I can see this topic has been raised multiple times previously, so I'm surprised it has never been addressed by Sonos: for music stored on a phone, why is there no folder view? It is a simple programming fix included by multiple other music apps. The included Artist/Album/etc views are useless, given that the app is very sensitive to ID tagging differences and splits some albums into multiple albums (for instance if 1 song on an album is tagged as "pop" and another is tagged as "alternative", they appear as separate albums). Also, mix albums get split over multiple artists.
A folder view allows users who care about the organization of their music (a user base which highly correlates with users wanting high quality speakers like Sonos) to control their listening experience, which is the point of technology. This missing feature makes me regret having switched to the Sonos ecosystem (I have wasted hours on workarounds, including re-tagging my music, only for Sonos to find some other reason to split songs amongst albums).
Answered
Folder view on mobile
Best answer by MikeV
Music stored on a phone is read by the Sonos app from a database provided by the phone's operating system. Sonos isn't reading the actual files from the memory card or built-in storage. That's why a folder view isn't available for music stored on a mobile device.
Some mobile operating systems don't have a concept of folders in synchronizing music to the device (Apple/iOS), so for Sonos to be consistent in controller operation, under Android they read from the media player's database rather than doing their own file system scanning. They rely on the device OS to handle that rather than doing it themselves.
View originalSome mobile operating systems don't have a concept of folders in synchronizing music to the device (Apple/iOS), so for Sonos to be consistent in controller operation, under Android they read from the media player's database rather than doing their own file system scanning. They rely on the device OS to handle that rather than doing it themselves.
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+21Music stored on a phone is read by the Sonos app from a database provided by the phone's operating system. Sonos isn't reading the actual files from the memory card or built-in storage. That's why a folder view isn't available for music stored on a mobile device.
Some mobile operating systems don't have a concept of folders in synchronizing music to the device (Apple/iOS), so for Sonos to be consistent in controller operation, under Android they read from the media player's database rather than doing their own file system scanning. They rely on the device OS to handle that rather than doing it themselves.
Some mobile operating systems don't have a concept of folders in synchronizing music to the device (Apple/iOS), so for Sonos to be consistent in controller operation, under Android they read from the media player's database rather than doing their own file system scanning. They rely on the device OS to handle that rather than doing it themselves.
Thanks for your detailed response Mike, I think I follow and at least I won't continue thinking Sonos just doesn't care.
On the computer, there is a way to stream music on Sonos using a different media player (say Mediamonkey via upnp). Curious whether Sonos could offer that feature on Android for tracks stored on the phone (since Mediamonkey has folder view, it would be the controller, and Sonos would just stream the result)?
On the computer, there is a way to stream music on Sonos using a different media player (say Mediamonkey via upnp). Curious whether Sonos could offer that feature on Android for tracks stored on the phone (since Mediamonkey has folder view, it would be the controller, and Sonos would just stream the result)?
I have an Android phone and also want to view my music according to the folder structure that I have setup. Downgrading the Android support so that it is limited to what Apple devices can do seems like a backward step.
Is there an app or some other way to get around this Sonos limitation? It really puts a damper on my enjoyment of our Sonos speakers when I can't find the album that I know I just put in a particular folder.
Does Sonos have an API that would let an external application get around this problem?
Is there an app or some other way to get around this Sonos limitation? It really puts a damper on my enjoyment of our Sonos speakers when I can't find the album that I know I just put in a particular folder.
Does Sonos have an API that would let an external application get around this problem?
I use Audio Beats as my music player on my Android, and use a Folder system as well to listen to my music. I do not care for Artists, Albums, or Genre views. As Sonos does not have a Folder view in the "on this mobile device", I created a playlist in the media player of the songs from each Folder...and use Playlist in Sonos as my Folder view.
I'm happy.:)
I'm happy.:)
On Android under "Music Library" I'm linked to music on my home NAS drive, and there is an option to view "Folders" so that I can find music the way I have it organized. I don't think it's too much to ask that we have a "Folders" option under "On This Mobile Device" as well... again, I would like the ability to look for music the way I have it organized on my device, rather than album view, song view, genre view, etc., which is next to useless for me.
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