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Answered

Sonos Plays Random Tracks or Stations

  • 5 February 2023
  • 12 replies
  • 1474 views

I’ve searched and found other people have the similar issues but no resolution.

  1. I have an alarm set for one news radio station. Sometimes it plays correctly, sometimes it will play a different new radio station. If I try to manually play the original station CNBC, it still plays the other. After a few days it went away
  2. I’ll play an album. Randomly part way through it plays other unrelated songs. The songs are different artists, styles, and usually ones I don’t listen to. The “continue on” feature is disabled.
  • No one else has access to these accounts. Most of the music is played through Spotify
  • there is no pet that might be touching the speakers
  • The speakers are Sonos SL (no microphone), and are high up where they cannot be touched without the assistance of a ladder
  • One speaker is literally a foot above the router, the other is in another room
  • I’ve rebooted and reset all more than once

Other suggestions?

 

 

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12 replies

Jamie A
Userlevel 7
Badge +16

Hi @Silent, welcome to the Sonos Community.

Sonos plays whatever stream it’s given by the music provider, so the best way to figure out what is causing this is to submit a diagnostics as soon as the issue occurs. However, I’ll list a few tips on what may help resolve this in the future if these issues happen infrequently.

As the radio station wasn’t playing correctly, even when you tried to play it manually rather than through the alarm, it’s possible that the link to the radio stream was incorrect and that issue was resolved by the radio service provider. If it happens again and attempting to manually start the radio stream plays the incorrect station, try testing the same station with a different radio service to see if it still happens. 

The only reason I could think of Spotify playing a random song is either Spotify’s Autoplay feature or that someone else in has access to the system and is adding items to your Spotify queue. I assume by ‘continue on’ you mean this feature and have turned it off, so I’m not sure what would cause this if nobody else has access to your Sonos system.

While this may also be an exaggeration, if the speaker really is one foot above the router, it’s too close and is most likely picking up on junk wireless signals. I’d recommend moving it at least 2-3 feet away and having a look into our guide on reducing wireless interference. 

The best suggestion I can give here, is to wait for the issues to occur again, submit a diagnostics, then reach out to our support team for further troubleshooting. They have tools available to look into this, troubleshoot your system with you, and can help resolve these issues.

I hope this information helps!

S

Thanks, I’ll be sure to grab diagnostics next time.

  • Radio station link. It worked in the past on Sonos and if it was corrupted, which is reasonable, I don’t think it would point to another radio station. The original station is CNBC and then got re-directed to MSNBC. That seems a bit too prescriptive to be random corruption.I have seen this in other community requests for support and don’t see resolution in those cases either.
  • Randomly plays a different song. The speaker is on a shelf about the router so it can play music for the room. It literally a foot above it but the other speaker is about 20 feet away. Same problem.
    • Please explain, in detail, what a junk wireless signal is. In 30 years of building networks I haven’t run across that term. Why would it cause one song in a playlist to be substituted for another? Yes, autoplay is turned off and I was specific that it’s in the middle of the playlist, not at the end. In addition, this only happens on the Sonos, not on Spotify itself. If any of the previous assertions were true, wouldn’t they happen on Spotify too? 
buzz

If you are playing a SONOS Playlist, if the current track is stalled due to a communication issue, the track will be abandoned and the next track will play.

We use “junk wireless” to describe a wireless interference issue that is not yet specified. Possibilities include Microwave Ovens, baby monitors, cordless phones, adjacent channel WiFi, Zigbee, Bluetooth, or some other spurious emission.

S

:/

If you don’t know it is ok to say so. Random answers are only going to make me more snarky.

 

  • The track is abandoned and then SONOS plays a completely random song. It is not skipping.
  • As I pointed out, and the last person had issues believing the router and SONOS sit very close to one another. Does putting them closer make the likelihood that a microwave in another room is going to cause interference? The inverse square law applies here.

I give up. Thanks for taking time to write. 

buzz

If you like, go to http://[address of a player]:1400/support/review. click on a player and watch the error counts in /proc/auth_rincon/status and /sbin/ifconfig. This is an undocumented, static area. Refresh the page to see current data. Newer designs report less data here than the older designs.

buzz

In addition to inverse square, we have summation. At some point the receiver will be overwhelmed. We could also have a rogue device that is emitting something awful.  

Jamie A
Userlevel 7
Badge +16

Hi @Silent ,

As @buzz  explained, ‘Junk Signals’ is a catchall term that we use to describe unknown wireless signals that the system is picking up which are not intended for Sonos.

If your speaker is very close to the router, signals being sent to the router from non-Sonos devices can be intercepted by the Sonos speaker which may result in interrupted playback, skipping tracks, being unable to start playback, and more. If you have speakers grouped together, the unintentional signals that one speaker picks up may also effect playback on the other speaker(s). Wi-fi devices pick up unintentional signals all the time, it’s just so much more noticeable on a Sonos speaker as they’re designed to output the signal information in the form of audio, and without ‘buffering’.

The issues you are experiencing are unique though. A diagnostic will allow us to see which device or service that the playback is being initiated from, as well as if any errors might be present on your system, and without a diagnostics to look into, I can only offer tips on reducing potential interference from other devices.

I’ll be happy to take a look at your diagnostic, so when the issue happens again, please submit a diagnostics and reply here with the reference number. You can also reach out to our support team for real time troubleshooting.

I hope this helps.

N

So glad I found this.  I’ve been having the same exact issue lately and it’s a really frustrating experience.

I play a song from a Spotify album, and after the song it skips to some random other song on repeat - no playlist or anything.  I can sometimes even replay the first song from the album, fast-forward to the end, and it will repeat the behavior.

I was able to fix it once by restarting sonos app, but then it came back the next day.

My roam is nowhere near the router - opposite side of the house and a floor apart.  This is a new issue in the past 2 weeks, after using the same roam and router in the same places for over a year. 

This only happens on roam.  Not the phone, not One, not carplay, not JBL via Bluetooth (which has great sound, great battery life, immediate startup, automatic phone connection, and zero issues ever - it just works). 

S

In the end, I learned three things.

  • Amazon implemented a new feature that forces music to skip unless you pay for the next upgraded service level.
  • When I use Apple Music as the primary source, everything works flawlessly across all of my devices (mobile, laptop, Sonos, car). All of the songs play without issue across all of the devices. I exchanged my Spotify subscription for Apple. 
  • I sent the diagnostics over and never received a reply. I like Sonos and when it works, it is great.

 

Airgetlam

You don’t receive a reply when you send a diagnostic to Sonos, you need to call them, and tell them to look at it. See the discussion in the Diagnostics - How do they work? thread.

 

I would imagine Sonos gets way too many of the ‘I was just testing the feature’ to be able to dedicate the time to look and respond to every single submission. Nor do I recall the last time I submitted one ( it’s been a long time) that there was any way to denote what they should be looking for. I would think or hope there’s enough data in one to take 10 or 15 minutes to process, and potentially even more if you had no idea what you were looking for. 

Bruce
S

To be clear, I had at least ten calls with Sonos and Spotify each. I kept getting handed off to another person after a ten minute period. it was frustrating and a waste of my time.

 

My problem was solved by moving to Apple for music. The other issues… I don’t care to spend more time on.

Airgetlam

Thanks, it wasn’t clear to me, and I didn’t want you to lose out, if you were expecting them to call you, as some people seem to think will happen. 

I am glad you got your own situation resolved to your satisfaction. 

Bruce
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