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When tagging music with genre, it should be possible to use more than one and instead have multiple genres. For example: Benjamin Grosvenor's Rhapsody in Blue is not just "classical". It is "classical" and "piano" and "piano concerts" and "romantic" and "british". Rammstein's Herzeleid is not just "rock" but also "industrial metal" and "neue deutsche härte" and "german". Mike Oldfield's Exposed is not just "pop" but also "guitar" and "live" and "symphonic rock" and "orchestral". It is extremely difficult to shoehorn music into genres as it is, keeping it organised with only one genre is downright impossible. Some cross-over genres are even so eclectic that setting just one genre is unfeasible, e.g. Rodrigo y Gabriela or Roger Greenawalt and David Barratt's Beatles on Ukulele project. I am aware that using a UPnP server remedies this but since UPnP support is rudimentary at best (not mentioning having to have a server running), this is not a viable solution.
+1 Trying to organize/locate classical music without using a 'multi-value' genre-tag is a real challenge - particularly because other tags such as 'conductor' are not present, -- or I can't figure out how to access them via the controller app being a newbie to Sonos.
I agree with this wish. I would like Sonos to add possibility to use several tags for all categories. I would also recommend functionality to build my own hierarchy of tags (please look at how eg Adobe Lightroom lets you tag your photos). I do not think this is just a issue for classical music - also me who mainly play rock and blues would like to be able to refine and add several tags for eg genre for a lot of my music. Please make this possible
This is a feature that should have been implemented by now. We all pay enough (for me $3000+) to Sonos that this kind of feature should have already been implemented.
A HUGE +1! Please Sonos, implement a feature to handle several genres listed in the genre tag of an mp3...
I agree.  This feature should be put on a fast track for the next Sonos update.
It is a convention that if there is more than one genre listed in the metadata, that they are separated by a semi-colon (;). Other software correctly lists each genre independently so that a genre of “Pop; Rock” shows the song under the Pop genre and the Rock genre. Instead, the Sonos controller, incorrectly creates categories of Pop for songs that only list Pop, Rock for songs that only list Rock and another category of “Pop/Rock” for the prior example. In fact, songs categorized as “Rock; Pop” are in a fourth category. It gets worse for songs that have multiple categories, as described above. This makes the genre feature useless as you have to know which permutation to search under.



Sonos - when are you going to fix this?
Sonos, please add multiple genre support, thanks.
The distinct lack of response from sonos on this is not very promising. Even a sense that they are trying to sort this would be appreciated.
After some googling I found some threads with the same question on the sonos forums. Some of these came from 2008 and 1 was even started in 2007. They all request multiple genre support. What I could not find however was a proper response from Sonos. I am getting more and more irritated with sonos. In the first place because their product is not as perfect as they make it believe and in the second place because they seem to lack the decency to give any response to this issue. Appearently people have been asking this question for 7 years and in those 7 years nevet got a proper awnser (And if for some reason multiple genre tagging is not possible, is it that hard to leave a quick message to your loyal users explaining why it is not possible?)
For those following this topic, last month I got in touch with Sonos CEO John MacFarlane on Twitter (@JohnLMacFarlane) about this issue. He told me he would 'pass it on'. It might be worth others contacting him to reinforce the fact that this is an important issue for Sonos users.
FWIW, I submitted this as a bug last July and had a live session with 2nd level support, while they accessed my screen and took screen shots proving that this bug exists.  I then had a conversation with their escalations people, who agreed that the software was not working properly.  The person I dealt with said that he would document the defect and be sure product management was aware of it so it could be addressed in a future release.  Of course, there's no specific performance promise there.  Given the renewed interest by the community, I just re-opened the ticket, asking if there is now any kind of expectation for a fix date (and saying that CEO was alerted to the issue).  I'll update this thread if I hear anything substantive.
For what it is worth, I have switched to using JRiver Media Centre together with their player device, the JRiver Id. The support for multi genre and tag-based browsing is superb, and the overall ability to navigate the library is superior to Sonos when using the iOS controller app, JRemote. I still use my extensive Sonos system for Internet radio and streaming, but no longer for any downloaded content, as it became impossible to find what I wanted to listen to. Sonos should have a look at the likes of JRiver/JRemote and try and implement at least some basic features that would make music organisation and navigation easier. It seems like from a leader Sonos is a good bit behind innovation when it comes to stored digital music. I assumed it was a sign that Sonos were no longer interested in anything except for streaming services. PS. I have been an early adopter of Sonos, and I would very much like to see its software improve.
This does seem like a fairly straight forward request/feature. My tool of choice is Media Monkey which uses a semi-colon ";" as a delimiter. There seems to be other payers coming into this market; Definitive Technology, Samsung, Bose, ... I'd hate to see Sonos get leap frogged.

