Skip to main content
Question

Albums show up crazy in library

  • March 24, 2026
  • 6 replies
  • 17 views

Forum|alt.badge.img+10

My Sonos system is getting along with my SMB NAS now. Except one album out of 2000 is showing up wrong! Below you can see that Sonos shows two copies of the same album, although of course there is only one. And (much worse!) that “album” only has one song listed, even though there are 20 on that album.  Looking at the tags there isn’t anything odd about that album. Ideas?
 

The single song
​​​​​​
the album shown twice

 

6 replies

MoPac
Forum|alt.badge.img+19
  • Headliner III
  • March 24, 2026

 That’s odd.  The problem used to be if there were 20 tracks you got 20 different albums.  That was only when each track had a different artist in the tag data.  The Album Artist tag would be something like Various Artists.

 When you look in the Folder view does the album show correctly?

 Looking at the album I now see it is all Grateful Dead.  So the Album tag & Album Artist tag for all 20 tracks should be Grateful Dead.  Also make sure the Album tag is the same for all tracks.  That should index correctly.


Forum|alt.badge.img+10
  • Author
  • Enthusiast II
  • March 24, 2026

Yes, I remember the old “various artists issue”! It was super annoying, but fixed for a while.

Yes, everything looks right on Sonos’s “folder view”. The albums show up fine an apple music, and with my tag editor it looks like the info is right:
 

 


Forum|alt.badge.img+10
  • Author
  • Enthusiast II
  • March 24, 2026

Interestingly, that one song name is longer than any of the others…. could there still be old file/path name length issues?


  • March 24, 2026

This is a known problem. Have look at these:

Albums have suddenly started to behave strangely

Sonos Controller - Duplicate Album Titles

This is the problem discussed in those threads. An album showing multiple times with one (the same) track in each. As a work around, you can locate the album under Folders and play from there.

 


Forum|alt.badge.img+10
  • Author
  • Enthusiast II
  • March 24, 2026

Yep, that sounds like the same thing.


Forum|alt.badge.img+10
  • Author
  • Enthusiast II
  • March 24, 2026

tx, it does indeed sound like the same thing.