disaggregation of compillation albums and lack of queueing

Hi ​@Phantom 1483, welcome to the Sonos Community!

I’m sorry to hear that you’re having some issues with your library and Sonos system.

Your music library showing duplicates of your complication albums will be due to how the app processes the metadata of your library. You’ll want to update the "Album Artist" field in the metadata of any impacted tracks to something such as "Various Artists", then re-index your library; this will resolve the issue and show the complication albums correctly.

For queuing in the Sonos app, this was added back in a previous update. You can add to the queue by tapping the three dots next to a track, album, artist, or playlist. If you already have something in the queue, you can either select: ‘Add to End of Queue’ to add to the current queue, or ‘Replace Queue’ to erase the current queue and replace it.

I hope this information helps!

Hi ,

thanks for your reply - how do I do the first para please? I’m no expert on this stuff so a step by step noddy guide would be useful, and, can I do this in mass or is it album by album - I have many. Main principle is “why should I have to fiddle with this stuff? Will I do damage to my library if I do it wrong”

the second part re queueing, here is my three dot screen

As you can see - no queueing options !

further help needed please!

Hi Jamie A

queueing now sorted thanks 👍

ive tried mp3tag and unfortunately it can’t do it as many of my files are m4a files. Does this mean that before I can use it I have to convert all the files to mp3?

​@Phantom 1483:

Adding an Album Artist tag will only help your library organization.  All compilation albums should have the same Album Artist tag name for all tracks.  Usually the Album Artist tag would be Various Artists.  I just use Various because I don’t like typing.

I don’t know how many Compilations you have.  If it’s a lot you have some work ahead of you.  Using a program like MP3 Tag you would have all tracks of a compilation album highlighted and then fill in the Album Artist tag with Various Artists ( or whatever you want ).  Do a few at a time when time allows.

I don’t use MP3 Tag so the process probably varies from how I described it above.

You can thank Apple for the screwed up tags and you can blame Sonos for not taking that into consideration.

Be Aware

it appears that if you follow this advice and tag Album Artist with “Various Artists” or “Compilation” it solves the album fragmentation issue but it does mean that the Artist that appears on each individual song won’t appear in search Artist  or Search Song etc.

solve one problem create another…..   

Hi Jamie A and Editor,

I have a solution🥳 thank you both!

Here is what I do:

Down mp3tag

Open Media Player - select each album - highlight all tracks on the album - right click and go to mp3tag

add “various artists” to the album artist field

save

go on to the next album and repeat.

when finished, re-index the media library in Sonos.

this works!

it will take ages, and I shouldn’t have to do it - blame who you like, but it all worked fine before the upgrade, so it’s Sonos for me!

But thank you for a solution at last - I’ve been at this since June!

I hope your next upgrade is more successful - all this just to get it to do what it used to - I am still unaware of any benefits from the upgraded app!

Have a very Merry Christmas!

Phantom 1483 signing off

🎄

I have no such issue.

I must not have explained myself very well,  

If you have added a tag for Album Artist as “Various Artists” then 

In your example above try looking under the Artist tab on the Music Library screen for “Lynyrd Skynrd” or “Cream” etc. and see if those tracks on that particular album appear. 

If you don’t have any other albums by those artists you may find the artist doesn’t appear at all in the list

You are correct.  It looks like Sonos are using the Album Artists tag for the Artist category ( tab ).  Most of my music playback does not involve Sonos.  I mostly use music streamers that look for servers.  In my case MinimServer.  MinimServer has a category ( tab ) that does look at the Artist tag.  They call that category All Artists.  In All Artists I can find an artist that is only in one of my compilations.

One example of an artist in my sample album above is Sugarloaf.  I know I have no other Sugarloaf albums.  Because of the way the 80.x Sonos app handles catagories at this point I have no interest in scrolling endlessly in the Artist category until I get to Sugarloaf.  So I just search for Sugarloaf and there they are with the compilation album shown.

So maybe Sonos should include an All Artists category which would solve the problem.  For compilations I’m leaving the Album Artist tag “Various”.  A alphabetical bar would be nice as well.

​@MoPac , in the DC area in the 80s/90s, were you? I’m amused and pleased to see WCXR, a station I listened to heavily after they changed format to classic rock. Although the changeover was a bit of a shock. ;)

I acquired that compilation album when tagging a friend’s library.  I think he acquired that album from someone else because it was in a folder named From Others.  So I have no idea where that album actually came from.  The stuff in that folder was so varied it could not have been a single person.  My friend worked at Audio Consultants at the time so he met a number of folks from all over the country.  Those 4 Audio Consultants stores were very popular.  Closed now.

I’m a Chicago area guy all my life.  Our station of choice for Rock was WXRT.  In the 80s-90s they were very good at playing tracks you would never hear on other Rock stations.  They have since digressed into more mainstream.

Merry Christmas.

If memory serves, I have three of those WCXR compilation albums. I always assumed some company made them available for rebranding by whatever ‘local’ classic rock station would pay them, and then resell them. But I moved away from the DC area years and years ago, I fear. It was a pleasant ‘see’ in this forum.

And Merry Christmas to you!

WXRT has some very cool live album compilations.

https://musicbrainz.org/series/00997785-003e-4c04-a70b-086a53bb9edd