Frequent problems loading or playing songs from Spotify playlists using the Sonos app

When using WiFi, what WiFi band, channel and channel-width are you using to connect your One SL speaker to your router and what router make/model is it?

Are there any features on the router like QoS/Airtime Fairness/Firewall/Parental Control/VPN etc. Have you perhaps tried using a different DNS server, if cinnections are timing-out?

Also have you tried the speaker wired direct to the router, just to see if the issues are resolved by doing that?

Last, but not least, who is your ISP provider and what is their download/upload speed limits that you are subscribed to? 

I just hardwired my Sonos device into my router. It made no difference.
I tried loading 188 playlists into the queue. I got “An error occurred while adding tracks to the queue 1002”. The songs from most of the playlists were added to the queue but some of the playlists were skipped.

I submitted the diagnostics: 979564211.

Try the router here - see if there are features like ‘QoS’ or ‘Airtime Fairness’ and just disable those (if enabled) and see if it makes a difference. You can always restore them back.

I do also fully appreciate the things you have mentioned, but I was just thinking there are things you could still try with your setup to perhaps try to narrow things down a little to get closer to the root cause.

I mostly use Amazon Music & Deezer here, but do have the Spotify ‘Free’ version service setup and personally speaking whenever I do use it via the Sonos App, I don’t have any issues with Spotify at all.

So my own personal experience seems to be somewhat different to the one you describe. Hence the suggestions to maybe try a few things obvious and to see if it might resolve your issues.

This issue drives me absolutely NUTS! It is not a router issue, because Sonos works just fine with all the other products (Youtube Music, Sonos Radio, etc.). If it is a Spotify issue, Sonos should have their tech team talk to Spotify’s tech team to ensure the integration is working. I cannot believe you’d sell a speaker at these prices if it can only play the selected music 80% of the time. 

I currently have 188 public playlists. The average number of songs per playlist is probably a little less than 100 songs (from 20 to around 300) so the total number of songs is around 18,000.
https://open.spotify.com/user/83mnlqxhxhdol6vqbsypr2j8w/playlists

I agree that error 1002 is a network connection error, but I believe it’s caused by the internet connection being lost as a result of a timeout when Sonos requests something from Spotify and Spotify doesn’t respond quickly enough. As it attempts to load the songs from all of the playlists I’ve selected into the queue, each time it finishes with a playlist it sends a request to Spotify to send a list of the songs in the next playlist. When Spotify is too slow responding, a timeout occurs and the internet connection to Spotify is lost, so it skips that playlist, starts up a new connection, and goes on to the next playlist, and when you’re all done you get the error 1002 message indicating that not all of the songs you requested were loaded into the queue. That’s why I end up with all of the songs from most of the playlists I selected in my queue, but some of the playlists are completely skipped, and the playlists that are skipped vary from one occurrence of the problem to the next.

This loading of all of the songs from all of my playlists has been working for me MOST of the time for a long time, but for the last few days I can’t even load a handful of playlists without getting the error. I suspect that’s because the Spotify servers are getting overloaded.

You might try selecting a larger number, like all of the 70s rock playlists. The greater the number of playlists that are selected, the greater the chance that the error will occur with at least one. (You can select the first and then hold the shift key when you select the last, and all of the ones in between will also be selected.)

I believe the only benefit of Spotify Premium (which I have) over the free version is that you don’t hear commercials.

When I set up my Sonos app I selected Spotify, then went to “Your Library”, then selected Playlists and added it to Sonos Favorites. As a result, whenever I get into the Sonos app now, the list of my Spotify playlists (those I’ve created myself and those I am following) shows up under Sonos Favorites.

I always begin with a clean speaker queue, then go to my list of Spotify playlists and select which ones I want to listen to, and then select “Add Selected to End of Queue”. (Most of the time I select all 188 playlists but sometimes I just want to listen to jazz, country, 70s rock, or whatever.)

As I mentioned before, loading all of the songs from all of my playlists into the queue has been working for me MOST of the time for a very long time, but for the last few days, when I attempt to load as many as 10 or 20 playlists into the queue I will usually see the error and some of the selected playlists will be missing from the queue.

It is important to note that when the problem occurs, it’s not because of a single timeout for the entire list. It doesn’t just stop loading songs from playlists at a certain point. When the error occurs I can see all of the songs from most of my selected playlists in the queue, but all of the songs from some of the selected playlists are not in the queue. The omitted playlists are scattered randomly throughout the list and they vary from occurrence to occurrence. This indicates that as it loads the queue, Sonos goes through all of the playlists I selected, and for each playlist there is a good chance that its songs will be loaded, and a slight chance that it will be skipped instead and none of its songs will be loaded. This is why I believe that for every playlist I select, Sonos has to request that Spotify provide a list of its songs, and if Spotify is slow in responding, there is a timeout and the connection to Spotify is lost, and as a result, Sonos skips that playlist and goes on to the next one in the list.

There is a similar problem that doesn’t happen quite as often (but it’s really irritating when it does) when Sonos is playing songs from the queue. When Sonos reaches the end of a song and Spotify is slow to supply the next song in the queue, there is a similar timeout (the Sonos app displays an “unable to play song - Spotify connection lost” message) and Sonos will skip that song and go to the next song in the queue. When Spotify is really slow Sonos will skip a whole bunch of songs in the queue, and when it skips enough it will give up and stop playing altogether.
 

I eventually gave up on the Sonos app. I now just use the Spotify app with the Spotify Connect feature when I want to play music from Spotify on my Sonos speaker, and I never have any problems. I’m not crazy about the fact that I’m no longer able to play songs from multiple playlists in shuffle mode, but I’m getting used to it. (The Spotify app only allows you to play from a single playlist when using the Spotify Connect feature.)

Let’s hope Spotify create a genuine multiroom option for Spotify Connect then.  If you are using the Spotify app rather than the Sonos app you aren’t really using the Sonos system, just a bunch of Spotify Connect enabled speakers. If you wanr that sort of multiroom control then use the Spotify implementation in the Sonos app.

I am away from my system at the moment, and don’t use Spotify, so I can’t check if this might be a generic problem or just network latency on your system.