Access music library

  • 4 October 2016
  • 3 replies

Hi all, I am a newbie and haven't bought my sonos yet. Thinking of gearing up the whole house though. The one thing I can't seem to figure out is the options to how Sonos will connect to my music library. I currently have all my music on an external hard drive, as it is too many gigs to have on one computer only. I have selected pieces on my Mac, but that is what I find annoying. I DON'T use the cloud. HOW can I connect Sonos to my music WITHOUT having a computer running the whole time? Is there another option? I understand there's spotify etc but doesn't at least one table or computer have to be running then as well? What happens when the internet fails (which happened on a regular basis here)...does it still work? Thank you heaps in advance for giving me answers or directing me to links where I can further my research. 🙂


3 replies

Most of the regulars that use Sonos to play music that they own do just this. The hard disc drive that contains the music needs to be of a kind that can be wired to your WiFi router. Sonos, once set up to do so, will then access and play the music files on that drive, as commanded by the Sonos controller app that can be hosted by your smartphone. The Computer doesn't need to be on to do this.

A drive of this kind is called a NAS and a WD My Cloud is a good example.
Userlevel 4
Badge +11
I suspect that a NAS will be the best thing to solve all your worries.

If you upload your music to Google Play (or similar) then your Sonos device can access them directly, as long as you have internet access. The tablet/PC only acts as a controller, it doesn't stream music through the device and on to Sonos.
Userlevel 3
Badge +5
You can play music from a NAS as long as your local network is working. It will continue play when the internet is down.

Spotify and other streaming services will play with just Sonos. Of course these services will fail if you lose internet.

In both cases no computer is needed unless you're using it as your controller.