We are in the final days of Google Play Music and (unsurprisingly) YouTube Music still lacks features to put it on equal footing with its outgoing music relative. There’s one missing feature in particular that is going to be a dealbreaker for many, though. Sonos Casting support still isn’t here and there are no signs that it’s coming.
Over the past year, I’ve tried to give YouTube Music a fair chance and often force myself to use it, knowing that so many of you are still attached to Google Play Music and plan to move your collections over rather than switch to another service, like Spotify. Whenever I do, as someone who owns a few Sonos speakers, I immediately get frustrated at all of those Sonos speakers missing from the list of devices available to Cast to.
I have an old Sonos PLAY:3 that I hooked up in my garage that I use almost every day. I picked up a Sonos Move at a discount this summer that my family used constantly while hanging out outside during warmer months. We use a combination of Spotify (me) and Google Play Music (my wife) and can easily connect to any of these devices with a couple of taps. Spotify has its own device connection button or system, but with Google Play Music you just use the Cast button, since each Sonos device shows up as an option alongside Google Home/Nest and other Cast targets. Google Play Music picked this option up in 2014, if I remember correctly.
To connect to a Sonos speaker from YouTube Music, you can only do so by using the Sonos app. Outside of setting up a new Sonos speaker, I’m not sure I’ve opened the Sonos app to play music through it since 2014 because it’s not a great app. And there hasn’t been a need to use it since it’s infinitely quicker to just Cast to one through Spotify or Google Play Music.
“But Kellen, just use the Sonos app and stop complaining,” you say. The issue there is that I have a bunch of Google Home/Nest units throughout my house that I would Cast to from the YouTube Music app because the Sonos app won’t play to them. But then for Sonos stuff, I’d have to open up the Sonos app. It’s adding complexity (management of two apps) to a situation that didn’t have it previously, all because Google (or Sonos) won’t add Sonos support.
Sonos speakers missing from YouTube Music
I promise I’m not alone in this either. In April of last year, a support thread was started over on Google’s YouTube Music Help page where users were asking if Cast support would ever show up. It didn’t pick up much steam initially, but has since grabbed hundreds of responses from users like me who are missing this feature. Google ignored it until July of this year, only to respond by not fully acknowledging the issue.
The thing is, in March of 2019, days before that thread was started, the YouTube Music team held a Q&A where they answered questions about YouTube Music and plans for its future. Someone asked about Sonos Casting support and a Googler said that they “are now working on direct casting to Sonos from [YouTube Music], but don’t have any set dates yet.” That was a year and a half ago! And again, this feature is already in Google Play Music!
So what’s the deal, why isn’t Google adding Sonos Cast support? We just don’t know. In January of last year, Google made a splashy announcement about YouTube Music arriving within Sonos and (obviously) hasn’t made any Cast-related moves since. We know that the two companies are having a legal battle over the technology their smart speakers use. Is that a part of what’s holding this all back? I hate to jump to “Yes,” but what else would be stopping them?
Again, I’m a Spotify user at this point, but there are countless users out there who pay for YouTube Premium and used Google Play Music who aren’t going to want to switch like I did and pay for another service. They already pay for YouTube Music and Google should bring over a matching set of features like they said they would. There is no excuse for Google to not add Cast support, and by leaving it out, they are giving a big chunk of users a lesser experience than they were promised.
Well that’s annoying, I just signed up to YouTube Music with plans to drop Spotify. Guess I’m going back before playing a single track. What a pity, I was looking forward to ad free YouTube at barely any more cost than Spotify.
Sonos sucks.. so over priced, cumbersome and not good
FUck them, best route is to call them and cuss them out
I want YouTube Ad-Free and NO YT Music. Why is this not possible? 🙁
Simple fix. Get rid of all your Sonos stuff and get Google Home speakers. I have no issues casting spotify, youtube music, bandcamp, and twitch to my devices.
We just gotta accept that Google is failing us when it comes to music. They are doing the whole one foot in one foot out ordeal. GPM was good but youtube music kind of blows. The radio sometimes plays a different genre of music then what I was listening to.
“YouTube Music is a Dealbreaker”
I fixed the title for you.
Sonos app I feel has gotten better. But yeah I just use YTM thru the app
I used Google Play Music from the very beginning and never thought about Spotify. Once GPM was announced to be ending I finally dove into Spotify and wow why didn’t I do this years ago! Aside from a couple artists missing, it is years ahead a better service. I did once look at YTM and it was an absolute horror show….
