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Sonos Playlist Size Limits

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I have a long playlist (3,295 songs) that won’t load completely on my PC where my music collection is stored.  It loads ~ 3,149 each time I try, almost to the exact # of 3,149 each time.  When I try to load this playlist via my iPhone, I get an error message “Unable to browse music.”  I can load other smaller playlists via my phone and completely via my computer, so the issue must be with the number of songs.  I found on the Sonos website that the official Sonos limit is 40,000 songs on all playlists, which is what Sonos will sort.  The total songs I have on my iPhone and computer via playlists on Sonos is about 5,000, so I'm nowhere near this threshold.

 

So what’s the problem here?

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Best answer by buzz 19 March 2022, 04:26

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39 replies

Ken_Griffiths

I understand the following limits maybe the case, but this is just from things I’ve picked up in other posts in the community here…

Apparently there is no hard limit for the number of playlists that can be made, but the total number of all tracks in all ‘Sonos’ playlists supposedly may not exceed 10,000.

There are limits too on Imported Playlists, which are:

  • The maximum size of the queue: 65k tracks
  • How quickly a playlist loads into the queue, which typically times out after 15 seconds
W
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I can tell you for a fact that i can’t load any more than 3,000 songs.  Sonos just terminates anything beyond that.  That’s no where close to 65,000.  My play lists are imported.

What do you suppose is going on?

Ken_Griffiths

It seems from your description that when trying to load the playlist it’s either encountering an issue (perhaps with metadata) or it’s timing out - but is this happening with one particular playlist and have you tried another of similar size.
 

Where are the tracks are stored on the PC and how is the PC  attached to the network?

W
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The tracks are stored locally on an SSD.  The PC is hard wired into Sonos as well as I understand it….

W
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… and it happens with all playlists.

Airgetlam

Possible duplicate IP address issue, knocking the Sonos off the network momentarily? Have you assigned reserved IP addresses in your router’s DHCP table?

The PC should not be hard wired to Sonos, it should be hard wired to your router, the same as then Sonos should. And the SSD. All three devices work off of the network created by the router, none of them should be directly connected to Sonos. 

Bruce
buzz

How many tracks are in your library? Are any of these tracks missing from the library index?

Ken_Griffiths

The largest playlist I appear to have here is 3652 tracks and when I just tried that, it loads okay.

The whole of my local library is 25,746 tracks - I am able to load the entire library too, but it won’t allow me to save it as a playlist (as expected) as I believe the track limit (for all Sonos playlists) is 10,000 songs, as mentioned earlier .. but obviously I can load all those library tracks to a queue (see screenshot).

The queue limit is around 65,000 tracks (give or take), but as stated earlier the loading of the queue is also limited by a 15s time-out. 

So that’s my experience with my system here running on a SonosNet connection. 

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W
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I created my playlists elsewhere and import it.  Works great but it truncates at just under 3,000 songs. I have a SonosNet connection, and the way it was explained to me is that the songs are uploaded to the cloud and then downloaded to the amps or speakers, i can’t remember which. 

Ken_Griffiths

I created my playlists elsewhere and import it.  Works great but it truncates at just under 3,000 songs. I have a SonosNet connection, and the way it was explained to me is that the songs are uploaded to the cloud and then downloaded to the amps or speakers, i can’t remember which. 

WiFi these days (and wired networks) are pretty quick, much quicker than a SonosNet connection in most cases, so perhaps if your WiFi supports your current system okay, then maybe try running your entire setup on the local WiFi instead and see if that improves things and allows your large playlists to work. 

If not, you can always revert back to the SonosNet connection.

W
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How do I do that?  I think I was moved TO the SonosNet because it was faster, but i’m not sure….  Please say more!

 

buzz

Assuming that you have entered the WiFi details into the SONOS system, you can easily flip between SonosNet and WiFi by simply eliminating any wired SONOS connections. While the changeover may require a minute or two, the system will manage all of the details. Note that ROAM and MOVE are always WiFi.

