Missing tracks or albums in Sonos music library

There are few reasons why tracks or albums might be missing from your Sonos music library. Below are some steps you can take to resolve this issue.

Update your music library

If recently purchased or downloaded songs are not showing up in your music library, you will need to update the music library index. This will scan your library again to update its list of tracks and albums.

Note that the computer or NAS where your library is located needs to be turned on and awake while the library is updating.

Make sure your files are in the right place

If some of your music files are not in your music library folder, they will not appear in the Sonos app. For example, if you’ve shared your iTunes Music folder with Sonos, but you’ve purchased and downloaded a song from a different source (e.g. Amazon), the file may be in your computer’s Downloads folder. If you share music with Sonos from a NAS drive, make sure you’ve transferred any new music files from your computer’s hard drive to the NAS.

Once you have moved any missing files into the correct folder, update the music library index.

Check how many tracks are in your library

A Sonos music library has a 65,000 track limit. The limit can be reached by either track count, or by memory usage. The memory limit can be reached prior to 65,000 tracks if there is a large amount of metadata. For example, classical music tracks tend to have a large amount of metadata and can use up the available memory before the 65,000 track limit is reached.

Check if your music files are protected by DRM

Some purchased music may be protected by Digital Rights Management (DRM). This prevents these files from being shared via third-party apps like the Sonos app. This issue most commonly affects music purchased from iTunes before they switched to DRM-free music.

Apple no longer sells DRM protected music and all music now for sale is free of any playback restrictions. If you still have some tracks that are DRM protected and unplayable on Sonos, iTunes Match allows you to upgrade your music to a DRM-free version. More information on iTunes Match and instructions on upgrading to DRM-free can be found on Apple’s website.

Make sure your music files aren’t missing metadata

A music file’s metadata specifies organizational labels like the title, artist name, album name, and more. Sonos categorizes your music files based on how they’re tagged in the metadata. Most of the file formats supported by Sonos support metadata, but AIFF and WAV do not have full metadata support.

In most cases, a music file that is missing a metadata tag will not appear in the Sonos app where it’s supposed to. For example, if a file is missing its “Artist” tag, it won’t appear when you browse or search for that particular artist in the Sonos app.

You’ll need a media library management tool like iTunes to view and edit the metadata on your music files. After making any changes to metadata, make sure you update the music library index.