Compilation Albums .... still!

Is this on sonos’ radar?
 

It most definitely should be! 

it was a very badly thought through change to solve a relatively small problem that has caused so many knock on effects such as those you describe but also the ongoing effort that every media library user now has to take on when adding a new album in order to maintain the library and deal with the fragmentation.

how on earth the side effects weren’t spotted during testing is a mystery too.

I seem to remember Sonos saying this is the new reality though, so “working as expected”. 

Anybody from Sonos?  Is this fix / restoration of previous functionality on the radar?

Again, there are probably at least two ways to address this:

1. Resurrect the “Show Contributing Artists” feature from previous versions of the App
2. Continue showing the Contributing Artists as is done today when Album Artist is left blank, but fix the fragmentation that occurs when tagged this way.

The problem is that as far as I can tell, there is no tagging strategy that can allow us to both see Contributing Artists in the index and not have Album Fragmentation.  If it was just that I had to do hours of work to retag my library, I’d probably curse and complain … and then I’d just do it (assuming I could trust that the way the library indexing works wouldn’t change again in the near future!)  But as it is, I know of no way to make it display in the expected fashion -- the way it did before app updates, the way it does on competing products, etc.

C’mon, Sonos!  You’re so close!  You’ve come so far!  I think this is one of the big “basic functionality” issues still hanging out there.

Used the search function for you, see Sonos’ reaction in this thread: https://en.community.sonos.com/controllers%2Dand%2Dmusic%2Dservices%2D229131/fragmented%2Dcompilation%2Dalbums%2D6927141?postid=16844706#post16844706

The advice in that link doesn’t help with the underlying issue

What I really don’t get is that Sonos expect 100% of media library users to follow their advice and

1. expect them to spend time re-tagging their library 
2. in doing so lose all the compilation artists from the artists view   
3. also lose the artists completely from the search capability on the windows version of the app
4. expect us to waste time retagging every new compilation album or those with guest artists that we add to avoid fragmentation  in perpetuity!

No one at sonos (including the ceo and his key firefighters department) has explained why they made this design decision when the obvious solution was simply to get the small number of people affected (or even bothered by) the albums with duplicate names issue to just get them to do the work to re-tag JUST THOSE DUPLICATE ALBUMS not everyone’s entire library !

in that context the latter makes no sense whatsoever and I cannot see that such a solution would have created all the knock on effects that I list above (and these are only the ones I have spotted so far, its probably not a complete list)     

argghhhhh 

what were they thinking ? 

I think the explanation is given by ​@Corry P , though it may not be to your liking: “Due to the change made, Albums with the same name but from different artists will now show properly as different entries.”

Just moved in to a new build in Ireland and updated all my Sonos kit. I was previously using the S1 app on the old system and now, with the new app, I’m encountering the compilation album fragmentation issues discussed above. It seems a real dogs breakfast as the problems didn’t arise on the old S1. Albums with guest artists are also fragmented.

I’ve been using iTunes to convert to M4a files which are stored on a synology DS213j. What would you guys suggest? Would I need to somehow retag compilation tracks in iTunes - unfortunately there are hundreds of albums? Or do you see Sonos solving this issue. Or is there a work around? I’m afraid I’m relatively new to this issue and there even seem to be reports that the problem has been solved. It’s all very confusing! Thanks.

There’s a mention of a tag editor in the link I provided above.

Firstly , A CORRECTION,

I must apologise to all for some confusion, when I re-read my post above I said

“in that context the latter makes no sense whatsoever and I cannot see that such a solution would have created all the knock on effects that I list above”  but that’s not what I meant ! 

I meant that the solution Sonos have adopted makes no sense whatsover and adopting the “making just the owners of duplicates do the tagging work would made much more sense”

Tagnofile, 

To answer you I would suggest doing nothing for the moment other than adding your voice to those who have complained to the CEO office (the email is ceo@sonos.com.)

There is a small chance that if the CEO keeps seeing the same poor responses & complaints on this topic he may take action to have it corrected.

I would suggest asking them to explain why they have made 100% of media library users undertake all this retagging work in perpetuity when only the owners of dupes needed to bother?  why they allowed a solution that created all the knock on issues above (and probably others) ?

The advice from Sonos on a solution is that you have to go through your entire library and:- 

• identify all the affected Compilation Albums and Albums with guests
• Convert WAV files to another lossless format as WAV tagging support is poor    
• re-tag all such albums with Album Artist = ‘Various Artists’ or similar using 3rd party software
• re-index your library and Sonos

But in doing so you have to accept all the shortcomings that I and others have noted as Sonos have currently shown no indication that they will do anything about the other issues they have created.

I have spent time re-tagging and somewhat regret it now but I am not yet ready to change it all back and live with the fragmentation.  Losing all the artists from the Artist view was the biggest disappointment more so than all the grunt work of identifying and re-tagging everything. 