Ken_Griffiths

How do I do that?  I think I was moved TO the SonosNet because it was faster, but i’m not sure….  Please say more!

 

What @buzz says - and also see this link too:

https://support.sonos.com/s/article/3209

W
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I looked under my Sonos app at “About My System” and all of the devices there are W:0 = products are in a wired setup.

W
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I just found this link that notes that the number of imported M3U tracks is 65,000 - # of indexed tracks = Max # of M3U’s imported.

What’s an “indexed track”?  My playlists are M3U and my limit is less than 2,900.

 

 

 

Ken_Griffiths

I just found this link that notes that the number of imported M3U tracks is 65,000 - # of indexed tracks = Max # of M3U’s imported.

What’s an “indexed track”?  My playlists are M3U and my limit is less than 2,900.

 

65k is the maximum size of a local library, which is a different thing to the playlist limitations in the App

W
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65K?  That’s not even a megabyte.  And 65k is the # of tracks as it states here.  No reference to the size of an entire library, which for most of us run into the gigabytes, many gigs...

“• Total number of tracks (65,000) - Number of indexed tracks = Maximum number of M3Us
imported”

 

The help site is specifically about playlists, imported playlists in particular.

 

I’m confused….

Airgetlam

Sonos doesn’t store tracks, they store pointers to where the tracks exist. 65K is, as I understand it, only one of the factors that go in to the size of the data file that Sonos stores to maintain the playlists, but there are other factors involved that can also affect the total amount of memory that Sonos needs to store.

Given that your playlist is much smaller than I would expect that any of those issues might be impacting them, my suspicion is you’re not hitting any of those particular limits, but instead some sort of interruption, possibly wifi interference, or duplicate IP addresses, or something that is stopping the speaker, where the process is occurring, from completing. That’s where I’d be focusing, not so much on the playlist, unless you have egregious amounts of extra metadata in your tracks, such as lyrics, etc.

Bruce
Ken_Griffiths

65K?  That’s not even a megabyte.  And 65k is the # of tracks as it states here.  No reference to the size of an entire library, which for most of us run into the gigabytes, many gigs...

“• Total number of tracks (65,000) - Number of indexed tracks = Maximum number of M3Us
imported”

 

The help site is specifically about playlists, imported playlists in particular.

 

I’m confused….

The simple fact is the room ‘queue’ will hold upto 65k (65,000) tracks and that’s where you load your playlists to for playback, but also remember it’s subject to a time-out limit of 15secs.. the 10,000 playlist limit is the Sonos playlist limit and that’s for ALL Sonos stored playlists - so it’s not an individual Sonos playlist limit. I hope that helps to clarify things.

Ken_Griffiths

It’s perhaps also helpful to mention here that the 65,000 track/slot limit, is nothing to do with the storage of the music files, it’s the amount of pointers/shortcuts to the music tracks - but some track-pointers with very long paths and metadata can sometimes reduce that 65,000 limit, as some may use more than one available ‘slot’ for the actual pointer.

The limit applies to a Sonos room queue aswell as the number of tracks that can be saved/indexed from the local music library (Thats about 135 days of music playback, if each of the tracks are just 3 minutes long and the library tracks played for 24 hours every single day).

buzz

You can think of the music library index as being similar to a card catalog for a library of books. The absolute limit is 65,000 tracks (books). “Metadata” is the track name, artist name, composer, disk file name, etc. that must be written on each card in the catalog.  File size is limited by the computer or disk drive, but I doubt that any home user will bump into a hard limit here. You could have a mixture of 65,000 encyclopedias, comic books, and baseball cards in the library. 

Continuing the analogy a little, there are a fixed number of drawers in the card catalog. The SONOS system stores the catalog in player RAM. If the Metadata is very large, multiple cards might be needed to save all of the data and eventually you’ll run out of drawers (RAM), possibly before reaching the 65,000 limit. Playlists are also competing for space in the drawers. 

