Sonos Controller - Duplicate Album Titles

Roger

No one is a “dumb” user. To use any system like this shouldn’t need a masters degree. The simple fact is that long term users of Sonos have lost trust due to Mr Spence and his “courageous” app. Thankfully he’s gone, but we have to live with the consequences. I feel sorry for the staff at Sonos that still have to put up with the after effects. The new app hasn’t been too bad recently but now we have this new problem. I have been seriously considering changing to the S1 version of the app. Like you, all I want to do is listen to music, not have to devise ways around a problem. I can’t help thinking that those of us that still have our own music libraries are seen as a bit of a nuisance by Sonos. Mr Spence hinted at that when he gave us S2 “courageous” and initially you couldn’t even access your local library.

The truth is that most new users of Sonos are probably not going to notice this new issue as many people now stream their music from an outside source. I have for a long time used Sonos to listen to the radio through BBC Sounds and very good it is at doing that.

The upshot of this is that I wonder how much effort Sonos are going to put into fixing this issue. They told me they would keep me updated but the silence has been deafening. Clearly something has been changed that is causing this problem. This is why I no longer recommend Sonos to anyone.

Like you, if the silence is broken by Sonos I will post it on here, in the mean time let’s get back to enjoying our music. 😀

Thanks for the reply. As I indicated, I did add a new album and re-index. Some old problems persisted. Other previous problems are no longer problems, but albums that were listed correctly before are now messed up. And all this is within the ‘Albums’ list, while the ‘problem’ albums look fine via the ‘Folders’ list.

This confirms that it is not a metadata issue - it’s a software issue. My confidence in Sonos is now very low.

My situation is that I have over time purchased five different pieces of Sonos hardware. I have also invested a lot of time to digitize over 500 LPs - over 6000 tracks - that I’d accumulated over the years. An old favorite is ‘Dr. Root’s Garden’ by Chrysalis. Let me know if you find that on Spotify or Amazon.

I also support buying CDs from small performers that pass through town. You might find ‘John Stone’ on streaming services, but not the one that’s now messed up in the albums list (below).

Anyway I would not invest another penny in Sonos. To me this is indicative of the overall quality of their products. I’m sure they don’t care about this ‘geezer’, but that’s where I stand - until I see some good faith improvement.

I did receive a follow-up email asking me to submit a diagnostic, which I did. Don’t know if it matters, but I did it while playing one of the tracks from the above John Stone album. Will post whatever I hear.

Received another email from Sonos support:

“What happens if you move your entire Music folder to a new folder and then move it back again?  Does that clear up the duplicates?  If moving files resolves the issue then we should be able to just move all the files instead of just some of them.  

“Let me know your thoughts on this proposed test.”

So here’s what I did:

1. Used the SONOS client to ‘remove’ the music library folders, and then re-indexed. ‘Music Library’ is no longer present as a service. Then re-added one of my music folders and re-indexed again. Duplicate albums were again present in the album list. (Note: this may also address the concern someone raised about the fact that I had multiple ‘music shares’ in my music library.
2. Used the system folder tools on my server to create a new folder called ‘music_new’. Copied one folder from ‘music’ to ‘music_new’ and verified its content. Renamed ‘music’ to ‘music_old’, then ‘music_new’ to ‘music’. Added the new ‘music’, with its one sub-folder, back to Sonos and re-indexed. Duplicate albums were again present. (This also addresses the multiple ‘music shares’ concern.)
3. So I removed this new folder from Sonos, renamed ‘music_old’ back to ‘music’, and re-added/re-indexed my existing folders, setting everything back to the way it was. Of course the duplicates showed up again.

Sent an email back to support informing them of these results. More if/when I hear anything else.

Any other thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.  Thanks!

I’ve done similar things. Not one of them fixed the problem.

I've now lost faith in Sonos, it’s simply one mess up after another.

You should be grateful that Sonos support are emailing you. They promised to keep in touch with me, but haven’t. Anyway, I’ll keep an eye on this forum.

Thanks for passing this on.

Had one more thought: could the issue be related to the fact that my music is in subfolders inside a ‘music’ folder?

So, using the Sonos controller app, I ‘removed’ my subfolders from the ‘music library’.

