Airplay 2 and play count bug

My iTunes music listening scheme relies on play count being updated and Sonos didn’t support that so I wasn’t a Sonos user. But we got a Playbase as a sound bar for our TV and liked it a lot and enjoyed the streaming functionality.

Since Airplay 2 support - which would allow me to stream directly from iTunes like I do the Airplay speakers I had - came out, I decided to pick up a Sonos One to play with. Airplay directly from iTunes, and Sonos streaming capability - best of both worlds, right?

I set my shiny new Sonos One up today and…hit an unexpected snag.

If I would play music using iTunes to my computer speakers and using Airplay to also stream to the Sonos One at the same time - the play counts in my Smart Playlists would NOT be updated. However, if I started streaming to a second non-Sonos Airplay speaker (so, computer speakers, Sonos One and an additional Airplay speaker), the play counts WILL be updated.

So: Airplay to Sonos - no play count update. Airplay to Sonos + non-Sonos - play count update. This makes no sense. When using Airplay, the Sonos speaker should just be a dumb client being driven by iTunes which should update the play count.

Is this a bug in the Sonos Airplay implementation? Is there a setting somewhere I failed to set? I am new to the Sonos galaxy.

Any insight would be very welcome.

Cheers all.

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In all honesty, I think this is an Apple issue, not a Sonos issue. In this scenario, the speaker is just a "receiver" or "target", and it shouldn't make any difference. whether it's a Sonos speaker, or an Apple TV, or anything else.

Just out of curiosity, why did you buy a Sonos One to play with Airplay 2? Why not just use the Playbase?

I have the same problem, and your suggestion to Airplay to Sonos & non-Sonos speaker works. The play count in iTunes is working.

That's absolutely fascinating.

I have the same problem, and your suggestion to Airplay to Sonos & non-Sonos speaker works. The play count in iTunes is working.

True, but that's a crap workaround. But I'm glad that someone else is seeing the same behavior - that verifies that this isn't somehow unique to my setup.

I would like to replace my existing Airplay speakers with a couple of Sonos Ones, but this play count issue is a deal breaker. Sonos made a lot out of adding the Airplay support and having it delivered broken like this is a huge let down.

My next move is going to be to completely scrub the Sonos app from my Mac and see if this behavior persists. Part of me wonders if you are using to Airplay to play to only Sonos devices if it is doing some sort of end-run around Airplay by somehow employing the Sonos app - which as we know, does not update the play count.

I have no proof of this (and I could totally be wrong), but this behavior doesn't make any sense and I need to examine all the angles. I DID notice that when Airplaying from iTunes to the Sonos One, if one opens the Sonos App, it will show what song is playing on the speaker including the album artwork. And if the speaker is merely acting as a dumb Airplay audio client, that seems like odd behavior.

You lost me on that last bit. The controller shows what you're playing if it's streaming something from Pandora on the speaker, why would it not show what your streaming from your Apple device?

I think it is because we have to play through the Sonos Controller to get the audio to work, where as the other non-sonos speakers connect directly via Airplay. What I did was to select my Apple TV as another audio source t test, and like you said, it works.

You lost me on that last bit. The controller shows what you're playing if it's streaming something from Pandora on the speaker, why would it not show what your streaming from your Apple device?

It does show on iTunes and the Sonos Controller (Concurrent). Not sure why forwarding audio to the controller (via Airplay) does not increase the play count in iTunes.

You lost me on that last bit. The controller shows what you're playing if it's streaming something from Pandora on the speaker, why would it not show what your streaming from your Apple device?

No. If I am streaming from music from iTunes to the Sonos One using Airplay, I would expect that the Sonos One is acting as a dumb Airplay audio client. Such is the nature of Airplay (with audio devices) and would be the desired behavior. But if I open the Sonos app (which is theoretically not involved in this transaction) it reports the song name and album artwork of what is being played to that speaker. I would not have expected that behavior.

I have the same problem, and your suggestion to Airplay to Sonos & non-Sonos speaker works. The play count in iTunes is working.

Yeah, agreed. I noticed the problem a few hours ago, and I logged in to the community to see if anyone else had that same issue.

Your workaround works, so I am good for now.

Thanks for the solution.

Your workaround works, so I am good for now.

Thanks for the solution.

Well yeah, but a workaround isn't exactly a solution. I would expect that a product that professes to have Airplay support (which other third party non-Apple products have) to not come with any hidden caveats like "also injects our software into the mix that may interfere with the presumed behavior of your software that is using a standard media streaming protocol."

Which appears to be what is happening.

This is definitely frustrating as I was also hoping for the play count functionality 🙂. Having said that, it may indeed be an Apple bug. According to some comments over at the apple forum, people seem to have play count problems with the HomePod and even when streaming from iTunes to the Apple TV. Hopefully the bug will be fixed soon

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8457333

Hmm. Thanks for passing that along!

