Hard to be sure from a forum post, but it is possible you’re experiencing a duplicate IP address issue.

Try unplugging all your Sonos devices from power, then reboot your router. Give the router a couple of minutes before you plug back in your Sonos devices. Again, wait a couple of minutes before testing.

However, if this doesn’t make a change, I would recommend that you submit a system diagnostic within 10 minutes of experiencing this problem, and call Sonos Support to discuss it.

There may be information included in the diagnostic that will help Sonos pinpoint the issue and help you find a solution.

When you speak directly to the phone folks, they have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your network and Sonos system.

Hello,

I’m experiencing the same form a couple of weeks now, not sure exactly but at the same time of the downgrade of the Sonos App or shortly after.

I’m a communication system engineer and I’m pretty sure that the problem as nothing to do with the network. I’m listening most of my music from Rock Radio dot com (censors …). It went ok for many years and suddenly I’m able to listen to it for a couple of minutes and then the music stops. When I try to play it again, I get a message like ‘unable to read blabla – station not found’ – seen on the Windows application. Then a couple of minutes after, let’s say 5 to 10 minutes one can listen to the station … for a couple of minutes again. Very frustrating.

And this problem is not related to my network but Sonos itself. I experience no interruption of the stream on other devices like smartphones, a simple web page on a PC and so on. For the geeks of you, use Wireshark to watch where the problem lies.

There are only 2 possibilities beside the fact that Sonos prevents you now to add custom sources of music:

• They don’t want you to use other sources of music that the services available in the app (follow the money …) because those play without a hitch,
• Or after screwing up the application, they’ve managed to do the same with the hardware.

Whatever the explanation is, yet another LOW from Sonos which is trashing what used to be very nice system.

Sonos is a public company, so they have to expose their financials. I’ve followed that money, Sonos doesn’t receive any at all from any of the streaming companies. Their revenue stream is from hardware sales, not industry kickbacks. 

In addition to that, their policies for integrating/maintaining a service are public and open.  It states quite plainly that the only fees charged are for the Sonos Pro service, which is for commercial installations only.  All consumer level service integration is free of charge. 

Thank you for your additions. First, the published information by a company like Sonos is far from everything they might working on now or in the future. History has shown that one cannot rely on the public statements of any company more or less linked to the streaming business.

Second, the way the application is changing may give some clues about the future. It seems quite clear,  even if Sonos is a speaker manufacturer, they try more and more to get some control of the devices they sell through account, registration, data collection, obligation to upgrade to the new application (which stays almost unusable so far) and so on.

Regarding the custom radio stations, the user is still unable to add new ones and use them through the favorites – they are not shown at all!

Certainly, there is nothing in the public releases of Sonos about some kickbacks, but facts are here and stubborn. There is no indication nor hope that the Sonos ecosystem will remain open enough to let the users to use whatever source of music they might want to listen to.

I hope I’m wrong, but the reality shows that Sonos is not taking the right path to deliver an open system for the users we are.

So rank speculation and biased conspiracy theories overrule public financials and plainly stated rules?  

<Backs out of the thread . . . slowly> 

The word conspiracy is an easy way to close any debate on what will happen with the Sonos line of products. I’m a faithful user of Sonos for almost 10 years now. I have invested quite a bunch of money in their products.

The way I came to Sonos is quite simple. I was in a wineshop around my place when I listened to blues, my favorite style of music, without any talks or commercials. I asked the attendant how this was possible. He showed me a Sonos speaker and said we were listening to Rock Radio dot Com playing a blues rock stream. I decided on that moment I wanted this in my home. I checked on the website of Rock Radio the way to play these streams on the Sonos speakers. Everything was aligned so I bought the system.

Then an announcement came about the end of the initial TuneIn service. Gone with this service the ability to add custom radio stations. The only solution was to save those radio stations into the favorites with no possibility of editing an existing or adding any new entry. One can hardly call this new feature a progress and I see it as a clear cancellation of a feature available before.

After many discussions, threads and request, I have no clear indication about the future of this feature. The silence of Sonos about this topic is deafening and I’m not the only lost guy which uses custom radio stations. No comes the new applications which makes my Sonos products less usable if possible.

Questions about the future of the usability of the speakers began to flourish. I came to make some hypotheses about the goals of Sonos and one of them was the money they could get from the services embedded in the application. I was wrong, ok, but there is no conspiracy there. Which company wants to unveil their future plans to the competion?

Someone wrote that they are speaker manufacturers, period. So, could you explain to me why the are restraining the use of their products to the point we cannot choose the service we want to use?

The answer is likely that selling speakers is not profitable anymore. After all, one does not buy new speakers just because they want to have the latest bells and whistles. It’s also quite reasonable to think that Sonos is looking to move from the single transaction model to a monthly billed service relationship. And thinking this is not building a conspiration.

Maybe you have the answer to all those questions, and I would be glad to read your comments about it. But, for sure, I will not back down on this topic unless I have back the ability to add custom radios like it was possible before.

