Include Contributing Artists field in search!

I agree this would be really useful update. I have my music library set to 'Group albums using albumartist' which filters out all artists on compilation albums (as I have the albumartist set to the name of the album on compilation albums). The result of this is that I cannot search for an artist on a compilation album, only the name of the compilation album. Being able to search by artist even though my music library is grouped by albumartist would get around this.

This is a definite must have - can't believe it's not already there!

FYI - Andronos from the Google Marketplace does allow you to search Contributing Artists. Whilst overall the app is not quite as good as the official one, I use it at parties so people can search Compilation Albums properly. It also have an iTunes-like coverflow feature if that sort of thing interests you. It's free, with an option to donate if you wish. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=dk.contix.android&feature=search_result#?t=W10

I find it unbelievable that such an essential feature should not be available from the beginning, and it escapes me why it does not find more followers. Probably no one is listening to own music anymore, and everybody is just using spotify & Co.

This is easily my number one priority for Sonos to fix. About a third of my library consists of compilation albums and with the album artist populated for these (as Various Artists) and group by Album Artist turned on around 4000 out of 12000 tracks cannot be searched by artist. I love the Sonos system but this is a terrible oversight that really should be given high priority. The above was more of an issue for me when I had the Album Artist populated with "Various Artists" for multi-artist compilations. When I upgraded to iTunes 11 I found that I too was only able to search for Album Artist in this program also. I was able to 'fix' the search in iTunes by changing the album artist for all compilations to blank. (All of my compilations have had the Compilation option ticked for a long time). The search now works correctly in iTunes and also in Sonos providing I do not group by Album Artist. With group by Album Artist turned off however my artists list contains the artists on my compilations. In many ways I would prefer compilation artists to only appear under the "Contributing Artists" list but Sonos needs to search both "Contributing Artists" and "(Album) Artists" when searching by artist. Has anyone else experienced the issues surrounding tagging of compilations since the upgrade to iTunes 11? I can group by the iTunes compilation flag on Sonos and this puts the compilation artists under "Contributing Artists". Unfortunately however it is not possible to search by "Contributing Artist" in Sonos. Until this issue is solved I will continue to not group compilations in Sonos so that the artist search function works for both single artist albums and multi-artist compilation albums. I will continue to leave the Album Artist blank for multi-artist compilations in iTunes too. This approach however, makes it harder to scroll through my artists list for album artists as the volume of compilation artists greatly outweighs the volume of album artists in my music collection. Does anyone at Sonos have a library with a very high percentage of multi-artist compilation albums? If so, they should highlight the seriousness of this issue to higher management. I really do hope the handling of multi-artist compilations in both iTunes and Sonos is improved soon. At the moment it all feels rather broken in my opinion, in both Sonos and iTunes. Please can we have an official response from Sonos on this matter?

Totally agree, number one issue for me. I have a lot of various artist albums. Please fix. The user experience would be so much better with this one issue fixed!

Same here. I miss this feature for the last 6 years! It is a big big gap in the featurelist and in my opinion a must have in the system. I adressed it several times in the last years, but nothing happens. I do not understand, why it is not available and Sonos only focus on the online-systems and not on all (old) users, who use Sonos with a local database.

I've had my Sonos for a day now and I've been trying to find out what was wrong with the search since I couldnt find a lot of my music. I was shocked to find out that this isnt possible. Also I'm puzzled why this hasnt raised more noise amongst the users. This is a really big thing to me.

This really needs to be fixed. Nearly 50% (6000) tracks in my library are from various artist compilations. It is ridiculous that I cannot access these 6000 tracks by performing an artist search. It is such a pain to scroll through my huge "contributing artists" list to find what I am looking for. It should just work. It should group the results into two sections. The first section should show the albums by the specified artist. The second section should show the various artist compilation albums that feature the specified artist. In this view selecting the compilation album should just show the track(s) on the compilation by the searched artist. I shouldn't have to use my iPad (with iTunes Match enabled) to find out which compilations feature an artist that I am looking for. This is a major flaw with search and I can't believe more people haven't complained about this. I can only assume Sonos do not test their system with various artist compilations!!! Please fix Sonos. This is almost as ridiculous as no DTS support for the play bar. (I'm one of the thousands of users that will only consider a PlayBar if DTS is added)

Also consider voting on this related topic.
"Please could you create a KB article that explains exactly how to get compilation albums to work correctly for display and search"
https://ask.sonos.com/sonos/topics/_how_to_article_required_for_compilation_albums