Sonos Library sorting albums by Artists instead of track number

buzz - yep, I have my files name also with first few characters as the number. So, I just now tried your suggestion (changed to sort by file name) and it didn’t work. (I later made other changes just to make sure my changes were being applied, and not user error.) Oh, but thank you. I noticed one thing that the Sonos folks should be aware of - there is no option to group Albums by Album. I mean, what the heck? isn’t that the very definition of Album - the name of the album to which a group of tracks belong? @Sonos - anyone reading this? In any event, I have it set to group by Album Artist and have tried sorting folders all three options, none make it work the way it should. 

Stanley_4 - great advice, thanks! I look forward to starting this project. 

In case anyone spots a clue, here’s an example screenshot of my tags and filenames, etc. 

… and how it shows up on Sonos. You can see that Sonos recognizes Drive South as track number one but is sorting first by Artist. 

Here is a better example of how it is sorting first by Artist, then second by Track: 

Using flac, ripped using dbpoweramp, Sonos S2, Build 82.01.9-release+20260303.72b6033 on Android. On Windows, running Sonos Controller for PC, version 17.2.2, Build 90068190. (Same ordering issue exists with Sonos for PC.) Music library stored on a NAS (all in one single shared folder). 

​@mtnscall 

 your tags look perfect.  In my case the Music Library settings have never been changed.  All my albums appear to sort by track number.  Your tag example was a compilation and is exactly how I would tag a compilation.  The only difference may be how I tag regular one artist albums.  For those the Artist & Album Artist are exactly the same.  I have no clue why your samples are sorting the way they are.  I’ve never changed the settings shown below.

Thanks again, ​@MoPac . 

I’m pretty sure the “Sort Folders By” setting only applies to Music Library > Folders. I changed mine from Song Number to Song Name and after the library re-scanned (54 minutes) that was the only place I saw a change. Everywhere else was still by track number.

All my Various Artists albums, Album Artist=Various Artists, Artist=Performer, list in track number order. 

I noticed you have a Compilation tag set. I don’t have any Compilation tags. My understanding was that originally Sonos used that to indicate compilation albums in itunes libraries. I guess now called Apple Music libraries. 

Right. I checked and the Classical Christmas example does not have the Compilation tag set. Just to make sure, I set the Compilation flag on that KFOG album to 0 and rescanned. No change. Thanks for the suggestion, however. 

It’s good to know that Sonos is sorting properly for other folks. I’m tempted to do a complete factory reset of my entire system, but with 8 devices (and two of them physically hard to reach), I was hoping for an easy button. 🙄

 I don’t use the Compilation tag.  In fact my tags look just like the sample shown by ​@mtnscall.  The only difference would be the removal of the two AccurateRip… lines and the removal of everything below Album Artist.  Don’t want to overload the index with all that tag data.

 Factory reset should only be used when you are going to sell the speaker or if you bought someone else’s speaker.