Duplicate album names queued together

Hi ​@RogerWF 

Thanks for your post!

Sorry to hear of the issue you are having with your duplicate album names confusing the index.

This is the very reason why we added support for the Album Artist metadata tag - so that the albums with identical names can be distinguished from each other.

Using a tag editor of your choice (I personally use Media Monkey, but neither I nor Sonos can take any responsibility for any harm caused by the use of third party software), please alter the metadata of your compilation albums (and albums with duplicated names) to include information in the Album Artist field. I recommend you use the Alicia Keys, Wind Machine and Eric Clapton for the Unplugged albums, and Various Artists for any compilation albums consisting of tracks from multiple artists. You will be able to do so an album at a time for the Unplugged albums, and all albums for Various Artists in one step.

I hope this helps.

Hi Corry,

Thanks for the quick reply. I hope you don’t mind my saying that it was pretty presumptuous on your part. I’ve always ensured that Album Artist is properly populated. I’ve attached a display of the properties of track one from each of the four ‘Unplugged’ albums, and no I haven’t changed anything.

FWIW all my music is on a Synology server. I’ve got almost 28,000 tracks in almost 2600 folders. I started with a Synology DS209 with the S1 Five and now have a Synology DS214play (209 is now a backup) with the S2 Play Five plus a Roam.

Let me know if there is any other info I can provide that might be helpful. Thank you.

Hi ​@RogerWF 

Apologies - you do indeed have the Album Artist tags present!

In that case, I have absolutely no idea why your albums are being displayed in the way that they are - I did not think I was being presumptuous as it seemed pretty clear at the time that that was what the issue was. That it is not has me fairly stumped.

I do notice that Alicia Keys does not have the Contributing Artist tag, but I don’t think that is relevant at this stage.

I recommend you get in touch with our technical support team who have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your Sonos system and what it reports - if they cannot solve this for you, they can at least document the issue and report it to our software teams as an issue to be investigated.

The screenshot in your opening post looks like it might be from the Desktop Sonos app - could you please check the mobile app to see if it displays things differently? If it does, please be sure to mention this to the agent you speak to.

I hope this helps.

Same thing with the phone app; see attached (and it’s my wife who is the Grey’s Anatomy fan ;) ).

Yes, I could contact your tech support, but I thought it might be easier to first check with other users, who surely must have this same scenario in their library, and who could quickly either confirm or deny similar behavior.

I also fear being placed on hold forever. Too busy for that. But when I get a chunk of free time I will give it a try.

And, no, you ‘presumed’. ‘Assumed’ plus some evidence to support your assumption. But no facts.

Have a good day.

I think there might have been a misunderstanding on Cory’s side. The issue is not that the albums are not shown correctly, but adding them to the queue will queue all albums with the same name.

I have just reproduced this as well with two Unplugged albums, but it only happens on the desktop controller here. If I add an Unplugged album to the queue on my iOS Sonos app it works as expected, only the selected album is played.

Outburst, Thanks for checking this out with your system. And for shedding important light on the situation!

You are exactly right. I just queued up the Alicia Keys Unplugged using my Android app, and that’s the only thing now in the queue!

I had gotten used to using the desktop app due to other issues with the Android controller, so it didn’t occur to me that there might be different behavior in this scenario.

So, in summary, both my Android app and the desktop app erroneously show multiple Alicia Keys ‘Unplugged’ albums (separate problem; see above). But if I choose one of them using the Android app and ‘Replace queue’, only that one album gets queued. OTOH if I select the same album using the desktop app, all albums with that title are queued.

Thanks again - hope this helps in pinning this down.  Cheers!

Ok now I see that I also did not fully understand your issue 😅 I have no issues with albums being shown multiple times, just with the queueing aspect. Is the Alicia Keys album the only one that is displayed multiple times? If yes, maybe post a screenshot of the metadata of two tracks of this album here.

First of all, I have to give props to Corry for helping me partially resolve the Alicia Keys ’Unplugged’ issue (why it was shown three different times in my Album list).

He noted that the Contributing Artist field was blank in the metadata for the song from that album that I included.

