FEATURE REQUEST: enable Sort Field capabilties based on metadata for Music Library

  • 21 November 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 33 views

Please add the capability for the Sonos apps to sort one’s Music Library leveraging the Sort metadata fields on a given release. 

For example, in Apple Music/iTunes, one can choose how their Library is sorted based on alternative text in the sort as fields, as below:

Note:  by changing the album field’s “sort as” text from the album title to the convention: Artist - Year-Month-Day - Title, I am able to then organize and search through my entire Library of albums by a given artist, and then the albums ordered chronologically, thereafter.

Another use case is an album series, named as “Volume #” and there are 16 albums in the series. The Sonos app does not sort on numbers, smartly - meaning, it doesn’t recognize that 2, 3, 4 come before 10, 11, 12, because it’s only looking at the first integer.  Instead it orders as follows:

  • Volume 1
  • Volume 10
  • Volume 11
  • Volume 12
  • Volume 13
  • Volume 14
  • Volume 15
  • Volume 16
  • Volume 2
  • Volume 3
  • Volume 4
  • Volume 5
  • Volume 6
  • Volume 7
  • Volume 8
  • Volume 9

My only workaround at the moment is to rename my albums as follows:

  • Volume 01
  • Volume 02
  • Volume 03
  • Volume 04
  • Volume 05
  • Volume 06
  • Volume 07
  • Volume 08
  • Volume 09
  • Volume 10
  • etc.

If the Sonos app could simply read the Sort fields in the given track’s/album’s metadata (meta tags), I could designate how to sort the albums without having to corrupt the album series’ nomenclature.

To be clear, I’m talking about my own, localized music library that I keep on a network drive in my home, and not looking to have my music subscription service(s) - i.e. Apple Music do the sorting functions.

Here is a screenshot of an album in the above series, opened up in a Metadata editor, Kid3, in which you can see the available metadata fields:

Note: I’ve highighted in yellow the difference between the “Album” field and the “Sort Album” field - both fields are available for reading, but the Sonos app does not utilize reading the “Sort Album” field.

Please enhance the Sonos app to read the Sort fields and prioritize them if and when they have data different than the non-sort corresponding fields.


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1 reply

Userlevel 7
Badge +18

Hi @U2Joshua 

Welcome to the Sonos Community!

Thank you - I've marked this thread as a feature request and it will be seen by the relevant teams for consideration. Keep the ideas coming!