I have one Sonos device: a Sonos One SL.
I run the Sonos app on a Windows 10 PC.
I keep my Sonos app and firmware up to date (currently on version 14.10).
I bought and use my Sonos device to play songs from Spotify playlists.
(I can play songs from Spotify on my Sonos device by either using the Spotify app connect feature
or by using the Sonos app, but I prefer using the Sonos app because it allows you to select and play
songs from multiple playlists while the Spotify app only allows you to play from a single playlist.)
As long as I’ve had my Sonos device I’ve had intermittent problems when attempting to load songs from one or more Spotify playlists into my queue, or when playing songs from Spotify from my queue.
When attempting to load songs from Spotify playlists into my queue I get unable to load songs 1002 errors, and when attempting to play songs from my queue I get unable to play songs - Spotify connection lost errors. These problems are becoming more and more frequent, and lately it has become impossible to load the songs from all of my selected playlists into my queue. Sometimes I am unable to load songs from a single playlist.
I have noticed that dozens of people have reported this problem over the years but Sonos support has been unable to resolve it. I’ve also noticed that the Sonos Support people here generally blame the problem on the user’s wi-fi connection despite evidence indicating that the wi-fi connection has nothing to do with it. Using the same wi-fi connection, Spotify works fine when using other apps, and Sonos works fine when playing from other services. The problems only occur when playing from Spotify and using the Sonos app.
When I use the Spotify app connect feature (on my PC) to play music on my Sonos device, I have no problems.
When I use the Spotify app on my Samsung Smart TV, or the Spotify app on a Roku device to play from Spotify on another TV, I have no problems.
When I use the Sonos app to play Sonos Radio to my Sonos device, I have no problems.
But when I use the Sonos app to play songs from Spotify playlists on my Sonos device, I have frequent problems (even when the Sonos device is only a few feet away from my router).
And all of these use the same wi-fi connection.
This leads me to the conclusion that the problems have nothing to do with the wi-fi connection between the Sonos device and the router. Instead, I believe the problem has to do with the internet connection between the Sonos firmware and the Spotify servers.
I have a hypothesis that I believe explains what the problem really is. In a nutshell, I believe that the Sonos software (or firmware) was not designed to handle Spotify’s frequent slowness. When loading songs from Spotify playlists into the queue, Sonos has to request the list of songs for each playlist, and when it finishes playing a song from the queue, it has to request that Spotify provide the next song. Unfortunately, the Spotify servers are sometimes slow to respond, and Sonos, instead of waiting for Spotify to respond, times out, and skips to the next playlist (when loading songs into the queue) or the next song (when playing songs from the queue).
This hypothesis explains several things:
1. The problem is intermittent because Spotify’s slowness is intermittent.
2. The problem is becoming more frequent because Spotify’s servers are becoming slower.
3. The problem does not occur when using the Spotify app on the PC, the Smart TV, or the Roku device because those apps are waiting for Spotify to respond instead of timing out so quickly.
If my hypothesis is correct, the solution is to change the Sonos software/firmware to wait longer for Spotify to respond before timing out.