I’m having the same issue!

It seems like a bad update went out recently. I first noticed it 5 days ago. I don’t know when/if they plan on fixing it.

This is core functionality. It makes local music impossible to use. I’ve spent close to 20 years now as a Sonos owner/user maintaining a local library, that is carefully tagged for use in Sonos.

It’s been reported and acknowledged by Sonos, it’s a firmware issue but no ETA of a fix

Yeah, a little poking around yesterday and I saw that. Seems odd to me that it would take them so long to fix it. But I can deal - just have to avoid looking in “Various Artists”, which is for now completely unusable for me.

Yep, I have the same; it’s not your fault. I believe the software is taking the “artist” rather than the “album artist”. So it is “album name” + “artist” that’s being treated as a single album, so if you have, as I have, a compilation of 20 tracks by 20 different artists but with “album artist” as “Various Artists”, you don’t get a single entry listed in the app, but 20 identical entries (sigh! what we’d term “schoolboy error” here in the UK).

It shows lack of attention to detail when they were testing the changes to the system. It shows a very unprofessional attitude to regression testing (testing that any changes DO NOT break existing features).

Quite possibly also showing that this project was rushed out without due diligence. Again, one cause of this is senior management’s narrow-vision of what constitutes a major software change, failing to regard quality assurance as a serious part of product release - either through ignorance, or, I suspect, chasing the $$ in preference to turning out a quality product.

Yeah, at first I didn’t know why some albums had become multiple, but I think you are right - it’s the artist. I agree it’s a pretty big mistake on their part. Surprised that they don’t have an automated test that would have caught this. I know it’s not an easy thing, but that stuff has worked quite well for a long time.

I guess they are a smaller company, but I know where I work this would be considered a very serious regression and would require a fix in less than 24 hours.

On the “bright” side, I expect they will fix it soon-ish.

On the app go to music library and then at the bottom is folders. That seems to be working okay.

So, I’m on phone support right now with another issue and they want me to be on the latest update before they can go further into my issue. I told them the latest update is known to cause the issues mentioned here with albums and that I don’t won’t to turn my current issue into a worse issue.

Not sure what to do about Sonos.  I hate to dump a 12-component system and start over, but I think I may have to start seriously looking at a migration.  We’ve had a buggered system now for months - getting to be untenable.

And now my support call got dropped.  I guess I get back into it tomorrow. 

Definitely not like we had! I went directly from LP to sonos about a decade ago. And it was great. Still don’t know if there are great alternatives, but wow are they losing the cred!

oh, good tip. Still awful for me, since I have a lot of compilations, and some are in a folder called “compilations” and some are in “Various Artists”. But not bad…

I’ve had sonos for ten years, 9 great years and in the last one problem after another.  So no Beta testing anymore…. Just get it out right or wrong?

I saw on another post that the new software update doesn’t fix this. I have 16.3.3. I’ll try re-indexing and see what happens….
… nope, still totally busted. anthology box sets come out as 40 different albums!

It seems the fix is not in the recent update. As the answer to this thread indicates however, Sonos are aware of the issue. Fingers-x’d it will be in one of the next couple of updates.

Considering this wasn’t initially an issue when the music library became available with the new app, it seems a bit strange that it wasn’t a quick fix. I fear it’s somewhat low in the priority list. 

What this, apparently, minor problem - which has not been repaired - suggests is that there is a lot of turmoil in the development of this release - which can hardly be called a “release” any more as it now in its 5th month and issues are still not fixed nor is there a clear “road map” of what will be fixed and when.

It would appear that Sonos development is about as well organised as Putin’s Russia is in trying to attack Ukraine.

Perhaps we should refer to this as Usability-Release-Zero in future correspondence.

Or ‘Application Ruins Sonos Experience’ ? 

You can fix this providing you are prepared to forgo searches by Artist  and composer.

Download Mp3tag, go to the album causing the issue, select all tracks, copy the Album Artist into the Artist and Composer fields, save.  Then re-index your music library in Sonos.  Don’t make the Artist and composer fields blank,which I also tried,  for some reason Sonos doesn’t like this and won’t play the album.

This would not work for me - my compilation Albums have the ‘Album Artist’ set to ‘Various Artists’

The ‘Artists’ tag has the name of the singer, or band …and in my case I don’t bother with the ‘composer’ tag.

I haven’t reindexed since before the 16.3 update that caused the ‘compilation albums’ issue and my library displays fine with no duplicates in the new Sonos App.

Plus …Sonos have acknowledged this ‘compilation albums’ only issue and have said they plan to fix it. So I think it’s best to wait for that fix. Otherwise I can see users having ‘duplicates’ to contend with in their library search results.

Thanks for the suggested workaround @KiwiTony but I am with you on this one Ken.
Waiting “somewhat” patiently for Sonos to sort this out. Frustrated at the time it is taking being that we reported it back in July.
Ross.

The Music Library Compilations issue appears to have been resolved with Firmware Update 16.4.2.
Ross.

I  agree that the latest firmware update 16.4.2 appears to have fixed the compilation album problems. My Music Library albums list in the Sonos app has now shrunk to a more manageable size.

16.4.2 and later versions haven’t fixed it for me ,  its still an issue making the Album view a pain to navigate.    

Its very odd that they know when it happened, so they must know what triggered this behaviour but they haven’t yet put it back the way it was,   A seemingly obvious change you would think (ie “oops we’ve broken it, lets put it back the way it was until we have found a solution” )     

There is no way I want to spend hours playing around to fix tags - where does this stand with the CEO’s latest pronouncement on values and priorities?????  

I had similar issues.  I ended up changing the library in Sonos to an empty location followed by a libarary scan.  Then once complete I re-entered the correct library location and did a new scan.  The new scan takes a while but it should work.  Also check that Album viw is by Artist and Not Album Artist.

Thanks for the Tip,   I tried deleting the library scanning a different location then re-establishing the original library and re-scanning but sadly the compilation albums are still fragmented.