Music Library Compilations not playable in new app

 It does not matter what is in the Album Artist tag.  In fact I actually only put Various in that tag.  I only used the example Various Artists because that seems to be the most popular entry.

 Is the Artist tag James Bay for the compilation album Best Days Of My Life?  If it is a search for James Bay in Music Library on Sonos app should return all the albums he has performed on including Best Days Of My Life.

 As an example I have a compilation where Diana Ross is one of the artists.  When I search the Music Library for Diana Ross the compilation album is one of the albums listed.

 

Hi, thanks for that info, it does work okay on the IOS iPad app & on Android, I hadn’t tested those. But on the Windows app (16.4.2) it doesn’t work. However as I usually use the IOS app & Android app that isn’t too much of a problem. Once again thanks for your help.

The SONOS system is still a mess and doesn't seem to adhere to any other method of interpreting tag metadata that I've seen. I'm honestly not sure how they - SONOS - have written their software to read metadata.

I very recently added the album 'Acadia' by Yasmin Williams to my music library. On the album and in every online reference I've seen the Album is credited to Yasmin Williams. So I tagged Yasmin Williams as Album Artist. However, on many of the tracks, the Artist is listed as 'Yasmin Williams feat. ... '  Obviously, sensibly, correctly, I tagged the Track Artist with those specific details. The result in SONOS is that I can't play the album from start to finish. I have about 8 entries for albums, all with an identical title Acadia, and all consisting of one or two tracks. If I search for Yasmin Williams I get the Album credited to her, Acadia, but it only contains the tracks on which she alone is credited

SONOS doesn't appear to understand the hierarchy and relationship between Album and Track, and Album Artist and Artist. I have no such problems when playing this album in other non-SONOS software on my Windows PC or Android phone. It's like the SONOS developers have never listened to an entire album, and only ever spend their lives listening to streamed music from a random shuffled source.

And don't get me started on classical albums ... !

 For the Yasmin Williams album try adding the feat. Artists to the Album Artist tag an have Yasmin Williams for the Artist ( Track Artist ) tag.  Then reindex, and search for Yasmin Williams again.  All the tracks should then be on the Acadia album.

 I listen to a lot of classical music where the tags are all over the map.  For me to have successful search results I have to make the Artist & Album Artist tags both the last name of the composer.  For compilation albums where in the same album there are the two pieces Malcolm Arnold: Symphony No. 2  &  Roy Harris: Symphony No. 1 that becomes two different albums: Symphony No. 2 & Symphony No. 1.  Each with the last name of those two composers Arnold & Harris in the appropriate album.

The new app still seems a bit deficient in its settings, and I wonder if your local library has the right advanced settings? On my iPhone I just have add shared folder, Scan for new content and detect music library, whatever that does… On the Mac desktop controller there’s an advanced tab which allows a group albums by option that I think needs to be on Album Artists. That setting needs to make its way into the new app before they retire the desktop controllers … 

My albums that have featured artists in the artist tag, that were generating multiple album entries are correct again after the very latest firmware and a re-index. 

We are all payed up customers and here we are dealing with things we probably shouldn’t even know about in an effort to work around the alterations Sonos made to their product to prevent it from working (through ignorance not malicious intent). This has to end. Sonos are you listening?

Thanks for the response. 

However I do think that that Yasmin Williams workaround is fundamentally wrong. It goes against the facts. Yasmin Williams credited the album to herself, and the individual tracks to her plus the featured artists. If you change these absolute facts, you might as well tag it as a Frank Sinatra album! Other media players, say like foobar2k, have no problem interpreting the tag metadata correctly.

I sympathise entirely with the classical issues. I too have many classical recordings. In a music collectors group I was a member of I argued long and hard that you shouldn't put the Composer in the Artist tag. There is a perfectly good Composer tag in the MP3 spec to hold this. Most of my acquaintances simply put the Composer in the Artist field, "because it's easier." Well, they may have thought that, but I insisted they were wrong. Imagine if you had a recording of a piano sonata with Beethoven as the Artist - wow!! The only time I'd have the Composer in the Artist field would be if they had genuinely played on the recording as well as having Composed it. I have a few Benjamin Britten recordings in that category.

I'm sorry to dismiss your suggestion. I've spent a long time working out what for me is a high precision tagging system. It satisfies me and it works really well with all competent media player software. Including, amazingly enough, the obsolete SONOS S1 app. I'm too invested in this personally to throw it aside. I don't have the same emotional attachment to SONOS, and this could be the breaking point for me.

Thank you for the suggestions and areas to explore.

I have a Windows desktop app and Android mobile app, but even so, the Apple apps layout must be nearly identical.

I inspected the 'Group Albums by' option, but I already had it as Album Artists. So no joy there. However, I also looked at my software release and it was 16.3. Having seen your reference to 'very latest' release I prompted an update, and after a couple of errors (hey, come on, it's SONOS. Of course there were errors!) I ended up with 16.4.2. Then I reindexed my 20k+ tracks local library.

WOW! The indexing issue seems fixed! I almost wrote 'well done SONOS' but that would be going too far. I think a milder 'thank you SONOS' is more appropriate. We're getting back to where we were all these months ago. Next on my personal priorities would be to get album art displayed on my mobile app. It's there on the desktop app, so my fingers are crossed …

I'm smiling today. :)

OK, I might even go a little higher than 'thank you SONOS'. I've just discovered another benefit of the upgrade.

On the classical side I have about 20 recordings of Bach's Goldberg Variations. That used to be a nightmare! Because the album title was, by definition, identical for all of these, SONOS used to lump them all together in one mega-album, with 20 Track 1s, 20 Track 2s etc. To separate them I had to re-tag them all so the each album name appeared unique. What a nuisance. To be honest, the same also applied to albums titled 'Greatest Hits' or 'Gold' but not quite on the same scale.

However, while browsing my local music library now I spotted two albums with identical titles. One is by Ella Fitzgerald and the other by Charlie Barnet. I obviously hadn't spotted this overlap when adding the second one. But SONOS has got each one correctly identified and indexed so that only one artist and set of tracks appears in each album. That is such a leap forward again! I wonder if I can now re-tag my Goldberg Variations recordings with the correct, as on the album, title?

Could I fall in love with SONOS again?

Incidentally, my previous comment about missing album art may be an Android issue. I was infuriated to see that my wife and her iPhone have the album art displayed. I just have the grey placeholders for tracks, albums, artists on my Pixel 7. More investigation called for I fear.

@Walter Eagle 
 Back when I started all this digital library stuff the software I was using had no Composer category.