You have to assume there will be an extensive post mortem after all this. What is wrong with Sonos’ processes, testing and QA that allowed this update to go out? Testing and QA should have prevented this release from getting out the door.

From my perspective @Corry P is the Forums equivalent to @KeithFromSonos on Reddit. Sonos have some amazing people working hard for them to try to assist customers through these trying times. Hats off to them i reckon!

Ross.

@RogerWF

Thanks for reporting about the queue / now playing issue… but it already was mentioned for several times on different threads. And as far as I know that will be part of the next queue/ playlist fix updates. So maybe @Corry P will confirm that Sonos also is aware of this „bug“.

Still cannot add my library. Once added everything is empty. Problem persists. Sonos sucks, sorry. Who has all the time to read through all these posts to just learn that there is still no solution to properly adding a library? Or spend hours with their support stuff by resetting the speakers only to then have to live with work arounds that in the end are broken with the next update? Once I find time I will downgrade to S1. Done forever with S2.

Did you try adding the library by following the Sonos instructions here… 

https://support.sonos.com/en-gb/article/add-your-music-library-to-sonos

The library share needs to use the SMBv2 (or higher) protocol. I suggest setting up the the chosen user/credentials on the share with just read-only access.

@mhd 

What exactly does „Once added everything is empty.“ mean?

Can you see an added share / music library in Sonos settings but there is no content visible under library source?

Or does it mean there isn’t any library in settings at all?

Hi ​@rosswells127 et al

I have an update regarding this behaviour.

It is (now) expected behaviour that if you have a compilation album with no Album Artist metadata tagged on an S2 system, it will appear in the album list multiple times. To resolve this issue, please tag all tracks in the album with an Album Artist - if there is no single artist, please tag each track in the album with “Various Artists”. Once an album has a Album Artist tag, it will no longer appear as duplicates in the Album container list.

I hope this helps.

Edit: This thread was automatically closed due to inactivity. I have reopened it.

While its good to get some clarity here, thank you Corry, I am wondering WHY this was changed in the first place? I don’t recall anyone complaining about how tags where interpreted in the “before times”.

Hi ​@controlav 

I have no idea. I will try to see if I can get an answer though.

I was up until now thinking that it had something to do with classical music and how it tends to get tagged, but that does not make much sense as - as far as I am aware - classical music tends not to get released with multiple contributing artists.

Due to the timing, I think it could be related to however it was that we got Music Library working with the new cloud-based Search method, but that is just a guess.

Hi ​@controlav 

Was that a Cloud Atlas reference?!

Thanks, I've already updated my library, so no more multiple albums

I don’t know what that is, so no :-)

This is fixed now. It was broken. And now it isn't. My library required no changes (album artist always set).

Hi ​@Fynoderee 

That is the experience most people had, including myself. To be clear, there was an issue that we did fix, but some people were reporting still seeing it - they will need to re-tag the affected tracks.

@controlav - it’s a movie by the Wachowski siblings. Not bad, not great, but somewhat confusing.

This is poor and very disappointing. What a colossal fall from grace. I'm not going to tag all my stuff to work around this. I've relegated my Sonos usage to the beam and surrounds for TV usage (this works really well I have to say) and set up a subsonic server for my music instead. The end of an era.

Never, ever, will I miss an opportunity to shout about the incomprehensible screw up that is Sonos. There is(was) only one acceptable course for Sonos. That would have been to fix this issue within days of its appearance. I am not going to spend further hours tagging all the tracks on my albums. I am now a BlueSound customer with two Sonos soundbars remaining on two TV’s. We seldom listen to the music library on these units, or they, too, would have been replaced. 

Quite some time ago now, I set the MP3Tag App to update my local NAS library tracks ‘Album Artist’ tag field with the often-used ‘Various Artists’ tag - it took less than five minutes of my own time to actually setup, I just left it to do the tag update overnight.

It worked fine, post re-index.

That may be, but I am a user who makes no pretense of expertise in these matters. . Sonos needed to have suggested this with thorough and easy to follow instructions months ago if it a suitable fix. My thanks to you, but I am gone.

How did you tag your local library in the first place? - if using Windows, or iTunes, for example, you would just search/highlight all the library tracks and select the properties TAB and update the ‘Album Artist’ field with the words ‘Various Artists’ and wait whilst they (batch) update/complete - and then go onto re-index the library in the Sonos App.

I’d describe it as a similar process to renaming a file, except it’s a tag inside the selected track files and it will update the chosen ‘Album Artist’ field for all the selected tracks as a batch operation. 

Maybe checkout YouTube - there’s probably a video showing how to do these things, depending on what you use to hold your library files.

Agreed Ken, doesn't look difficult to do but I agree with HJ also, th attitude of Sonos is utterly appalling. Updating the app with known missing features and changes that break existing users’ experience and doing nothing about it for months. They cannot be trusted anymore. It's a dead platform to me, which is such a shame but follows the path of many companies these days who long ago stopped caring (Microsoft and Adobe immediately spring to mind but you can add ubisoft and electronic arts to that list if you play video games). I switched to Linux because windows became gradually worse, then to open source Linux apps to replace Photoshop etc. when Adobe became the scummiest company on the planet and now I've had to roll my own music server setup thanks to Sonos (which also caused me to cancel apple music because that became almost worthless to me). I'll stick around here in case Sonos ever seen the light and start caring about customers again and I haven't sold any of my Sonos gear.

Dismal….. 

It worked, picking up the compilation album metadata without issue.

Then it didn’t.

Now it only works (apparently) if customers edit all their album artist metadata for all affected albums.

When will Sonos learn?

And can anyone suggest a nice alternative for Sonos Amps / Ports / Connects ?

​@BLD2 

Have a look at WiiM and Bluesound, Bluesound has more similar hardware to Sonos.

In the previous Sonos S2 and Desktop Apps, there were three options to group albums, as shown in the screenshot below (one option includes no grouping of an album/compilation)…

In the new (current) Sonos App - it seems Sonos have chosen the "default option” of ‘Album Artists” only - Note: this was always the default option anyway, but I suspect that some users switched the setting to using ‘iTunes Compilations’ instead - it means the ‘Album Artist’ tag field needs to be populated in a compilation album for it to group - it’s not something Sonos have changed, but something a user likely did, to switch away from the default option when they were using the S2, or Desktop, App…

The answer is to switch it back to group albums using ‘Album Artist’ and ensure that tag is populated - it may already be populated anyway. Common practice is to use ‘Various Artists’ in that field - so I maybe would not entirely put all the blame on Sonos in this instance - they’ve just decided to go with the most popular/common option only.

No idea why iTunes compilations can’t still be used, it worked fine here for many years. So it’a another unwanted ‘change’ introduced without advising the user base. For months there has been no way to tell if this is a bug or intended behaviour, whether it will be fixed or needs to be mitigated by the user etc.

It’s taken an age to get a clarification on what has happened, and the workarounds that will get you back to it working how you like. 

The metadata isn’t populated on my library here and it’s an annoying job to do it for all compilations given the size of my library. I guess that’s what I will end up doing but the trust is ebbing away and I am looking to migrate away from Sonos over time despite having a medium sized system here. 

If you do hold your library in iTunes, it’s a simple change - highlight/select all compilation folder tracks and goto the properties, where you can quickly populate the ‘Album Artist’ field (one time only) with ‘Various Artists’. Then walk away and wait till the changes are complete and go onto re-index the library in the Sonos App - even Apple mention this sort of tag update/change on their website. Here’s one example I found…

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/music-windows/mus2561f46f8/windows