once again a question of the Sonos ecosystem.

Anyway, I'm out of Sonos, the closed ecosystem is not for me!

Can you substantiate this? How is allowing access for Sonos to files on an Android phone, something Google would have to pay Sonos for? And how is asserting their right (they largely won the case against Google) a Sonos fault?

At this point I have nothing to add to my statement.

Your comment of the patent issue is sort of correct. Google did remove some of their multiroom audio functionality rather than rewrite their code so that it does not conflict with Sonos.  That had to do with an earlier situation where Google wouldn’t be able to import their products that had Sonos patented coding in them.  The recent court case though resulted in a financial award to Sonos, and I don’t recall there being any option to remove something to avoid paying fees to Sonos with that case.  Could be wrong on that.

Regardless, I’m not following what that has to do with Google changing their OS functionality regarding file sharing. Are you saying Google changed the OS in retaliation to break Sonos functionality? Doubt that, but that would be Google’s fault, not Sonos.  Are you saying Sonos is just turning off the functionality to damage Google somehow?  Or is it more of a case where Google and Sonos have issues between them, so whenever there is a new issue between them, we should just assume it’s all tied together and Sonos is at fault?

I am sick and tired of Sonos incomprehensible policies concerning software updates. I don't use my Sonos all that much so pretty much every time I go to use it a software update is required. 

This time, my ability to play content from my phone was revoked, with the pitiful excuse that newer versions of Android won't allow this. I have been writing system software for Android devices for a decade and while Android continues to tighten its security with every release, this does not equate to completely revoking useful Android features. Usually such features just end up behind new user permissions. I find your claims highly suspect and would like to hear a technical explanation of this that satisfies an engineer. Until then I call BS on this.

But this has little to do with my situation, as I simply do not update my phone's OS. You have revoked a capability that, despite what you say, is still available on my phone.

I do not have a media server. I do not care to create one just becauss Sonos has now decided to drop my use case on the floor, nor do I want to bother managing it, making sure it's always on when I need it, etc. You have rendered my $1000+ of Sonos equipment essentially useless when it comes to my predominant use case, which was PLAYING FROM MY PHONE.

I bought Sonos originally because of its acclaimed ease of use, but it has turned into nightmare of forced updates, incompatibilities, frequent anomalies and revoked functionality.

I will never buy a piece of your hardware again and this sort of major functionality revocation deserves a class action lawsuit. Let me have the functionality I paid for. I did not pay for a system that would later decide my use case wasn't valid and if Sonos thinks this sort of feature revocation is OK because they buried the right to do so in some user agreement, all the more reason to never use their product again. I will purchase and set up all my own equipment before I ever spend another dime on this sort of crap again, because there is no guarantee you won't, and a near certainty you will, revoke some other feature in the future. 

@nelno Your 1000+usd is not essentially useless. There are are apps that will enable you to still play music from your phone without creating or using a media server, some are mentioned in this thread.

As for updates why don't you turn off auto updates in both the app and speakers.

At the risk of antagonising you even more than Sonos has already done: can you honestly say that no manufacturer other than Sonos might revoke some feature or other at some time for whatever reason? I don’t want to sound unsympathetic, but what manufacturer can guarantee to maintain capabilities forever? 

I read user agreements before clicking “agree”. If I disagree with a condition, I will not purchase or install the product.

It gets harder and harder and harder to use the Sonos.  Now that I can’t play music from my own phone anymore without going through a third party, my reasons for being a Sonos user are dwindling away.

If that feature was your main use case for Sonos, I agree you should probably move on.  

My entire library is stored on an external SD card on my phone so this decision effectively turns my Sonos Play speaker into a glossy paperweight. There's no way this needed to be done because of changes to the Android OS. Sonos are just increasingly locking down their products to a proprietary ecosystem and squeezing more money from their user base.

Not that they will care remotely about the loss of one user but my experience with their products from day one has been awful. This just concretes my decision to never buy a Sonos product again. 

If Sonos were trying to lockdown customers to a proprietary ecosystem, why do the support casting from different music service apps?  Why do they support airplay?  Why do their two latest products have aux inputs and bluetooth capacity? Playing files from android required using the Sonos app, correct?  How is that not with the ecosystem? I’m not following your logic here.

I’m not saying that the feature shouldn’t be important to you, and that maybe their’s a product out there that fits your needs better, but the motivation for the change doesn’t line up.