So, I listed the info for all tracks on that album and found that Contributing Artist was blank for all tracks except two, each of which had something different and unique. I therefore added ‘Alicia Keys’ into all the blank Contributing Artist fields and reindexed.  Now I’m down to only two Alicia Keys ‘Unplugged’ albums.  And each ‘album’ contains all tracks.

Doesn’t make sense to me; still puzzled but it’s a step forward.

And I realized right after posting ‘There I go again with the desktop app’. So I actually initiated a re-index from the Android app, waited for it to complete, and then listed the albums.  No change.

Secondly, I also have an issue with the ‘Crash’ soundtrack being listed twice.  Again, all tracks are listed with each copy.

Thanks.  Let me know if I can provide any more info that might help.

I have a few suggestions to try but don't wish to be admomished for suggesting/presuming/assuming something that you've not mentioned that may turn out not to be the case…

Do you have “Group by Album Artist” enabled in the music library settings in the Sonos controller? Also it probably might help to check the tracks in each of the duplicated albums or are they all the same?

Hi ​@Outburst 

Thanks! I was indeed misunderstanding!

There clearly is something going wrong here. I can only recommend you and ​@RogerWF both get in touch with our technical support team in order to have these unwarranted behaviours fully documented with diagnositcs taken at relevant stages.

I will see what I can do myself to raise awareness of this, but I am currently of the opinion that the teams will need the level of evidence demonstrating what is happening that can only really be gathered and collated from support calls. It is possible that a colleague will be able to replicate this, though, so I will let you know here if further evidence is not needed, if that turns out to be the case.

Hi ​@RogerWF & ​@Outburst 

OK, I heard back already. Please don’t call in.

My apologies - I keep forgetting that the DCRs (Desktop Controllers) for Windows and Mac are basically at End of Life - we are keeping them accessible for now, as some people are finding them helpful when it comes to sorting out issues with updating or registering speakers, but once the mobile app reaches full parity and is more reliable in this respect, the DCRs will be ended in favour of the Web App at https://play.sonos.com. Any issues that the DCRs have will not be addressed for this reason, and will remain unaddressed past the point where the DCRs are off-lined.

If any of you see any of this unwanted behaviour either with browsing albums or adding them to the queue when using either the mobile App or the Web App, please let me know, as that would need to be investigated.

I hope this helps.

Also watching this with interest.  I have seen some “interesting” behaviors in this area but not had the time to investigate in detail.

The news about the retiring of the Desktop controllers is really sad IMHO.

I think there will be cracks and issues in the mobile Apps for some time (that won't be apparent straight away) and the Desktop has helped thousands and thousands of users with such issues regain access to and control their systems over the past year, since the new App rollout.

I understand and respect that a level of effort has gone into the creation of the Web app but it is nowhere near good or quick enough to be considered a replacement for it.  I know I am far from the only one saying this and hope, unlike last time, such feedback won't go unheeded and ignored.  Sonos have promised to listen in future I heard..

One example, have you tried scrolling through the queue on the Web App?  I'd say it's unusable to be honest.

(1) Yes. See attached. Have not changed anything.

(2) Yes The track listings for each duplicate entry are identical. Alicia Keys Unplugged: 16 tracks each. Crash soundtrack: 15 tracks each.

Browsing these particular album titles via the web interface shows the same issue: one pair of duplicate ‘Crash’ entries, and one pair of duplicate ‘Unplugged’ entries, in addition to others that are not duplicated.

And this is probably just me as a dumb user and is not intended as an ‘attack’ on anyone here, but I’m finding the web interface very painful. I have the ‘album list’ up. How do I quickly find the ‘Unplugged’ album besides painfully scrolling down a few lines and then waiting for it to catch up? The ‘Search’ on the top line seems to search *all* services *except* the music library. I see all these services listed across the top row after I search, with the first few matching titles found in each one, but how do I get it to also search my library?

And then, if I select one of the albums to look at its track list, how do I get back to my place in the list I just scrolled down? Using the Back button puts me back at the top.

And again, dumb user here, but how does one add an album ‘to end of queue’ via the web interface? All I see are ‘play’ and ‘shuffle’ buttons for just the selected album.