I guess it's possible that this is a deeper iTunes bug impacting Airplay 2 stuff. It seems like the workaround I found is consistent with what is in that thread - streaming to a "legacy" Airplay device (like an older third party Airplay speaker or an Airport Express) makes it behave. I noticed that someone was also theorizing what I did - that the HomePod or Sonos wasn't "really" using Airplay, but was using Sonos/Apple Music streaming under the hood. Which still could be what is happening with this play count issue.

I don't use Apple networking gear anymore, but I had an old Airport Express sitting around so I added it to my network to use as a "dummy" Airplay device to get the play counts to update. But still, it's not really an optimal solution.

The other problem I've come across after using the Sonos One as a dedicated Airplay speaker over the past few days: before when using iTunes and an older Airplay speaker, when streaming to the Airplay speaker and also using my wired computer speakers (my base use case), like once a week or so, the two speakers would "fall out of sync" with longer things like podcasts or internet radio streams. The solution was to pause and resume.

But using the Sonos One as the Airplay speaker, it happens multiple times a day. Which is no good. And now I don't know which part of this setup to blame. Bad Airplay 2 implementation on the part of Sonos? iTunes being crap dealing with Airplay 2 devices?

Hi Rextyn

I am sorry to hear about these troubles and I can totally empathise. Very frustrating indeed. Without being 100% sure I have a feeling that the playcount bug is going to be 'easier' for apple to fix (assuming it is apple's). The sync issues you mention appear to be reported both within and outside the sonos environment. Check here for more:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8408186

https://www.reddit.com/r/sonos/comments/8zecq5/airplay_2_is_wildly_out_of_sync/

https://en.community.sonos.com/troubleshooting-228999/sonos-and-homepod-latency-issue-with-airplay-2-6809386

This is of course just a few cases but it appears that the airplay 2 sync issue is not limited to sonos devices. I don't have personal experience to contribute as I currently do not own any of these devices but I certainly notice out-of-sync music playback between my itunes 'base' (Macbook pro) and an apple TV4 connected to my tv and then dac - amp. I kind of expected this though as the signal leaves the ATV4 and then undergoes processing by my dac - amp. It appears that Airplay 2 is agnostic and cannot adjust for different hardware and the ensuing (varying) amounts of delay. I would imagine (to be tested of course) that if one were to use speakers from the same manufacturer (e.g. all sonos or all homepods) then the music playback would / should stay in sync. Trying to sync a homepod and a sonos one... might be tricky due to the different delay for each device. I am thinking out loud here but I am not sure Airplay 2 would be able to adjust and sync playback. Hopefully I am wrong.

Sonos is the same in this. If you try to sync a play one with a sonos connect feeding a receiver that employs dsp or room correction then you will end up with out-of-sync playback unfortunately. I had this problem when I owned a connect feeding a naim dac (which includes a buffer hence adding delay).

Having said that, people report Airplay 2 sync issues even when using the same type of speaker all around so it might be an apple bug again.

You've been a wealth of useful information and I appreciate it. I've been using a multi-speaker Airplay setup as my in-home audio solution for many years at this point. So all of this recent Airplay drama catches me a little off guard.

As far as the out of sync issues goes...that only used to happen like once a week, and only when listening to something long like a podcast or radio stream (never with music). I figured something about the buffering getting a bit wonky. No big deal. But this is happening multiple times daily now and sometimes with music.

All is not lost, I have a use case where I can deploy the Sonos One I have and not have it be a total wash. But my original plan to go Airplay enabled Sonos-only is definitely in hold at this point.

Hello everyone.

Got myself two wonderful Sonos One a month ago and as an avid iTunes and Apple Music user, I was delighted to be able to use AirPlay2. Unfortunately, iTunes doesn't update play count. Sometimes it does, for reasons beyond my knowledge, 2 or 3 songs every 25 tracks.

I really would like to be able to find a fix, and this is probably Apple's fault to be honest… I'll try to contact them but I know they will send me back at Sonos so…

I don't have another speaker so I can't really use the fix offered earlier in this thread.

I don't have another speaker so I can't really use the fix offered earlier in this thread.

If you happen to use any of the older Apple WiFi gear, you can configure an Airport Express to act as a dummy Airplay client and silently stream to that as well to make play count behave.

I don't have another speaker so I can't really use the fix offered earlier in this thread.

If you happen to use any of the older Apple WiFi gear, you can configure an Airport Express to act as a dummy Airplay client and silently stream to that as well to make play count behave.

Oh thanks! But I don't own any older Apple WiFi gear 😞

Is the issue with the play counts persisting? Just wanted to touch base to see if this is consistent of if by any chance it resolves itself?

Cheers

Not sure. I'm still doing the hacky workaround and haven't had the time to force updates and re-test it all.

I can report the "devices falling out of sync with each other with unacceptable regularity" when Airplaying to a Sonos device issue is persisting. Unfortunately.

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