They aren’t restraining anything.  The app was a ground up rewrite, and many things were left off or unfinished at the time of release.  The ability to add custom URL’s was one of those things.  Now will it be readded?  Only time will tell, but don’t attribute this to some scheme to bilk the user’s out of more money or forcing them into a monthly billing model (which is an absolute absurdity) when it is easily explained as something which didn’t make it into the app before it was released to the public.  The accusation of nefarious actions when a far simpler explanation exists is the very definition of conspiratorial nonsense. 

Just for the record, the announcement of the removal of the possibility of defining your own radio stations dates back at least 1 year. Nothing to do with the new app.

Then you would think the evil plan to move everyone to a monthly billing model would be in place by now if it all started back then.  

We can only wait to watch how things will unfold. I hope you are 100% right.

This app change and constant updates is just problem after problem. Airplay fails all the time and so does streaming spotify from within sonos app. Tech support is absolutely useless and all the contractors in India just dont give a *. They read from a script and then blame my network saying the era 100s are on my 5ghz wifi and the beam and arc are on the 2.4ghz. Their solution is to change the channel on my modem yet my ISP says its not possible with their dual band modems. Because of that india support just says to * off because that is their solution and since we cant do it and “rule out network issues”.

To top it all off, 1 to 2 hour waits on the phone.

*Moderator Note: Modified in accordance with the Community Code of Conduct.*

Hello @Marcus E,

Sorry to read this. I’ll try to give a couple of hints about this situation assuming that everything is connected through a single WiFi network available through the router:

1. Let’s assume that the speakers are all connected to the same WiFi network.
2. in some cases, the 2.4 and 5 GHz network may prevent cross communication; it’s called something like network or client isolation; it prevents one connected device through WiFi to ‘talk’ to another connected device through the same WiFi network; your ISP should be able to confirm if this feature is enabled or not on your router.
3. you can try to disable the 5 GHz network since all devices should be able to connect to a 2.4GHz network.
4. you can try a tool to scan your network (something like Net Analyzer under Android - iOS has certainly also that kind of tools); if you ‘see’ all your Sonos devices, the WiFi network is more or less ok depending on how big your site is; if all the Sonos devices are present, the problem lies elswhere.
5. you can also use the mentioned tool to measure the WiFi signal to check if it’s powerful enough to enable a reliable connection. You should not go under -60 dBm if you want to avoid any problem.

This is a bit technical, but these points can help since the very nice persons at the support are most of the time as lost as you can be and totally useless if a single point is not at the right place in their pre-chewed scenarios.

A week of no devices in my home finding the Sonos system on my WiFi (only one WiFi so all on one).  Strange that most speakers play Sonos content when I turn them on and off on the speaker.  So my Move plays radio when I hit enter on the Move.  Era 300’s play Radio Paradise and my Era 100’s are playing Amazon Music.  I can listen to these three items but can not access any speaker from the Sonos App on any device that anyone owns.  Every morning I go through the shut-down WiFi, unplug all speakers, reset all Sonos apps on all devices, and still Sonos can’t find Sonos on my WiFi on any device so there is no control.

Good news- a full suite of Apple Home Pods will be delivered tomorrow so I can enjoy Music and radio again.  I have $8,000 of Sonos speakers in my home and office locations and are 100% boat anchors now.  None of my MANY Sonos speakers connect thorough AirPlay2 anymore so they have all been rendered useless and I can no longer spend 1-2 hours every morning hoping today is the day I regain Sonos access through the App.

So sad and depressing

It’s a dual band modem from quantum and they said turning off one of the bands is impossible. They aren’t isolated as I have other smart devices both hardwired and WiFi connected to both bands so that’s not the issue. Sonos support shows all speakers connected to the WiFi and it’s only a 2000 sqft house where they’re within 10ft of the router

Ok, so one can almost certainly that the network is ok.

I was able recently able to connect 3 ‘old’ Sonos devices, 2 Sonos 1 and 1 Playbar. The only way to get through was to connect them through the Ethernet port. Quite cumbersome and at the opposite of the initial philosophy at the origin of Sonos but it works.

WiFi is a nice solution but, in my field, we are used to say that a wireless network is the source of many problems, not the solution. If you can afford to connect through cables at least until a stable app is published, you may again be able to use your speakers at a basic level.

Sonos devices have worked flawlessly many years on WiFi networks until the new application was published. It seems to me that we are in a kind of Georges Orwell’s 1984 Sonos world right now. Do not believe the support if your system was working perfectly before the update. The application is the source of the problem, period.

The unfortunate thing is I bought into Sonos after the * app update causing problems. When I first got the speakers iOS wouldn’t work to add speakers or updated 

so I bought into Sonos after the * update causing iOS app to not work with either install or software update. But I’ve heard that Sonos was reliable so that’s why I got them. 
I can use Ethernet for arc and beam so they now recommend I connect one of those with the Ethernet cable and the rest with connect to that one somehow

*Moderator Note: Modified in accordance with the Community Code of Conduct.*