The new Sonos Mobile App & Web App

So further to my post yesterday I’ve dug out an old Android phone (I use an iPhone) and downloaded the old app from APKmirror. I’m once again able to use my system properly and am now searching the internet for a replacement system; if anyone has a good suggestion for a NAS based setup please feel free to share 😊

Try Sonopad

I am having trouble with Amazon music. Even after authorising the service many times over, it still does not work on the new app!

Sensible suggestions. Sounds like you did get a good night’s sleep in the end!  :)

I recognize the importance of continuously evolving user experience (UX) design, and I understand the specific dependencies on iOS and Android platforms.

here just some pointer from my perpective:

Same here with Amazon Music @SarahN - I’m guessing that the engineers are still perhaps working on a few things behind the scenes at the moment. 

It looks dull and boring to me. No colour or artwork so far.

Thanks Ken - at least I know it’s not just me lol.

I can now access my saved Amazon content via My Sonos but cannot search new stuff. Is that the same for you @Ken_Griffiths ?

99% of the music I listen to is stored on my NAS.

For the life of me, I cannot understand why you would release apps that have inferior functionality than the previous version? 

For goodness sake get the alarm and sleep timer functions reinstated.  A really basic error.

I’m looking at Sonophone/Sonopad. Certainly looks interesting. Checking that it will allow use of my local server based (NAS) library. 

From you listening to locally stored music files SONOS cannot benefit even theoretically. But from you pushed to listen music from streaming platforms through SONOS app and gear most probably they can make a profit. 

But I really wonder what they will benefit from scratching the sleep timer and alarms. And what means “these feature will be back via updates in July”...Which July, 2024 or some other July. Many things appear to be very very wrong here.

Did another update drop my few playlist have sorted themselves out now.

It varies, I’m not seeing much of anything in that service at the moment, nor via the ‘Web App’ - so I’m sure things are a ‘work in progress’. I’ll just wait and see what happens later. There’s no rush, as I can still play on Sonos using Alexa/SVC voice assistants, or via the Amazon Music ‘native’ App.

Everything has gone wonky now. Can't access my library at all. Taking a while to load. Argh!

It works fine with mine.

This is all I am getting now since looking at for the last hour or so.

Weird. Now Apple music doesn't work at all. Might try restarting my phone.

My Subsonic → Bonob integration is gone with the update.

I don’t own any Spotify/Deezer/Whateverelse streaming platform account, meaning that my system was suddenly a brick.

I’m lucky I’m on Android and I could download a older .apk file to get it to work again.

Will it be possible to install custom local music providers again or should I sell my stereo system ?

Do let us know. I’d be most grateful! ☺️ 

checking my iPad the app prompted me to update. no way. the inbox has a mail “our best update yet” haha.

@Me40 Just as Sonos don’t make money from me listening to my local music, they don’t make any money from me listening to Spotify or Apple music or any other service that I’m aware of (except their own).

They make money from me wanting to listen to music (or TV etc) in another room and buying (or upgrading) another speaker - the same as if I wanted to listen through a service.  I don’t get your point.  I get the point that users listening to local files are much less than ‘streamers’ - but don’t see where the profit you referred to comes from.

Some feedback after about a day of use with the new app….

Positive/Neutral

* I don’t mind the change in interface from the tabbed interface to the new one. Maybe I actually like it, but will need to use a bit longer to decide on that.

Negative

* Feature removal: I echo what others have been saying about removal of features. It’s ridiculous that features like alarms, sleep timer, queue management, and local library search have been removed (even if some or all will come back in a few weeks/months). This new app should still be in beta.

* Performance: The new app seems to load pages really slowly. When I switch to a new page/view it takes a couple of seconds to load the graphics. What’s that all about? Even putting aside all the other issues this causes the app (and by extension the system) to feel low-quality rather than premium.

* Services: I can’t access Amazon Music from the app. When I browse to it in “Your services” I’m just presented with the message “No content items available”. It works fine when accessed from the Windows desktop app.

* Local library: When I first installed the app yesterday I had access to my personal music library (which I have stored on a NAS) via the “Your sources” section of the app. But when I opened the app today the “Your Sources” section seems to have disappeared from the app so I no longer have access from the app. I can still access from the Windows desktop app so there is no issue with the storage location/device.

* Favourites lists: This seems like a minor thing compared to all the other issues but when I browse to favourites I don’t like the new way of listing albums and stations. Previously these were listed with small icons in a single column (currently still being used for recently added section). Now they are listed in a 2-column layout with large icons. Please give us option to use single column + small icon list. Also, you have started using icons to indicate which service each favourite came from (in the subtext under favourite names). I don’t like this because these icons are very small and can be hard to see. Also some services don’t seem to provide icons, so I have a number of favourites which just say “Live Station” or “Album” with no clear indication of their source. I’d prefer it if you ditched the icons and went back to using text to indicate the source (or providing user option on this).

It’s hard to believe that they’ve effectively released a pre-beta version with functionality missing without providing a way to revert to a previous stable version while they resolve the outstanding issues/missing features.

I’m just so disappointed that they just expect us to test it and wait until they release newer versions - do they still expect us to recommend Sonos while all this mess is going on? 

This seems to be a total disaster across the board. Few people are even bothering to comment on the actual new UI design because there are so many other important problems to fix first !! 

They could be getting a revenue stream from the service for what is played from their devices, we can only speculate. Someone with the interest to do so may parse their financial statements to check because those statements are now in the public domain I am sure. 

But their neglect of NAS is just a business case decision because the Sonos user base that uses NAS is said by Sonos to be less than 5% of the total user base. This is a user preference driven outcome over the last ten years, and Sonos is simply orienting itself to it.

I wish they would make S1 work on all devices and let users that want NAS to go back to it, even if it means forsaking some S2 eye candy. Can’t be hard to do?