Does the Sonos system honour the ‘Album Artist’ tag?
I suspect not, but why not? Or is there way round it…..
Everything works - I can see my library, I can play music, I can play radio stations etc etc. Just cannot fathom how to get the darned set up to honour the ‘Album Artist’ tag. All other tools/systems I have do honour the tag (J River, Logitec media server, plex etc).
Any info/advice gratefully recieved.
Answered
'Album Artist' tag
Best answer by PaulR01
Hi folks. Sorted with your help. The albums which were listed by the track artist had a blank ‘ALBUMARTIST’ tag. Ive set all those to ‘Various’. Voila!
Re MP3tag (which I use) - the screen has text saying ‘Album Artist’ with a field below - as per the screen shot from Smilja. However, it displays (if present) the ‘ALBUMARTIST’ tag value.
I have some music ripped from before I understood too much about this stuff which has entries in ‘Album Artist’ (with a space). I don’t really use ‘Albumartist’ (or variations) except for compilations and classical stuff (a different ball game!).
I’ve spent ages tidying up various issues with tags - unneccessary entries, inconsistencies, inaccuracies etc, and this ‘Sonos’ issue was bugging me. I was also under the (mis) understanding that simply setting ‘Compilation’ to ‘1’ was enough to trigger the software to treat it as various.
Thank you all once again, especially ratty, Smilja and John B.
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Yes. Did you enable use of the tag for compilation albums? It’s in Settings/System/Music Library.
Thank you for the response ratty.
To confirm settings: in the PC app - Manage/Settings/Music Library/Advanced - ‘Group Albums using’ is ‘Album Artists’. ‘Show contributing Artists...’ is NOT ticked.
In the ios app (which I use to control playback) - Settings/System/Music Library - ‘Compilation Albums’ set to ‘Use Album Artists’. ‘View Contributing Artists’ is OFF.
I can confirm that for my compilation albums I have the ‘COMPILATION’ tag set to ‘1’.
My hunch is that these settings are correct but don’t appear to be working.
What format are the files? Do they originate from iTunes?
Flac. No.
But, I have found one or two discrepancies in some tags…...I’ll tidy those up so at least the tag use is 100% consistent across the library.
A ‘general’ question in the meantime if I may (but related) - for a true compilation album - e.g. ‘Best of Motown’ each song is tagged with the song’s artist (Jackson 5, Diana Ross, Temptations etc etc), what value do you put in ‘Album Artist’?
Many thanks so far for the time ratty.
PaulR01 wrote:
A ‘general’ question in the meantime if I may (but related) - for a true compilation album - e.g. ‘Best of Motown’ each song is tagged with the song’s artist (Jackson 5, Diana Ross, Temptations etc etc), what value do you put in ‘Album Artist’?
Various Artists.
And make sure the tag is 'ALBUMARTIST' without a space.
ratty wrote:
And make sure the tag is 'ALBUMARTIST' without a space.
I wonder if this will turn out to be an important point in your case. From what I have read in the past, some ripping software will create a tag called ‘Album Artist’ (i.e. with a space), which Sonos would not then recognise. Does that make sense, please,
John B wrote:
ratty wrote:
And make sure the tag is 'ALBUMARTIST' without a space.
I wonder if this will turn out to be an important point in your case. From what I have read in the past, some ripping software will create a tag called ‘Album Artist’ (i.e. with a space), which Sonos would not then recognise. Does that make sense, please,
Yes, that’s why I mentioned it. Though if I recall (it was over a decade ago), it was actually Mp3tag which presented ‘Album Artist’ (with a space) in the default panel. I certainly fell into that trap back in the day.
Using it for years now I never had any issues with MP3Tag. However, it is important to fill in the relevant fields like Album Title/Song Title/Song Artist/Album Artist.
Hi folks. Sorted with your help. The albums which were listed by the track artist had a blank ‘ALBUMARTIST’ tag. Ive set all those to ‘Various’. Voila!
Re MP3tag (which I use) - the screen has text saying ‘Album Artist’ with a field below - as per the screen shot from Smilja. However, it displays (if present) the ‘ALBUMARTIST’ tag value.
I have some music ripped from before I understood too much about this stuff which has entries in ‘Album Artist’ (with a space). I don’t really use ‘Albumartist’ (or variations) except for compilations and classical stuff (a different ball game!).
I’ve spent ages tidying up various issues with tags - unneccessary entries, inconsistencies, inaccuracies etc, and this ‘Sonos’ issue was bugging me. I was also under the (mis) understanding that simply setting ‘Compilation’ to ‘1’ was enough to trigger the software to treat it as various.
Thank you all once again, especially ratty, Smilja and John B.
John B wrote:
ratty wrote:
And make sure the tag is 'ALBUMARTIST' without a space.
I wonder if this will turn out to be an important point in your case. From what I have read in the past, some ripping software will create a tag called ‘Album Artist’ (i.e. with a space), which Sonos would not then recognise. Does that make sense, please,
John B - I’d use dbpoweramp generally to rip, and I’d also use Mp3tag to inspect for any oddities.
PaulR01 wrote:
John B wrote:
ratty wrote:
And make sure the tag is 'ALBUMARTIST' without a space.
I wonder if this will turn out to be an important point in your case. From what I have read in the past, some ripping software will create a tag called ‘Album Artist’ (i.e. with a space), which Sonos would not then recognise. Does that make sense, please,
John B - I’d use dbpoweramp generally to rip, and I’d also use Mp3tag to inspect for any oddities.
All mine is ripped with dbpoweramp and it’s never given me a problem with Sonos, so that probably isn’t the issue.
John B wrote:
PaulR01 wrote:
John B wrote:
ratty wrote:
And make sure the tag is 'ALBUMARTIST' without a space.
I wonder if this will turn out to be an important point in your case. From what I have read in the past, some ripping software will create a tag called ‘Album Artist’ (i.e. with a space), which Sonos would not then recognise. Does that make sense, please,
John B - I’d use dbpoweramp generally to rip, and I’d also use Mp3tag to inspect for any oddities.
All mine is ripped with dbpoweramp and it’s never given me a problem with Sonos, so that probably isn’t the issue.
Agree John, no issues with any of the tools, it’s my understanding rather!. A large amount of my library was ripped quite a while ago when my knowledge was even less than it is now. I use the dbpoweramp suite for a couple of other things too (format conversion mainly).
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