Track Info for file system track location eg info where is this track in My Music Library

  • 19 May 2023
  • 7 replies
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A
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I have a reasonably large music collection (MP3s) which I copied off CD a long time ago and I’m just cleaning up the file metadata and image art but I’m having trouble locating a few tracks within my collection.
At some point in the past iTunes tried to “help” sort my music collection for me and filed things in strange places only known to apple (eg compilations folders etc )

I can see the track on the sonos system, but am unable to locate them on the file system and would like to get them back into a more sensible filing system.
(Searching the file system is ridiculously slow given the music library size)

Question:

Is there a way to see the track location under track info? (I can obviously find it)

Feature Request:

If there isn’t a way to see the track location, it would be nice to see this feature added. When you need it it would be a helpful little feature and probably not overly hard to implement.

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7 replies

buzz

Use a tag editing program. These are designed to help edit the library’s metadata. You can sort by tag names and bulk edit. With a tag editor you can quickly find and correct misspelling. In your specific case, you can find the file and folder name of a track.

A
Userlevel 5
Badge +2

 

Use a tag editing program. These are designed to help edit the library’s metadata. You can sort by tag names and bulk edit. With a tag editor you can quickly find and correct misspelling. In your specific case, you can find the file and folder name of a track.

Yes, that is the plan. I have been using Picard MusicBrainz to do the tag editing but that is not the issue it’s locating all the tracks for a given artist the itunes has been “kind enough” to re-organise all over the place. 
The tracks can be seen grouped correctly by sonos but the underlying file system is all over the shop because itunes re-organised it (that and any errors that I made when copying off CDs back in the day)

The functionality I’m looking for in the Sonos interface is to find the file system location of a given track or album from the sonos interface similar to the iTunes function (right click - show in finder)
 

Ken_Griffiths

ITunes tends to generally place the tracks in the music folder in ‘Artist/Album/Track’ format and has a separate folder for compilations which is in ‘Album/Track’ format - if you want to reorganise those things, I would recommend doing that in a separate folder structure away from the Apple Music library and then point the Sonos App at the reorganised set of folders instead. The tag editor I recommend is MP3Tag as it can find all the tracks by Artist or Album etc. just organise things in the order you prefer. 
 

Note too in the Sonos App you can organise the local library index in several ways - (see screenshot)

  • You can organise compilation albums in the same was as iTunes, or by Album Artist, or opt to not group any of the compilations at all and…
  • Sort the folders by song name, number or file name and there’s an option to include contributing artists aswell.

So there’s plenty of ways already to (re)organise your library - you just need to find one you’re perhaps happy with.

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A
Userlevel 5
Badge +2

ITunes tends to generally place the tracks in the music folder in ‘Artist/Album/Track’ format and has a separate folder for compilations which is in ‘Album/Track’ format - if you want to reorganise those things, I would recommend doing that in a separate folder structure away from the Apple Music library and then point the Sonos App at the reorganised set of folders instead. The tag editor I recommend is MP3Tag as it can find all the tracks by Artist or Album etc. just organise things in the order you prefer. 
 

Note too in the Sonos App you can organise the local library index in several ways - (see screenshot)

  • You can organise compilation albums in the same was as iTunes, or by Album Artist, or opt to not group any of the compilations at all and…
  • Sort the folders by song name, number or file name and there’s an option to include contributing artists aswell.

So there’s plenty of ways already to (re)organise your library - you just need to find one you’re perhaps happy with.

Thanks Ken for the reply, 
I will look into MP3Tag perhaps it will offer the functionality I’m looking for.

As you say the bulk of my music has ended up where you would expect in Artist/Album/Track and a proportion has ended up in Compilations/Album/Track but the an annoying minority has just ended up in strange places (eg Album/Track or more random locations) these are what I’m having difficulty locating but they are correctly filed by Sonos because they have the original metadata to sort them into Artist & Albums but I cannot see their underlying location in the file system.

In most cases it probably doesn’t often matter much about the underlying file system locations but occasionally it is useful to have this information
In my opinion for an extra line item on the track information tab could offer benefit for minimal effort & no real negative effects but I would like to see this feature added, I’m sure opinions will differ.  🤔

Ken_Griffiths

@AnotherMusicListener 

The MP3Tag display (which can be customised) will clearly show the path and where the track/file(s) are located in the library structure. 

There might be something wrong with the metadata if the tracks have not been imported to their correct location in the iTunes folders. I would just move/remove the offending tracks/albums to a separate location - fix their tags and then re-import them to ensure they are correctly positioned. Then when complete, don’t forget to re-index your Sonos library to reflect all the changes made.

buzz

It’s not fun for large jobs, but you can disable the file storage system, then attempt to play the track. The error message will show the full file path. If you use the desktop controller, there will be a list of error messages. 

D
Userlevel 1
Badge +4

I feel the OP’s pain.

To respond to the initial question about track location: no, not within the Sonos controller app.

Believe me, I wish it did for I’ve been in the very same situation with iTunes: it’s metadata sux, ripping CDs using the compilation screws me up every time, and more. And as of late, my efforts have been to add my modest collection of audio books on CD, and again, iTunes does not make it easy with the additional problem that Sonos does not recognize/use the M4B file extension.

It would be really, really, really helpful if the Sonos controller app (especially the Windows version) would surface the path and filename data so that tracking down “lost” files would be simplified.

Short of getting the aforementioned enhancement added to the controller apps, another way to help locate content known to Sonos would be to get a dump of the internal Sonos database. I assume it would be a very large file using XML formatting for the data -- and if so, that would be very usable to me. Does any one know if there is a way to exfiltrate the Sonos internal database content from/to a Windows platform?

For my curating activities of my digital music library, I use tagscanner: https://www.xdlab.ru/en/index.htm . It has its quirks but I find it extremely useful so things like having to redo customizations are treated as annoyances.

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