Local Library Search - Some Positive Suggestions
I have a Synology NAS with my Music Library (13.8K tracks, all FLAC, very obsessively tagged and Album Arted over about 15 happy years with Sonos) on it. The Library contains 167 Compilation albums with some 3.6K tracks.
Compilation albums have the Album Artist listed as Various Artists and each track has its own Artist. Regular albums have the headline artist in both Album Artist and Contributing Artist fields, so the headline artists appear in both the Album Artist and Contributing Artist lists in the Sonos app, but artists who are only on Compilations only appear in the CA list.
It has always frustrated me that there has never been a Search facility for the CAs despite the fact that when the Library is indexed the CA list is always populated, which is indicated by the fact that, when you toggle the “View Contributing Artists” switch in the Music Library menu the CA list appears immediately without having to re-index.
I have, since the May 7 ambush, multiple versions of the Controller running as follows:-
Windows 10 PC and Android Controllers 1-3, V16.1, build 78151030
Android Controller 4, V80.01.07-release+20240517 etc
And the Web App
For the sake of completeness, although I don’t think it is relevant to this discussion, all 6 of my speakers are on V78.1-52020.
With these three different systems running, some interesting differences have emerged which indicate that changes are being made in the code and that perhaps there is an opportunity while the big re-work is going on to influence the way the search process works. Listing the variations may take a while, so bear with me please… I will use ABBA as an example because they appear at the top of the Artists list as I have two albums where they are the Album Artist and also some way down on the CA list as one of their tracks is on a compilation album and is tagged with them as the CA.
In V16.1 tapping on ABBA in the Artists list brings up the two Albums where they are the Album Artist, so the record is linked only to the Album Artist field in the Songs table.
In the CA list, tapping on them brings up their two albums plus the compilation album, so the Artists record in this list links to both the Album Artist and CA fields in the Songs table.
In V80.x there is only one Artists list and no CA list. It contains only those whose names appear in the Album Artist field of the Albums list. Tapping on ABBA brings up only their two albums, so here the Artists field is only linking to the Album Artist field in the Songs table.
In the Web App there is only an Artists list. However, that list contains both Album Artists and CAs and tapping on an Artist brings up all the albums on which they appear in either the Album or the Contributing Artist fields. This is the same linkage as in the CA list in V16.1 and is a good outcome as it shows every Song attributed to the Artist although it would be nice to be able to search on it.
The structure in V80.x is a backward step as the Artists list excludes those who only appear as CAs in Compilations; the only way to find them is to scroll through the Songs listing which does show the Artist for each track, but good luck with that when there are many thousands of tracks to scroll through.
At the moment the Search facility does not apply to the Music Library in either V80.x or the Web App, which appear to be the applications with a future. My suggestions to the programmers who must be working towards the promised re-introduction of library search in July are:-
1 Have an Artists listing, as in both 16.1 and the Web App, which includes ALL artists. Then have the option of selecting whether to show CAs as in 16.1 but don’t just disappear the CAs as in 80.x so you can’t find them anywhere except by doom-scrolling through the Songs list.
2 And this is the big one - when you re-code the Search function using the comprehensive list in 1 above, set it to match either the Contributing Artist field or the Album Artist field so you return all the Songs tagged to that Artist, compilation or not.
You have all the basics for an effective Search function in the existing code, built up over the last 20-odd years of developing the Sonos controller app, but they have never quite jelled as they could have in this aspect. When you bring back Search for local Libraries as has been promised, making these relatively minor adjustments would go a long way towards making us local library dinosaurs happy by improving our music listening experience.
Oh, and just give us our Album Art back while you’re at it!
Any thoughts on this topic from you other dinosaurs?