Not a problem that affects me but I can certainly understand the frustration and being pissed off. Though obviously not the same issue, similar frustration for me has been the new Smartthings app us ST users got forced into a few months back. I have a ton of sensors, switches, alarm, bulbs, cameras and what not on smartthings and it ALL worked GREAT on st classic…Then Samsung forced everyone over to the new st app a few months back and for several days, maybe even two weeks or so, I was essentially an st repair guy; or I should say: I attempted to be one, cause I was never able to get everything working again and Samsung support was completely useless (though the dozen+ st support reps I’ve spoken to ALL said they ALSO think the new app is complete garbage)…I spent several weeks and a shlt ton of hours of my life trying before finally giving up.
Now, the only thing “smart” that we use anymore are smart speakers…EVERYTHING ELSE is dead and/or just won’t work with X scene, automation, smart app or other device it needs to work with….well over $1,000 invested, probably closer to $2k and it’s all worthless now that Samsung made that switch and to make matters worse –> SAMSUNG DOESN’T GIVE A FCK ABOUT IT. Over something like 90% of all new reviews of the app in the last few months are one star reviews with thousands and thousands of users saying the same thing but because the new app has been around for years now, mostly for people with a smart fridge etc not a “smart home” and has over 500m downloads and close to 600k reviews, the thousands of new one star reviews have yet to make a dent in the rating and NOT ONE (that I know of) “tech blog/publication” has done an article on it so no one but individual users is saying a word about it to get Samsung to fix things (or just bring the old app back for gods sake!).
So yea, I get the intense frustration for sure.
I don’t have that many sensors. I’m lucky that mine moved pretty easily to the new app. However I’m still considering a move to Hubitat. I wish ST had more local execution support. Sometimes ST is very laggy.
I got a hubitat and will be returning it. I *used to be* in the tech field (systems administration, server farms management etc) but I’m now 15 years removed from that field and pretty out of the loop in terms of deeper knowledge of newer tech and I found the interface to be pretty confusing and after the time it took to get a single device moved off of st and to hubitat it would take me several weeks, if not months, to get everything moved over and working the way I need it to (assuming things will even work the way I need them to at all). I had several routines based on presence for instance, like coming home –> turn off the alarm, open the garage door and turn on a few lights, adjust thermostat etc…didn’t see a lot of evidence in the app that I could get all that working and I don’t want to spend months working on it, get past the return period only to find out it won’t do what I need it too. So returning it.
Reading this you gave me more reason to be done with Samsung.
I purchased 3 Samsung Active 2 LTE watches a few weeks before we found out their ECG functions only work on their phones. Would not have purchased them had they given us this info up front.
I have enjoyed my Samsung phones and watches. It may be silly but it upsets me enough to no longer buy their products. At least till I get past wasting so much money on their watches.
Yea, that one kind of irked me too, I have a galaxy watch 3 too and bought specifically for ecg and found the same after return period…but, most of the time I roll with a Samsung phone anyway, so not a huge deal, but still stupid. Someone told me it’s the fda(fcc?) that required it only be on samsung phones, not sure if I buy that though as it’s a pretty convienent restriction for samsung.
I simply paused my YouTube Premium account, which you can do for up to six month, so I don’t lose my grandfathered price. But if they haven’t enabled Sonos casting by then I’m just going to drop them. There’s no excuse for not having this enabled and I’m 100% positive this is a business decision and not a technical limitation.
Youtube music is pitiful. Clearly this was a idea to make things easier for Google with little consideration for the customer
Only reason I kept youtube premium is because of ads. I cancelled it for a bit and i couldn’t stand youtube ads lol. I forgot how annoying it was.
That’s the only reason I still pay $8/month too…plus, watching more youtube than anything else, Soo…definitely worth it.
This is one of my frustrations with YouTube music as well. Preach, brother, preach! My guess is exactly what you pointed out in the article, Kellen: that it’s stemming from the legal battle between Sonos and Google. And, in typical Google fashion, they’ve mostly ignored and deflected the issue, so we’re all just sitting here left to wonder why we have a lesser experience with YouTube Music compared to Google Play Music.
Can’t you just use bluetooth??
Edit: I just used my Google Assistant to ask about this question, and the result I got says that all three generations of the Sonos Play 5 / Sonos Five only support Bluetooth if you connect a Bluetooth adapter to the 3.5 mm headphone jack input. RIP my dreams of using Bluetooth to circumvent this annoying YouTube music issue. Lol.
I don’t believe that Bluetooth is available as a connection option on my Sonos Play 5. am I an idiot? Because honestly sometimes I am dumb and don’t even realize that my devices can do things that they can do. It wouldn’t surprise me that I’ve had this speaker for like 4 years and this whole time it said Bluetooth. But from what I can tell going through the Sonos app, I’ve never seen anything about using Bluetooth or connecting my phone directly to the speaker via Bluetooth.
Hmm. Not sure. That’s weird. I use Bluetooth to connect to my Bose speakers all the time. Sonos is pretty limited to their software though I guess.
Spotify for the win!