Contributor I

fragmented compilation albums

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
February 12, 2025
38 replies
1232 views

Is there a fix for fragmented albums. I am re ripping all my cds and compilation albums are showing an album for each artist and I cannot select the whole album

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Ken_Griffiths

? Sorry, I don’t understand. Are you saying there is a more recent update that does resolve the compilation album problem? So that compilation albums can be played? Right now, if I try to play a compilation album, in the Sonos app, I still just get three dots underneath the title, and a notice that it is a compilation and can’t be played. So the title is working correctly a lot of the time and does group the tracks together —but your player STILL WON’T ALLOW THE TRACKS TO PLAY apparently due to some problem, unique to Sonos since the big update, with allowing the differing album artist and artist meta tags. (The recommended Sonos solution of editing the artist metatags so they all read the same is ridiculous for a music company to recommend, that we basically erase the artist data!!!). Sonos seems to be focused instead on the smaller but also annoying problem about how a single album can be listed as all separate tracks - also unsolved by you. HOW HARD CAN IT BE TO LOOK AT HOW YOUR PROGRAM WORKED CORRECTLY BEFORE THE PROBLEM UPDATE, AND THEN ADJUST THE NEW CODE TO WORK THE SAME WAY, You do have a model for how it should work. Or you should remove the claim about playing music libraries off your advertising, because it is basically false.

Note there is no change required for the ‘Artist’ tag - that field remains unique for each of the tracks on the compilation album. It’s the ‘Album Artist’ tag that needs to be the same and have the folder grouping set to ..by Album Artist. The compilations should then display/work fine in the App - so no need to change the Artist tag at all.

Hope that helps to clear the mist.

Corry P

Sonos Staff

Hi @LPG

It was done to stop the occurrence of the exact issue that the person who started this thread is having:

@Ken_Griffiths has it right - you are adding information, not replacing it.

Right now, if I try to play a compilation album, in the Sonos app, I still just get three dots underneath the title, and a notice that it is a compilation and can’t be played.

I’m sorry - I don’t understand this report. Could you please describe or show screenshots of what you are doing in order to see this message, please? Thanks.

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein

E

Editor

Enthusiast II

The bigger question for me is still why on earth did Sonos Engineering take the approach that 100% of people with compilation albums in their Library should have to fiddle about with tagging rather than just those people who suffered from the duplicate album issue?

All it would take is for those with duplicates to add details to one of the duplicates to distinguish the album (if they were even bothered by it and I get that some people would be).

Corry , I know you answered this point in another thread but I disagree with your comment that it would be “corrupting” the album / artist on one of the albums if you took this approach but I don’t see it that way at all. I regard it that you would simple be choosing to add appropriate distinguishing details to the Album / Artist name.

I wrote to the SONOS CEO about this and asked him to get the engineers to explain to him why they chose to make 100% of customers make tagging changes rather than just the much smaller percentage who were affected / care about duplicate album names and get back to me with his response.

If he ever gets around to responding I’ll post his response here. (or perhaps Corry you might encourage him to post his reply here :-). )

Corry P

Sonos Staff

Hi @Editor

The bigger question for me is still why on earth did Sonos Engineering take the approach that 100% of people with compilation albums in their Library should have to fiddle about with tagging rather than just those people who suffered from the duplicate album issue?

All it would take is for those with duplicates to add details to one of the duplicates to distinguish the album (if they were even bothered by it and I get that some people would be).

Compilation albums were showing as separate albums for each track on it. There may well have been another way to approach this - I have not delved into the mechanics of it personally.

Corry , I know you answered this point in another thread but I disagree with your comment that it would be “corrupting” the album / artist on one of the albums if you took this approach but I don’t see it that way at all. I regard it that you would simple be choosing to add appropriate distinguishing details to the Album / Artist name.

I am not sure what you mean here, nor what I said - could you please provide a link?

I wrote to the SONOS CEO about this and asked him to get the engineers to explain to him why they chose to make 100% of customers make tagging changes rather than just the much smaller percentage who were affected / care about duplicate album names and get back to me with his response.

If he ever gets around to responding I’ll post his response here. (or perhaps Corry you might encourage him to post his reply here :-). )

If his reply is to you, I will never see it. You can post a reply here when you get it, though.

Edit: I misread what you said. I have never met or communicated with him.

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein

A

Alan_6

Prodigy II

Just updated the iPad app, and normal service seems to have been resumed. Local library browsing has changed to achieve parity with Sonos desktop, 3rd-party controllers, and 2023-era Sonos mobile. So I have workable local library alphabetical artist browsing (with “jump to letter” navigation), and respecting the “Artist” tag, allowing “artist1; artist 2” with grouping by “Album Artist”. So maybe, these bugs have finally been addressed, and we don’t need re-tagging, alternative controller apps or “album sequence” playlist workarounds. (Note: I have seen mention of Sonos finally discovering “feature toggles” and A/B testing around rollout of changes so your experience of the “latest” changes may be different).

E

Editor

Enthusiast II

I haven’t seen any communications that Sonos have back tracked on you needing to edit tags to avoid compilation albums becoming fragmented ?

Can anyone related to Sonos answer? has there been a change or do we still need to edit tags to avoid fragmentation as per Corry’s earlier explanation ?

Corry P

Sonos Staff

Hi @Editor

I haven’t seen any communications that Sonos have back tracked on you needing to edit tags to avoid compilation albums becoming fragmented ?

This is a statement with a question mark at the end, not an actual question, but my assumption is that you are asking if we have purposefully and needlessly undone our fix for a highly-reported-by-customers issue without saying a word about it.

No.

My assumption is that the current behaviour will remain.

has there been a change or do we still need to edit tags to avoid fragmentation as per Corry’s earlier explanation ?

No, yes.

I hope this helps.

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein

A

Alan_6

Prodigy II

Hi @Editor

I haven’t seen any communications that Sonos have back tracked on you needing to edit tags to avoid compilation albums becoming fragmented ?

This is a statement with a question mark at the end, not an actual question, but my assumption is that you are asking if we have purposefully and needlessly undone our fix for a highly-reported-by-customers issue without saying a word about it.

No.

My assumption is that the current behaviour will remain.

has there been a change or do we still need to edit tags to avoid fragmentation as per Corry’s earlier explanation ?

No, yes.

I hope this helps.

Helps how? We know that Sonos mobile was for a while not respecting 20 years of standard tagging practice, but now it all seems to work, and on all Sonos controllers.

But I’m still not much clearer as to how Sonos expects us to tag our music to work with all their controller apps, and whether or not that’s compatible with every other music player that ever existed.

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