I'm not going to buy any more components until I know Sonos is listening.
The way Sonos persistently ignores the intelligent proposals and expert advice of its user in this forum is highly disappointing, - this particular thread about genres is only one sad example among  many others. Obviously, enthusiasts with large collections of audiofiles are not Sonos' target group of buyers.
The reply from customer service was for me to submit this as a feature request on the forum.  I replied, telling them that this was a bug that I spent some time documenting and proving with level 2 support, and that it should be on the backlog for their engineers to fix.  He said that they only work off of the popularity of requests on the forum.



So, I give up.  Nobody from Sonos gives responses on these topics.  No matter what you do to prove that the product doesn't work properly, there are no indications that they will ever fix it.  Just a blow-off to add a comment to the forums.  Buyer Beware:  If you have a large music collection, keep looking.  Sonos is not interested in your needs.
Does anyone have any updates on this? I'm getting fed up with the lack of response from Sonos regarding this issue, and given that BBC Radio sports commentaries seem to no longer work on Sonos, I'm thinking of jumping ship and trying another multi room audio supplier. 



Does anyone have any idea if any Sonos competitors (LG, Harman Kardon, Samsung etc) support multiple genre tagging?
Sonos generally requires a tagging/indexing overhaul - I submitted an idea over a year ago for an "advanced option that, in my opinion, would not be very hard to implement. All major music indexers have this as an option, and Sonos should really provide a similar feature to stay competitive and appeal to music enthusiasts.



https://ask.sonos.com/sonos/topics/extend_tag_support
Hello,

I am considering buying a Sonos product soonish. For me this is a critical feature, and I won't replace my existing setup if multiple genres are not supported. Can anyone tell me if this has seen any progress in the past months ?

Thank you !
Can anyone tell me if this has seen any progress in the past months ?

Alas, no progress detected on this, as far as I know.
Please, Sonos, at least the courtesy of a reply on this issue. To not "recognize" the semicolon as a delimiter is not right; it's a basic.
I've spent a LOT more money on my music library than my 5 Sonos components, including my latest addition, the Playbar; But if Sonos can't support basic concepts like semicolons for tagging pieces with multiple genres, it makes you wonder if it's time to replace the sound delivery system - after all, that's just a commodity item and there are plenty of good competitors on the market these days.



Come on, Sonos! This is not that hard a software problem to solve. If you won't do it yourselves, open source the software and we'll do it for you!
Please implement this feature!
LOL... 3 Years and nothing?

Thats why I used Squeezeboxes...

trying Sonos as a new solution, but there are so many threads like this one 😕
LOL... 3 Years and nothing?

Thats why I used Squeezeboxes...

trying Sonos as a new solution, but there are so many threads like this one :-/



It's because a) it's an active forum. 😎 there are some very old threads. c) there is a very large user base



I've been an active user of this forum for at least a year and have NEVER seen this request which is up there with giving So so a teas maid functionality.
Please please, add multiple genres!! Mediamonkey does it so why not Sonos? Maybe MediaMonkey needs to develop a Sonos App?
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