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RogerWF
Enthusiast II
October 20, 2025

Sonos Controller - Duplicate Album Titles

  • October 20, 2025
  • 251 replies
  • 3207 views

Just an update to a previously reported issue Duplicate album names queued together | Sonos Community.  I have this album on my music library (apologies for some of the titles, but that’s the way it is):

 

File list for album tracks

The album is listed three times in the controller:

 

Selecting any one of the duplicate titles shows only one track:

 

These results are the same on the Windows, Android, and web controllers.  I reindexed before collecting this info. I should add that queueing any one of the duplicate titles only adds one track to the queue.

 

I emailed this info to Sonos support.

Moderator Note: Removed and recorded case number

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    251 replies

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    CronoCX
    CronoCX
    Enthusiast II
    March 11, 2026

    And I don’t see how to rename a root folder on my Synology server.  But given that your premise for the request was not correct, it’s probably not important.”

    Any helpful comments would be appreciated.  Thank you.

    I don’t for one minute think that messing around with root folders is going to make any difference. After all we both have the same problem, but I’m using Unraid, you’re using Synology, two different types of servers. I actually tried using an old Buffalo link station NAS, and made a copy of the library onto it, I got the same issue but with differing albums. When I’ve got a bit more time I might set up a library on my new Terramaster NAS, currently only used for backups from my Desktop PC. Also, why was it all good until about 4 to 5 months ago. I certainly didn’t change anything at my end and from what you’re saying neither did you.

    What worries me is that Sonos don’t actually seem to understand the problem despite you clearly explaining it to them.

    This, I’m about 99% sure it’s not gonna do anything.

    --Brian

    CronoCX
    CronoCX
    Enthusiast II
    March 11, 2026

    Long post - sorry.

    First, because SONOS cleared up a problem indexing one of my albums by removing the comments from the tags on those tracks, I used mp3tag to remove ALL track comments from my library.

    Second, mp3tag had also identified some kind of ‘error’ in the tags on seven of my albums (all downloaded from external sources), so I moved those albums into a holding folder outside my library, leaving me with a library with no tag comments and no tag errors.

    Reindexed - still have 12 duplicate albums in the Albums list.

    So I temporarily reduced my music library to just my Vinyl folder and reindexed (the library normally consists of four different music folders).  Now just two duplicate albums.

    Then I moved about half of the Vinyl folder into another folder and re-indexed just that one half.  No duplicates.

    Then I renamed the two halves so that the second half would be indexed.  Two duplicates.

    Finally I took the half with the duplicates and split that in half.  Reindexed the first half. No duplicates.  Reindexed the second half. No duplicates.

    So the two halves combined yielded two duplicates, but each half individually yielded none.

    mp3tag showed me that I have 10 different tag formats in my complete library, so I thought maybe the problem might have been with a particular tag format not being parsed properly. But, in my vinyl folder, there is only one format (thanks to the software I used to copy the vinyl albums), so apparently it wasn’t that.

    Seems to be volume/memory related - especially since the long comments in the tags on just that one album resulted in duplicates. I was hoping to whittle things down to a small enough clean but still problematic set that I could pass on to SONOS, but each half of Vinyl is 20GB with about 3,500 titles.

    I may try a similar approach with my other folders and see if I can get something smaller...but not hopeful.

    Can confirm that it’s not a “Comments” tag issue, latest software:

    Sonos Controller View
    iTunes Metadata View for ENTIRE Album

    --Brian

     

    RogerWFAuthor
    Enthusiast II
    March 11, 2026

    Long post - sorry.

    First, because SONOS cleared up a problem indexing one of my albums by removing the comments from the tags on those tracks, I used mp3tag to remove ALL track comments from my library.

    Second, mp3tag had also identified some kind of ‘error’ in the tags on seven of my albums (all downloaded from external sources), so I moved those albums into a holding folder outside my library, leaving me with a library with no tag comments and no tag errors.

    Reindexed - still have 12 duplicate albums in the Albums list.

    So I temporarily reduced my music library to just my Vinyl folder and reindexed (the library normally consists of four different music folders).  Now just two duplicate albums.

    Then I moved about half of the Vinyl folder into another folder and re-indexed just that one half.  No duplicates.

    Then I renamed the two halves so that the second half would be indexed.  Two duplicates.

    Finally I took the half with the duplicates and split that in half.  Reindexed the first half. No duplicates.  Reindexed the second half. No duplicates.