Finally, I am happy to report that when I ‘play’ one of the Crash albums, only it goes into the queue - not all titles of that same name. This was an issue with only the desktop app (thanks again, Outburst).

Speaking of which, mine was just updated on 4/20. Ironic… ;)

Cheers!

Ok so if you see all the same tracks in both albums, I don’t think it’s metadata related. If the metadata was off, I would expect that you see different tracks in each album. Maybe you actually have a second copy of these albums in your music share? That’s the only guess I have, if that’s not the case, maybe it’s best to call support. I think they can check the file paths of the albums and can tell you more. I’m not sure if that’s possible for a user without help of support.

Two chat sessions and a two-hour phone call later:  the issue is apparently being escalated with ‘level two support’.  I have received an email from a rep there asking for additional info, which I just provided.  I knew this was going to be painful, but at least I did not have to wait on hold as long as I feared.

FYI:

This afternoon, per request from level 2, I played a track from one of the duplicate Alicia Keys album entries and then submitted a diagnostic.

Then I played the same track as selected from the other duplicate album entry and submitted another diagnostic.

I sent both confirmation numbers back to them.

I did this using the Android controller on my phone.

Updates to follow as I get more info.

Phone call/screen sharing session today with L2 just basically confirmed everything already known about the situation.  A call with L3 is now scheduled for Wednesday 5/28/2025.

Just eyeballing, I see eight album titles that are used on albums by different artists but are not problematic.  Listing them here just for my own reference:  closer, distant shores, double take, eye in the sky, greatest hits, live, one step closer, smile.

Known duplicate album titles that are shown twice in the Sonos album list:  Crash (album artist = Mark Isham) and Unplugged (album artist = Alicia Keys).

And while reviewing everything today, I found one more ‘album’ that is problematic:  Paste Vault (album artist = Various Artists) occurs THREE times. This is not really an ‘album’; it’s a collection of 157 tracks that Paste magazine made available for free a long time ago.  I downloaded them, placed them all in a subfolder of my ‘music’ folder, and tagged them with the above album name and album artist. ‘Joe Pug’ is simply the contributing artist on track 70.  No idea why it was treated separately.

Regardless, if I select any of the three ‘Paste Vault’ album titles, I see all 157 tracks.  If I ‘replace queue’ with any of the album titles, all 157 tracks are queued.

The really weird thing is that, even though the Joe Pug track is number 70, it is always listed (and queued) first, no matter which album title is selected. Then all 156 other tracks are listed (and queued) in track number sequence.

Weird indeed...

Phone call and screen sharing session took place on Wednesday 5/28/2025 as planned.  L3 rep looked at the metadata for the suspect albums and saw nothing problematic.  He did have me try changing a couple of things related to a ‘contributing artist’ setting and another ‘compilation’ field in the metadata; the latter had no effect, but the ‘contributing artist’ change did affect how tracks were listed with each duplicate album entry, but did not resolve the fact that the albums show up multiple times in the album list.  He did ask me to display ‘Properties’ for each *album*, just to see if ‘Multiple Values’ might be shown for Album Title or Album Artist, in case there were some garbage unprintable characters in some of them, but everything seemed clean.

He seemed particularly interested in the Paste Vault situation, since every track in that ‘album’ has basically the same metadata:  Album Title = Paste Vault, Album Artist = Various Artists, and Contributing Artist = the actual track artist. Special attention was given to the display of Joe Pug as the ‘album artist’ on one entry, so he had me upload some tracks from that album:  track 70 (the one with Joe Pug as the contributing artist), one numbered before track 70, and one numbered after it.

At one point while checking things out he asked me to queue the Crash soundtrack album. Since we were working in Windows, I used the Windows controller to make the queue request, and of course if queued both Crash albums, so he also saw first-hand the nature of that problem.

He said to look for a follow-up email from him, so I was waiting before posting an update, but I haven’t heard anything yet.  Figured I better post something to keep this alive; will post any more info as I receive it.  I did tell him that the duplicate entries were really not causing me any heartburn, but that kind of garbage, coupled with the other problems encountered with their controller, makes one question the overall reliability of their software...and other products?