Content missing from Music Library

Hi ​@Maxim M 

Welcome to the Sonos Community!

Sorry to hear of this issue you are having with content being missing from your Music Library in the Sonos app.

There are basically two reasons for why this could happen - either the content is missing metadata (ID3 tags describing Artist, Album, Title etc.), or the folder scan did not complete.

If it is the former, only you can fix it, really, but if you use iTunes, then it is unlikely that this is the actual issue.

If the issue is that the folder scan does not complete, however, there could be multiple reasons for it. In this case, it really is best to ask the speakers, and to do that, it’s best to call in again. I did check your most recent diagnostics, however, and I see no errors occurring during the indexing process, which brings me back to the metadata tagging.

One thing you can do is browse folders within the Sonos app for the missing content - please go to Music Library » Folders and navigate to the folder(s) where the missing tracks should be and see if they are there - if they show up and can play from within Folders but not in any other view, then it is likely that the metadata is missing.

I hope this helps.

HI Corry. 

Thank you for your reply.

Unfortunately none of the solutions you propose work for me.

Regarding solution #1, the metadata is all there. All of my music was available just a few weeks ago, fully catalogued. A test also revealed that I can upload individual albums that I find missing in my Sonos library successfully.

Regarding solution #3, all of the music that has managed to upload to Sonos Library is available- I can click on any of the files there and listen to it. The issue is all of the files that do not get transferred and are not available to browse in Sonos Library.

Regarding solution #2, that is where I believe the issue to be- large music library files fail to transfer. I’ve been on the phone with tech support numerous times over these past few weeks, with each call lasting over an hour. Unfortunately, we have not made a lot of progress with this, and it has been frustrating at times. I was hoping the community would be able to propose some solutions that the tech support might be missing. 

Thanks again. 

Hi ​@Maxim M 

Understood.

Honestly, this is unlikely, With an issue like this, error messages are generally key, and so looking at the diagnostics is also key. For some reason, however, there do not appear to be any messages - which left me to assume it was metadata.

How long does the indexing take? There may be a time-out happening. It is possible that halving your music library into two folders and adding both to Sonos will help - if there is a time-out, scanning the second folder will reset the timer, so to speak.

Not that I understand why a time-out would take effect if new content is still being scanned in - perhaps that is where the problem lies (not that you’d be able to address it if it is). Please let me know how you get on with the above, and I will see if I can instigate an investigation of some kind if that does appear to be the issue - there have been reports along these lines before.

I hope this helps.

Thanks for your quick reply.

That sounds like it might be the issue- short indexing was successful.

The partial indexing that has been happening takes about 15-20 minutes and transfers about 4800 of my 28000+ files. That happens without any error messages. 

Tech support and I tried to transfer from a new test folder yesterday- a small transfer of 10 albums or so happened successfully. But when we copied my Apple Music folder to the new test folder and tried to transfer, I got an error message after about 20 minutes that said -

'//Mac-Studio/sonos test' is no longer available. The device where the music files are stored may not be powered on, or the path may have changed.

Go to Settings > System > Music Library > Music Library Setup to check the path.

I tried this two more times and got the same message after a while, though I haven't tried timing how long it takes. 

If you think you can help, I’d really appreciate it. My case number is **********

Moderator Note: Case number recorded and removed. Modified in accordance with the Community Code of Conduct.

Just to update my last post, I turned off the Energy Saver in settings just in case and tried to transfer the full music library folder from the sonos test folder on my computer. I got the same error message almost exactly 20 minutes after starting. 

I have a similar problem, some folders are just not showing from my. I have my library at \\ip\music and then folders a to z, contains artist and album in the correct folder. So \\ip\music\Cure\Disintegration\tracks

Folders e, f, l, m, o do not show.

i also have a large collection.

Any help appreciated.

Do you have music in the missing folders? I have no “N” artists here.

Also running on a Pi Raspberrian OS and Samba.

Hi ​@Maxim M 

I’m sure the time-out is 20 minutes, which correlates which what you see  but it seems this time-out might be happening even while new entries are being indexed, which does not make a lot of sense to me. I have reported this to see if we can get some traction on it, but this has been the behaviour for quite some time now - there may be some sensible reason that I have not thought of yet.

 Hi ​@Quadpus 

If you were being affected by this same issue, I don’t think you would have seemingly random letters missing - it would be every item after a point that would be missing. For example, you’d have A-K, then L-Z missing.

If ​@Stanley_4’s post does not answer this, it may be an issue with missing metadata on your tracks from artists starting with those letters.

I recommend you get in touch with our technical support team who have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your Sonos system and what it reports.

I hope this helps.

Hi ​@Maxim M 

Is your Mac connected to the network over WiFi? If so, please try connecting it via ethernet to see if it improves matters.

The engineer I am currently in discussion with has a Music Library that takes 35 minutes to (successfully) index, and is wondering if your issue is possibly due to Mac network standby mechanisms.

I hope this helps.