    So the two halves combined yielded two duplicates, but each half individually yielded none.

    mp3tag showed me that I have 10 different tag formats in my complete library, so I thought maybe the problem might have been with a particular tag format not being parsed properly. But, in my vinyl folder, there is only one format (thanks to the software I used to copy the vinyl albums), so apparently it wasn’t that.

    Seems to be volume/memory related - especially since the long comments in the tags on just that one album resulted in duplicates. I was hoping to whittle things down to a small enough clean but still problematic set that I could pass on to SONOS, but each half of Vinyl is 20GB with about 3,500 titles.

    I may try a similar approach with my other folders and see if I can get something smaller...but not hopeful.

    Can confirm that it’s not a “Comments” tag issue, latest software:

    Sonos Controller View
    iTunes Metadata View for ENTIRE Album

    --Brian

     

    Except that they apparently contribute to the overall memory usage issue…???

    craigski
    Local Superstar
    March 11, 2026

    Can confirm that it’s not a “Comments” tag issue, latest software:

    iTunes Metadata View for ENTIRE Album

    --Brian

     

    Its a long time since I tagged my collection, but if its a compilation/various artists, should the ‘Album Artist’ be ‘Various Artists’, the ‘Artist’ be the actual artist name, and compilations be ticked in the above example, the tags look wrong to me.

      MoPac
      MoPac
      Headliner III
      March 11, 2026

       I guess  might have some duplicates, but I have not found one yet.  Looking through my entire library is something that would take too much time.

       One thing I do have is consistent tagging.  All my tags are exactly the same.  All are done with DbPoweramp.  Any extra tag information that is part of download purchases is removed.  Only the tag categories that can be accessed from within control point apps are the ones I fill.

       For compilations my tagging has always been Artist=actual performer(s) and Album Artist=Various.

       When I did have duplicate compilation albums a while back Sonos fixed that issue.  
       
       I’m not a big fan of indexing systems like BlueSound & Sonos, but Sonos does Atmos so here I am.

        CronoCX
        CronoCX
        Enthusiast II
        March 11, 2026

        Can confirm that it’s not a “Comments” tag issue, latest software:

        iTunes Metadata View for ENTIRE Album

        --Brian

         

        Its a long time since I tagged my collection, but if its a compilation/various artists, should the ‘Album Artist’ be ‘Various Artists’, the ‘Artist’ be the actual artist name, and compilations be ticked in the above example, the tags look wrong to me.

        No. The Album Artist tag super seeds the Artist tag. So it looks like this: Artists are tagged where appropriate. It’s worked this way for decades. Either way, the “Compilation” tag is needed to work as such. I’m not using that. Apple Music, Plex, these Apps show things fine. This is a Sonos issue.

        --Brian

          craigski
          Local Superstar
          March 11, 2026

          If I was tagging this album, I would follow best practice for tagging compilation/soundtrack albums, eg:

          https://forum.dbpoweramp.com/forum/dbpoweramp/cd-ripper/44693-managing-soundtracks-and-compilations-of-various-artists

            MoPac
            MoPac
            Headliner III
            March 11, 2026

             For soundtrack albums my Genre is “Soundtrack”.  If the soundtrack is composed by let’s say John Williams he becomes both the Artist & Album Artist.  The movie title is obviously the Album tag.

             If the soundtrack album is made up of various pop or rock tracks I treat it like a compilation album.  The Genre is still “Soundtrack”.  I usually don’t bother with those types of soundtracks.

              kdowling
              kdowling
              March 11, 2026

              I have a new one, which also seems to point to memory corruption, or possibly a communication with NAS problem. (Has that been ruled out?)

              I just re-scanned the library and ended up with (in addition to triple albums) an artist listed 27 times in a row. Each having the same 39 (out of 47) albums by that artist. When that happened, I removed the library altogether. Scanned, so there was nothing. Then added the library back and re-scanned. The result was the same triple albums and also the same artist repeated 27 times. Scanning twice yielded the same results.

              I added another new album, re-scanned and now it’s back to just the triple album problem.

                CronoCX
                CronoCX
                Enthusiast II
                March 11, 2026

                If I was tagging this album, I would follow best practice for tagging compilation/soundtrack albums, eg:

                https://forum.dbpoweramp.com/forum/dbpoweramp/cd-ripper/44693-managing-soundtracks-and-compilations-of-various-artists

                That’s nice and might work for some people. But this is the way I have found works best for me. Every other App is fine with is, Sonos is not special. Also worth noting that I’ve have a few “Various Artists” albums too that also have had this duplicate issue. Currently, it seems I have only one at this time:

                 

                The “Complication” toggle is a trap and in my experience, causes more problems than its worth. Album Artist fixes that.

                --Brian

                 

                 

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