Then, on my server, I copied one of my subfolders up to the root level and renamed it ‘music_new’.

Finally, with the controller app, I added that folder to the music library and reindexed.

Same problem. So it seems that the ‘subfolders’ are not the issue.

Setting everything back to the way it was - again.

Will not do anything else until I hear back from Sonos support.

OK, I lied: I tried one more test.

Based on just eyeballing my current album list, there are *eleven* duplicate titles.

So I created a new folder on my server and copied just those eleven albums to the new folder.

Then, using the Sonos controller ‘Manage’ option, I removed my existing music folders from the Sonos music library. I normally have four folders, just because of the way I chose to organize my music: one for vinyl albums that I copied to digital, one for music I downloaded from some external source, one for music ripped from CDs, and one formerly used for iTunes.

As I removed each folder, a reindex was apparently initiated. Indeed, I looked at my ‘album list’ after removing a folder and could see that those albums were now gone from the list.

So, after removing all four folders, I added the new folder with just the eleven albums, which again triggered a reindex.

Then I looked at my album list and was surprised to see *all* the albums that lived in the *last* folder I removed still present in the album list - along with the ones from my new folder.

So I again removed the one folder from my library, and this time manually initiated a reindex via the controller app. This seemed to run for hours, as the controller constantly showed my music library being updated.

So I finally terminated the controller and restarted it. No sign of a reindex in progress. So I again added my new folder with just those eleven albums.

My album list still shows all those albums from the last folder that was removed, in addition to the ones from the new smaller folder. And if I attempt to play one of the albums in the list that had lived in the last folder removed, it plays successfully - even though my music library settings in the controller app just shows the one new folder in the folder list.

So I’m guessing that this is the cause of my duplicates: incomplete cleanup when the *last* folder is removed from the music library.

I have passed this info on to Sonos support.

Hi ​@RogerWF I’ve also had this issue and posted about it here. ​@Anthony_6 also chipped in on my thread as well as his own. I thought the problem had gone away but it hadn’t - I’d just not added a new album to my collection for a while. I did this week, and have dropped back into the world of having previously good albums splitting into three, each of which contains the same single track. Renaming (or sometimes creating a new) folder corrects the issue but then another album goes wrong instead. 

It’s not tagging, as a folder rename can fix it. I know how to tag compilation albums or ones with different artists on each track (in any case, the problem isn’t limited to just compilation albums). I’ve tried removing and recreating the entire library etc. 

This must be something Sonos has done to the system firmware and indexing process. The Album in the screenshot below (Windows controller as I’m writing this on a desktop PC, although I’m usually using the Android and iOS S2 controllers) was released in 2019 and the mp3 files have been unchanged on my NAS since 2015. So there is nothing new with the files.  

I’m going to try again to get Sonos to look at this, but if you hear anything back could you post it here? 

This was not a problem under the old software prior to May 2024. It’s a Sonos problem plain and simple. I don’t think it’s a User or NAS issue. Their software needs to display things correctly. I think the software is indexing correctly because you can access the Folders via the Sonos software, see the albums and play them from that without issue. If it WAS an indexing issue, I doubt this would be a work-a-round.

--Brian

Hi ​@RogerWF I’ve also had this issue and posted about it here. ​@Anthony_6 also chipped in on my thread as well as his own. I thought the problem had gone away but it hadn’t - I’d just not added a new album to my collection for a while. I did this week, and have dropped back into the world of having previously good albums splitting into three, each of which contains the same single track. Renaming (or sometimes creating a new) folder corrects the issue but then another album goes wrong instead. 

It’s not tagging, as a folder rename can fix it. I know how to tag compilation albums or ones with different artists on each track (in any case, the problem isn’t limited to just compilation albums). I’ve tried removing and recreating the entire library etc. 

 

This must be something Sonos has done to the system firmware and indexing process. The Album in the screenshot below (Windows controller as I’m writing this on a desktop PC, although I’m usually using the Android and iOS S2 controllers) was released in 2019 and the mp3 files have been unchanged on my NAS since 2015. So there is nothing new with the files.  

I’m going to try again to get Sonos to look at this, but if you hear anything back could you post it here? 

 

 

This.