Sonos is missing out on the forced YouTube Music conversion

December 10, 2020

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Google's YouTube Music transition from Google Play Music has been bumpy at best. YouTube Music still isn't the best streaming service on the block and still hasn't fully replicated GPM's features, and a big one that's missing is annoying Sonos owners.

No YouTube Music on Sonos

See, Sonos uses its own streaming protocol, not the standard Google Cast API. Google Play Music happened to use both, but YouTube Music has yet to adopt Sonos's solution, which means users literally can't sling music over to their speakers.

This might have something to do with a spat between Google and Sonos from years back, but regardless, it makes YouTube Music almost a non-starter for users in the Sonos ecosystem. If you were using Google Play Music, it almost means your library just got dumped into a service that you pretty much can't use, which is a huge slap in the face.

To be clear, you can turn on YouTube Music in the Sonos app, but most users report this as a pretty terrible and buggy experience. It's significantly worse than using the YouTube Music app.

Unfortunately for Sonos, they don't have much of an option to fix this. They could integrate Google Cast into their speakers, but Google adopting the Sonos streaming API makes a little more sense, especially since GPM offered this before, anyway.

For the time being, Sonos users might want to check out other music services. And Google Play Music converts? Well, you got another thing to complain about.

source: Android Police

Jared Peters Author

Born in southern Alabama, Jared spends his working time selling phones and his spare time writing about them. The Android enthusiasm started with the original Motorola Droid, but the tech enthusiasm currently covers just about everything. He likes PC gaming, Lenovo's Moto Z line, and a good productivity app.

1 comment

morjoie says:

December 15, 2020 at 7:34 AM

Thank you for reporting on this. The interface between Sonos and YTM is truly terrible. Sonos speakers are the only way I play music in my house. There’s no search function by genre, which is my preferred way of finding music. I scratch my head at trying to figure out how so many smart people at Google could bungle this transition, which didn’t need to happen in the first place. I’m trying to stick with YTM, since that is where my music library is, but other music services (maybe Amazon or Spotify??) are starting to entice… And no – I’m not getting rid of my Sonos speakers!

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