Why Sonos have their head in the sand on this topic is a mystery,  how they can justify making 100% of library users do all this work and maintain it whenever they add further compilation albums when only the duplicate named albums needed to be addressed is a complete mystery for a company that is supposed to be focused on their users experience. 

How they can create all these knock on issues and then just walk away saying our solution solves the duplicate album issue is beyond me. 

Please add your voice to those who have written to the CEO 

Thank you Editor, good sir, for your concise response. I will certainly voice my concerns to the CEO office. It is simply incomprehensible why they haven’t addressed such an issue which must affect many. I experienced some tagging issues with S1 but these were miniscule in comparison.

At the very least, Sonos need to be definitive on this issue. Are they actually working on the problem and intend to provide a future solution? Or is this something they mysteriously believe is unimportant and we all have to retag (with the obvious side effects). I’ll at least try and find out and let you know if I get a response.

Thanks again for the summary.

Agree with everything Editor says … but I’ll add to it that I’d even be willing to go through the work of retagging -- if doing so didn’t break the system in other ways!

Again, resurrecting the “Show Contributing Artists” option would at least give us a pathway to a system that would function as expected.  As it is, there is no tagging strategy or sets of options that allows us to both avoid fragmentation AND be able to see contributing artists.

Doing just this would not make everybody happy -- we’d be happier with the grouping that doesn’t duplicate albums in the first place -- but at least it would give us something, and really should have no negative side effects even for folks with identically named albums.

It's been the case for a long time that when set to view the album a certain way that you couldn't even search for the Artist either - it literally makes you think you have nothing by them until you display the album a different way.  It sounds like that's the same in the new ‘from the ground up’ App rewrite.

Like when S2 came out and was going to offer so much potential over S1, yet ended up basically the same.  As we're a year plus on from the new App's release and still don't have parity with its predecessor, I wonder just how much good stuff will be added to the App over the next year or two.  Sadly, I'm not holding my breath.

Again, this should be simple.  The link that 106rallye points to shows how to index with album grouping, which is half of what is needed.  The other part that is needed is currently available in the desktop app:  The ability to see Contributing Artists.

See it checked there?  On my laptop, I can browse the music library correctly, because that checkbox is available.  On a mobile controller, though …. it’s not.  I would need to tag compilation albums as Various Artists, which I am willing to do … but we need the Contributing Artists …. functionality that currently exists in the desktop app.  Please, please, please … bring it over!

​@Keith - Sonos any possible updates for this?

Sorry, I’m very new to this issue but I think I found an acceptable solution for my case. Using the Sonos Desktop Controller,  under "Group Albums using," I selected "iTunes Compilations." instead of "Album Artists"

I then reindexed using the Sonos App. Everything now seems to work as it did with S1. I did use iTunes to create the files for my music library so perhaps the solution is specific to my case. But I thought I should mention it as someone might well be in the same position.

I can’t locate specific artists on the compilations using Artists search under music library as (compilations) appears as a specific heading. However, all the compilation tracks are there under songs. This was probably the case under S1 - I never really used to search in this way.

It could well be this is the glaringly obvious thing to do for an iTunes user and I was just being stupid :-) 

But I hope it also might help someone!

This is a really frustrating topic and glitch in how Sonos handles metadata for compilation data. I understand the explanation that Sonos has given, but at the same time I simply cannot believe that I need to waste time correcting metadata manually. I use both Sonos and Bluesound and in the BluOS app and controller the tag “Various Artist’ is applied automatically for compilation albums with no need to change any metadata yourself, so they have cracked the code!!!

This is why Sonos is THE worst for managing music. I cannot believe that I would have to go through my entire library and add meta tags to the album artist which is clearly WRONG. No other music organizer requires you to do this. I’ve given up now getting something useful out of Sonos, it’s been so long since this disaster of an update, and they still cannot find a way to make this compilation album selection useful for users.

For those of you on iOS, has the newest update addressed this? If so, I can patiently wait for it to make it to Android!

I don’t think it’s the controller that is the issue, it’s basically just a display. I think you should be looking at the data stored on each speaker (essentially the firmware). 
 

And no, to my knowledge, there’s been no changes in the most recent release that addressed your issue….but that being said, I’m not experiencing this at all, with a mostly Apple Music generated local library. (Was iTunes when the CDs were ripped). But I’m not fixated on a display, or worry about order, either, I let my library random play, without looking at it. I only have a few compilation albums (maybe 20 or so?), so I haven’t been focused on it. 

Definitely would be firmware to correct the indexing, but a fix in the display on the controller would allow for browsing by Contributing Artist. While this would still require retagging, it would give at least a solution that would work. As of now, there is no possible workaround! We must accept either album fragmentation (make it not be a compilation) or inability to browse by the artists on that album (if it is called a compilation).