Show the Composer tag on the Now Playing screen

Forum|Forum|14 years ago
August 31, 2012
70 replies
2567 views

The Now Playing widget shows Album, Artist and track title. It doesn't show the Composer name, even though Sonos has this information in its indices. Many classical albums are a composite program of works by various composers. When a track is queued, or playing, there is no way whatsoever to discover who the composer is. The titles given to classical works often give little clue; eg. "String Quartet No. 8 in E minor, Op 59.2: I. Allegro" ... pick the composer? It is very disappointing that this feature hasn't been implemented after 5+ years of requests from customers who enjoy classical music. I can't see why it isn't self evident that feature is required. In most instances a Sonos improves upon playing music from a physical cd; ie. I don't have to find it, and then put it away. This is an instance where the use of a Sonos degrades the experience; ie. I am listening to something, but I can't tell what it is, as I have no longer have access to the cover.

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K

Kirk_7

Contributor I

Seems like a lost cause. I have been a loyal Sonos user for ten years. For the last two years I have been using Apple Music and Sonos. It works quite well but being unable to view the composer is a real downside. Have been using Apple TV to play my Apple Music library. The composer is then visible.

H

heseber

Lyricist I

Another disappointed user who would like to see the composer. I don't understand why Sonos has been ignoring users for such a long time. Even if they don't want to display the composer directly on the "playing now" screen, there should be at least an option to show the content of all indexed fields, including composer, from the three-dots-menu (where users can also select, e.g., "show all titles of this album" etc.).
Sonos, please listen to your users and don't just listen, but also do something about it!

J

JudithUitAmsterdam

Lyricist I

I completely agree. Not showing the composer is crazy, for classical music. What makes me really sad is reading in this thread that five years ago people were complaining that this has been asked for five years before that, so they have been not listening for ten years...

D

d0A0b

Lyricist II

+1

Please, let us choose which tag should be visible on the Now Playing screen: I'm doing a backup of all my classical library (about 3000 cds) and... I've just realized that if I want to know a composer or a specific Album Artist I have to get back to my cd sleeve! I spent many days to set up a tagging method to discover that it is useless on my new Sonos system.
I'm very disappointed. Please, let me know that you'll fix this issue...
Thanks.

A

Alan_6

Prodigy II

Sonos have made it very clear over the years that they're simply not interested in fetching any tagging information from either local library or subscription services other than the album artwork on-the-fly (we can assume Sonos units store the absolute minimum tagging required for navigation/display due to limited local library memory and/or "UI simplicity").

Using a separate source - iTunes, CD booklet, Wikipedia (and seek out some alternative controllers like Sonopad if you want that integrated) - is likely to be your only solution.

D

d0A0b

Lyricist II

Thank you very much for your reply.
Unfortunately, I didn't know the Sonos Policy. I can understand Sonos but... I dreamt something else.
I'll try alternative controllers to find out if there is someone which is getting closer to my expectations.
Many thanks, Alan.

A

Alan_6

Prodigy II

Thank you very much for your reply.
Unfortunately, I didn't know the Sonos Policy. I can understand Sonos but... I dreamt something else.
I'll try alternative controllers to find out if there is someone which is getting closer to my expectations.
Many thanks, Alan.

Well, at least Sonos are all about giving users a consistent and predictable experience (rather than a great one). And sadly, like the experience of buying music digitally, it does seem to be that most services believe that "liner notes and lyrics" info should not be delivered along with the music (or at all). Like so many software "solutions", the high-tech workaround for missing expected functionality is a piece of paper...

controlav

Lead Maestro

I've been looking at the data the system provides when enumerating and playing content, and I don't see the Composer data anywhere. You can Search the music library by composer, so it is stored somewhere for that, but i don't see it being returned at any other time.

TL;DR I don't think a 3rd party app could improve on the current experience, as the data is not available.

Author of the leading independent Sonos apps for Android, MacOS, iOS, Windows and Xbox.

A

Alan_6

Prodigy II

You're right that the data has to be available, either in a tagging database for fast access, or by going direct to the file system for tagging (or artwork file). I'm assuming that Sonos systems store the absolute minimum local library tagging necessary for navigation (to save memory). Whether it's even possible to get Sonos to read a local FLAC/MP3 file's tags is another question. And if different local/streaming libraries offer different tagging support, offering the minimum tags for consistency might be the smart move.

I can see a "composer" tag in my local library FLAC, would the average streaming service offer such a thing?

E

erniewan

Lyricist I

The music sources for my Sonos is Apple iTunes which provide both artist and composer for the song. So the information is already supplied to the Sonos Controller. All we need is for Sonos to give us the option to display either or both. It should be a easy fix for this obvious omission.

Therefore one can only conclude that it must be a deliberate suppression or complete contempt for its customers ignoring these complaints without explanation for such a long time. As such Sonos does not deserve our custom

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