Personally, I never wanted my computer/phone/pad playing music because they are too fragile. Computers can crash or I might want to reboot for some reason. Portable devices need to be charged and charged more often if they are constantly playing music. A phone tethered to a charger is no fun. If the phone holder decides to walk the dog or go shopping, the music stops. With music stored on an external device connected to the network, the music never stops.

While not an option when I started using SONOS in 2005, it’s no longer a big deal to copy the library to a card if I want a copy of the music for portable use.

The 2005 SONOS players are still playing. How useful is your 2005 cellphone? I had to recycle my older cellphone because the cell towers stopped supporting it. How useful is an older iPhone/iPad/Android that cannot run many of the current Apps? 

The dominant business model that the public likes is buy once, free support forever. This strategy works for a while, but only if new customers keep buying “new improved”. But, new customers need the latest and greatest that won’t run on older, less capable hardware and operating systems. 

Apple provides AirPlay that SONOS supports. For the moment, at least, Android has made it impractical for SONOS to continue supporting music play for music stored on an Android device. It’s possible that this could change in the future, but similar to AirPlay, this new capability will probably require a new Android and SONOS device.

Nice, I always had trouble with that speaker. Constantly appearing disconnected even though no changes were made to the network in years, getting random tracks partially uploaded / skipping mid song. Never has issues with other speakers. Sonos were already pretty much dead to me for failing to deliver something that just works.

I mean, it just need to play music and recognize the standard network encoding formats.

Anyway, havent updating this thing in years, I thought perhaps an update would resolve some of these issues. I decide to check the notes to make sure they didn't do anything stupid and as it turns out, they removed the local streaming option.... Pretty much the only thing I use it for... LOL!

The nail in the coffin

Uhh.. maybe for your speaker.

I don't have any slots or cable, my only option is stream from NAS (computer) or phone.. and they just entire option. 

Funny too because those are the options that you hate.

There are large groups of people who feel that the world revolves around Airplay or Bluetooth. I don’t find either of them to be very reliable. Maybe if I was all Apple they would be better options.

I do have a noise cancelling Bluetooth headset that I use in the summer. The iPad struggles with this, the PC has virtually no issues.

I have a lot of unreleased music from artists that I listen to, simply uploading the songs to a service isn’t enough because they’ll just get taken down.

I listen to music straight from my phone because it’s convenient enough for me and has been for the last twenty years. Removing the feature I relied on the most from Sonos is insanely detrimental to how I prefer to use the app to listen what I enjoy listening to.

I’m obviously not expecting the feature to come back. But now I’m limited to what I’m able to listen to on my home theater and that sucks.

You aren’t limited in what you can listen to at home, you just can’t listen to it off your phone.

Add a local Music Library and copy your music there and you can listen to it at home.

I did that many years ago, both to have ripped-CD music when the Internet was out and to have my unreleased stuff available.

It would be nice if Sonos had the ability to get the phone makers to keep supporting stuff Sonos uses.

Thanks, I really wish I’d known that this was a feature much sooner.

At least that works. Now I can listen to all of my unreleased music again lol

Thanks, Ralpfocus. I'm using the Hi-Fi Cast app on my Google Phone and Samsung tablet and as I always like to support independent apps, I paid about £5 for a lifetime premuim subscription. It seems to be working very well, although for some functions such as playing to multiple rooms, I still have to hop into the Sonos app. It's very quick with none of the sluggishness that is normally associated with the Sonos app, although I do appreciate that it's not drawing in data from multiple services.

I do wonder though, if a third party independent app can play my Android devices' music on my Sonos speakers, why won't Sonos? 

@RJSUK 

I do wonder though, if a third party independent app can play my Android devices' music on my Sonos speakers, why won't Sonos? 

I am not entirely sure about this but I think the Sonos App tells the Sonos Speaker that it can find music on your phone and the speaker then communicates with the phone to find and fetch the music it wants to play. I suspect it is this ‘outside’ device requesting information from the phone that cause some of the issues.

HiFiCast and other such apps are uPnP/DLNA applications, now Sonos speakers uses UPnP and will identify themselves as DLNA renderers when queried (but they do not fully implement DLNA). When using something like HiFi Cast the App sends the music stream to the Sonos speaker which then plays the stream.

So the key difference is that the Sonos phone app tells the speaker to fetch the music from the Phone itself whilst HiFicast sends the music direct to the speaker.