Sonos Controller - Duplicate Album Titles

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.

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

 

 

Will do.

Just for fun, I tried moving the albums that were listed multiple times in the Albums list out of my music folder and then reindexing.  As you might expect, new albums that previously displayed correctly were now duplicated in the list.

My issues go beyond albums showing just one track, though.

I have one album that is displayed twice, with another album title between the two duplicate titles. And if I select either one of the duplicate titles, all tracks display correctly.

A similar situation occurs with my Crash albums - the movie soundtrack and the DMB album.

Again, selecting either of the duplicate titles shows all tracks correctly.

I have another album that shows up three times, with two different Album Artists.

If I select the ‘Joe Pug’ album, just one track is displayed. And if I select either of the ‘Various Artists’ entries, all tracks *except* the one listed with Joe Pug are shown. And yet, as noted elsewhere, the album displays correctly in the Folders list...EXCEPT for the fact that, when I select this album from the Folders list, the one ‘Joe Pug’ track is listed first, even though it is not really the first track on the album. Furthermore, if I then select the ‘Info & Options’ submenu item for that track from within the Folders list, and then ‘View All Songs on Album’, only the one track is shown - the one that shows up with the ‘Joe Pug’ album from the Albums list. And yet if I use Windows Explorer and select *all* tracks on that album and then right-click to view Properties, the Album Artist does not show Multiple Values.

But yes I also have several albums listed three times showing just one track - in the case shown below, it’s track 9 of 11.

Just from eyeballing, I have a total of eleven album titles listed multiple times in the Albums list.

Sorry for the long post, but thought I’d consolidate all the info I have provided to SONOS support: CASE *********.

Cheers…

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

Update: today I received an email from Sonos Support suggesting that I change my settings to group albums by iTunes Compilations.  I did this in the Windows controller, reindexed, and found that I now have many more ‘albums’- apparently one for each unique ‘album name’/’album artist’/’track artist’ set of values.  See partial lists of samplers 54 and 57 in this list.

But also note that samplers 55 and 56 only occur once.  I explored these albums using the mp3tag utility and found that they include a ‘COMPILATION’ tag.  Note the difference between 54 and 55 as shown below:

So I used the mp3tag utility to set the compilation tag for all tracks on sampler 54 and reindexed.  It is now consolidated as one album in my Sonos albums list.

Note that others (53 and 57) are also no longer duplicated, as I was experimenting on them with the mp3tag utility, learning how to use it, before collecting this doc.

I passed this info on to Sonos support, but I sure don’t want to have to update this tag for all ‘compilations’.  So I asked:  Why is it not sufficient for them to simply consider all tracks having the same ‘album name’/’album artist’ pair of values as a unique album?

I must be missing something…???

Does your tag editor have a mass/multiple update tags option?

​@RogerWF 

It still doesn’t change the fact that a simple folder rename fixes the problem on the album that is showing incorrectly, but then generates a completely unrelated album to show the error. I really can’t see why messing with tags can fix this.
I get the feeling that Sonos don’t have a clue how their own software works.

I certainly agree with your last paragraph. I’m also impressed that Sonos are talking to you, I’ve never heard a thing from them since I contacted them on the 14th of October despite them saying they would.

Hi Anthony,

I agree with your premise, but I personally have not dealt with the folder rename issue, so it's beyond the scope of what I'm looking at. And I guess I didn't include it in my post, but I said it in my email back to Sonos support:

"And there are still other issues that I will explore next."

Definitely not a closed book yet…

Thanks,

Roger France

Hi Stanley,

I am no expert with this utility, as I did a good bit of putzing around, trial and error stuff, untiI I finally got to this point. So I may be wrong, but it seems that it will work on all files (i.e. tracks) within the 'active' directory.

So in theory, I guess you could put many tracks (or subdirectories, maybe?) in a single folder, open it with the utility, and do one mass update.

I did ask Sonos 'what would be the harm in just turning on the compilation flag in *all* tracks?' Then it would be very easy to do a mass update without copying or moving things around (assuming it will operate on subfolders within the 'active' folder, of course).

But, bottom line? We customers should not have to do crap like that to cover for the shortcomings in their software.

The utility is mp3tag. Feel free to take a look.

Roger France

Time for an update.

I received this email on 1/9/26 from Sonos support:

“The solution is to use software to convert these 11 albums into files that have consistent metadata or to use the id3 tag software to bulk edit the compilation tag.  For more info see https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/local-music-library-grouping-and-sorting”

Aye-aye-aye. They have looked at my system and know that the tracks on these albums have ‘consistent metadata’.

I replied on 1/12 saying that I didn’t think it should be up to me to turn on a misleading ‘compilation’ tag to cover up for their software deficiencies. Especially when, if I did that for these 11 albums, the problem would probably just move to other albums next time I made a change to my library and re-indexed.

I then received this reply that same day from a different person in Sonos support:

“Let me kindly explain that the cause of the problem is that random files downloaded from some magazine had inconsistent metadata. Sonos sorts files based on metadata. The metadata needs to be consistent if albums are to be expected to show up correctly.”

Aye-aye-aye-aye-aye-aye-aye! :) I replied, again that same day, saying that the problem existed on albums that didn’t come from ‘some magazine’ (they know that I have a number of CD’s from Paste magazine, a few of which were among the ‘duplicates’). I included multiple screen shots detailing the problem with one ‘non-magazine’ CD.

No response, until 1/18, when I received this apparently automated email from Sonos support:

“We haven't heard from you in a while. We wanted to follow up and ensure that you received the help you needed. If you still need help, reply to this email within 24 hours and our team will continue assisting you.”

WTF? So I replied that same day, again explaining the problem, and saying that it was still an open issue.

No reply. So, the next day I followed up again, simply forwarding the email I had send the day before. Still crickets.

And that’s Sonos ‘support’.

Hi - 

I’ve been having some ‘fun’ since getting an Era 300… I had disabled the automatic re-indexing a long time ago after the mess the compilation ‘bug’ made of it. The Era not being able to cope with a name instead of IP address in the file path forced me to re-index. I don’t just have duplicate album names but also lots of missing tracks. On one album I have two entries, but both with only one out of 10 songs in it… the rest just missing. Not a compilation, nothing special, no multi-disc.. 

Another fine mess, now where did I put that copy of the Cuckoo? 

None of us should feel fearful of having to run an index on our music library. After all you have to if you’ve added a new album or made a change. The other day I added a new album and afterwards I found no albums showing duplication, great! Then I added another album & I now have 5 albums showing as duplicates with one track in each! I know I can still play them by using the folder option, but should I have to do that?

Just been looking through the album list on the Mac controller, trust it slightly more than the iOS app, and I have a mix of issues. Some duplicate albums where they have the same single track, others where the album title is the same and you get a series of duplicates, some with all tracks duplicated and others where even though the indexing is set to group by album artist, and it’s consistent on all tracks, it’s split by artist… no consistency and no obvious connection in things like special characters in titles, well, not that I can see anyway.