Compilation Albums .... still!

Agree with everything Editor says … but I’ll add to it that I’d even be willing to go through the work of retagging -- if doing so didn’t break the system in other ways!

Again, resurrecting the “Show Contributing Artists” option would at least give us a pathway to a system that would function as expected.  As it is, there is no tagging strategy or sets of options that allows us to both avoid fragmentation AND be able to see contributing artists.

Doing just this would not make everybody happy -- we’d be happier with the grouping that doesn’t duplicate albums in the first place -- but at least it would give us something, and really should have no negative side effects even for folks with identically named albums.

It's been the case for a long time that when set to view the album a certain way that you couldn't even search for the Artist either - it literally makes you think you have nothing by them until you display the album a different way.  It sounds like that's the same in the new ‘from the ground up’ App rewrite.

Like when S2 came out and was going to offer so much potential over S1, yet ended up basically the same.  As we're a year plus on from the new App's release and still don't have parity with its predecessor, I wonder just how much good stuff will be added to the App over the next year or two.  Sadly, I'm not holding my breath.

Again, this should be simple.  The link that 106rallye points to shows how to index with album grouping, which is half of what is needed.  The other part that is needed is currently available in the desktop app:  The ability to see Contributing Artists.

See it checked there?  On my laptop, I can browse the music library correctly, because that checkbox is available.  On a mobile controller, though …. it’s not.  I would need to tag compilation albums as Various Artists, which I am willing to do … but we need the Contributing Artists …. functionality that currently exists in the desktop app.  Please, please, please … bring it over!

​@Keith - Sonos any possible updates for this?

Sorry, I’m very new to this issue but I think I found an acceptable solution for my case. Using the Sonos Desktop Controller,  under "Group Albums using," I selected "iTunes Compilations." instead of "Album Artists"

I then reindexed using the Sonos App. Everything now seems to work as it did with S1. I did use iTunes to create the files for my music library so perhaps the solution is specific to my case. But I thought I should mention it as someone might well be in the same position.

I can’t locate specific artists on the compilations using Artists search under music library as (compilations) appears as a specific heading. However, all the compilation tracks are there under songs. This was probably the case under S1 - I never really used to search in this way.

It could well be this is the glaringly obvious thing to do for an iTunes user and I was just being stupid :-) 

But I hope it also might help someone!

This is a really frustrating topic and glitch in how Sonos handles metadata for compilation data. I understand the explanation that Sonos has given, but at the same time I simply cannot believe that I need to waste time correcting metadata manually. I use both Sonos and Bluesound and in the BluOS app and controller the tag “Various Artist’ is applied automatically for compilation albums with no need to change any metadata yourself, so they have cracked the code!!!

This is why Sonos is THE worst for managing music. I cannot believe that I would have to go through my entire library and add meta tags to the album artist which is clearly WRONG. No other music organizer requires you to do this. I’ve given up now getting something useful out of Sonos, it’s been so long since this disaster of an update, and they still cannot find a way to make this compilation album selection useful for users.

For those of you on iOS, has the newest update addressed this? If so, I can patiently wait for it to make it to Android!

I don’t think it’s the controller that is the issue, it’s basically just a display. I think you should be looking at the data stored on each speaker (essentially the firmware). 
 

And no, to my knowledge, there’s been no changes in the most recent release that addressed your issue….but that being said, I’m not experiencing this at all, with a mostly Apple Music generated local library. (Was iTunes when the CDs were ripped). But I’m not fixated on a display, or worry about order, either, I let my library random play, without looking at it. I only have a few compilation albums (maybe 20 or so?), so I haven’t been focused on it. 

Definitely would be firmware to correct the indexing, but a fix in the display on the controller would allow for browsing by Contributing Artist. While this would still require retagging, it would give at least a solution that would work. As of now, there is no possible workaround! We must accept either album fragmentation (make it not be a compilation) or inability to browse by the artists on that album (if it is called a compilation).