Earlier I asked if any tracks seem to be missing from your library. It is possible that there is a stray, invalid character in your Metadata. The library indexer will stumble and stop while processing one of these characters. Users cannot control the order that files are processed and separate runs of the indexer might terminate with a different number of successfully processed tracks.

I suggest that you submit a diagnostic and follow up with SONOS support. If there are network issues or the indexer crashes out early, there will be details in the diagnostic.

W
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Airgetiam: I am hardware wired to all of the amps, speakers, etc. according to my System Info. (W=0)  
I have had my system analyzed by my local support company a few times and they found no network issues.  
(We are working on a new dropout issue with my system.  The playlist problem has been around since
installation.)

 

Ken: What is a "Time-out limit of 15 seconds?" How do I measure or assess this?

So if I look under "Music Library" on my (desktop) app and it lists "Imported playlists," are you
saying that the total of all of these playlists can't exceed 10,000?  I'm not sure what comprises
"Sonos stored playlists."  Anyway, all of my playlists in that list might get close to 10,000, but
it wouldn't exceed it by much.  Is this what you mean?  How do I determine what are in my "Sonos
stored playlists"? 

I only load playlist at a time, so I'm assuming that's the only Sonos stored one.  The others are just names in a list that can be selected and loaded, right?

It's hard to believe that the "shortcuts" on my system could reduce the limit this far.


Buzz:
I've actually had a song that contained  an invalid character and Sonos noted it and skipped past it.  I fixed all of them.  My songs all have the basic metadata common to mp3's.

I know how to submit a diagnostic to Sonos.  How do I follow up with them?

How do I determine my player RAM, and what is that exactly?  Is the RAM in the amps or speakers
or elsewhere?  You’d think that would be listed in the info about my system…..

 

Thanks guys.

 

buzz

RAM (Random Access Memory) is hard wired into each SONOS player. Users have no direct access to this and it is a finite resource. Early in the life of SONOS (2005) RAM was much more expensive. A copy of the library index and SONOS playlists is stored in each player. Storing a copy of the library index and playlists in each player is one reason why the SONOS system is so responsive and resilient. Yes, it would be possible to distribute sections of the index and playlists among the players, but what happens if one or more of the players is offline for some reason? A portion of the index would be missing. Another option would be to use a separate ‘box’ or computer storing these items to always be online. With the current scheme all of the SONOS controllers can be shut down after music play is started. If a computer was required during playback, music would stop while the computer is OFF, rebooting, or updating. While it would be possible to redesign the library index and expand the space available for storing playlists, this would not be possible for older players with less RAM.

Ken_Griffiths

Ken: What is a "Time-out limit of 15 seconds?" How do I measure or assess this?

It’s partly a side-issue to the playlist limitations being discussed. The ‘queue’ on a Sonos device (aswell as the local library) can hold up-to 65,000 tracks, but when loading that queue, there is also a 15 second timeout limit in place - so after 15 seconds the attempt to load tracks to a speaker will timeout, but if you look back at my earlier screenshot, I loaded my entire local library 25,746 tracks to a Sonos Move and that took no more than 4 seconds across a gigabit wired connection from the NAS box, with the Move connected to the faster 5Ghz WiFi band… some SonosNet connections are often slower operating on the 2.4Ghz band. I just mentioned it ‘briefly’ earlier, in case your issue was related to a time-out, rather than the playlist limitation of 10,000, tracks which is a limit for all the playlists/tracks you have saved to your ‘My Sonos’ tab in the App - I too have reached that limit (long ago) …and if I try to add more tracks, I usually receive a message ‘similar’ to the following from the App:

 

 

W
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Thanks.  I’ve never seen that message.  All of the playlist just doesn’t load; in fact, you can see part of the last song to load at the very end.  It just terminates.

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