Album/Artist listing order

Burnboy1,

The SONOS library index is built from "Tags" (also called "meta data") embedded in each track, the file and folder names are ignored, except in the library Folders view. You can display the SONOS library by Artist or Track Title -- if the Tags are correct.

I'm not an iTunes user and I don't know why iTunes did not embed the Tags. In any case there are 3rd party "Tag Editors" that can fix this. Most of these Tag Editors have a batch processing mode. While this this batch process will likely require your computer to struggle for several hours, it is a "hands off", straight forward process. After running the batch process, you will still need to pick through your library and manually fix any spelling inconsistencies.

Burnboy1 wrote:

Is there a way in the Sonos controller to change the order of listing to artist name first, instead of album name first? With over 400 hundred albums ripped to ITunes, it's easier to have the artist name in alphabetical order. The listing is correct in ITunes and Apple Music, but it's reversed in my library in the Sonos controller. Thanks. Loving the Apple Music and Sonos.

Where are you looking, under albums? Look at the artist section of the music library and it'll be sorted by artist, obviously. I don't really understand the nature of the complaint.

I have the same question, so please allow me to explain. I always browse the library by Album, because it's beautiful; you see your CDs' covers as if you were checking the real CDs over a shelf. That only happens when you are browsing by Album. The problem is, you can't decide how you want the albums ordered, they are ordered by Album Name. So when I'm browsing, I don't see all Genesis albums together, or all Soda Stereo's albums together.
I resolved the issue by cheating on the tags. On the Album Name tag I always add the artist name at the beginning, like "Genesis. Selling England By The Pound".
So the question is: is there a better solution than the one I implemented?

Fabian1122 wrote:

I have the same question, so please allow me to explain. I always browse the library by Album, because it's beautiful; you see your CDs' covers as if you were checking the real CDs over a shelf. That only happens when you are browsing by Album. The problem is, you can't decide how you want the albums ordered, they are ordered by Album Name. So when I'm browsing, I don't see all Genesis albums together, or all Soda Stereo's albums together.
I resolved the issue by cheating on the tags. On the Album Name tag I always add the artist name at the beginning, like "Genesis. Selling England By The Pound".
So the question is: is there a better solution than the one I implemented?

Intrigued and slightly confused by the use case. So if you know you want to listen to Genesis, go browse Artist->Genesis, if you know which album you want, go browse by album and get a big alphabetical list of all albums by all artists. Both of these screens display as lists (desktop) or artwork tiles (mobile), sorted alphabetically. Now, you could argue that release date is a better sort index when listing an artist's albums (and it is), but that would require better tagging support in Sonos.

Hacking your tags just to get a custom sort sounds like a lot of work for a use-case you might not even want or need.

First of all, thank you for your time trying to address or at least understand the issue, I truly appreciate.
Yes, you are right, hacking the tags took me a lot of work.
Re. the use case, well, maybe I'm a rare bird but I typically do not know up front what do I want to hear. What I typically do is browse the albums and click on the one that catches my attention.
By the way, you called it a "custom order", it's definitely not a weird order, that's how any CDs store sorts them on their shelves.

Question: any chance these conversations are monitored by the company for future enhancements?

Buzz: iTunes does embed the tags

In albums view iTunes orders the albums by album artist then by album name. Sonos lists albums in album name order only.

Fabian1122 wrote:

First of all, thank you for your time trying to address or at least understand the issue, I truly appreciate.
Yes, you are right, hacking the tags took me a lot of work.
Re. the use case, well, maybe I'm a rare bird but I typically do not know up front what do I want to hear. What I typically do is browse the albums and click on the one that catches my attention.
By the way, you called it a "custom order", it's definitely not a weird order, that's how any CDs store sorts them on their shelves.

Hey, we all have our own schemes for organising our music. I do prefer to sort my CDs (not that I really need to these days) by artist->release date, I can't remember how my local record stores do it, and I typically have a good idea of the specific album or band I want to stick on next. But thinking about it, your process makes sense from a record store or "alphabetised record collection" point of view...

Fabian,

If I may quote Ryan S from a post in another thread in this same topic heading from 38 minutes ago:

We read every thread that's posted and share ideas with the development teams internally. In fact, many of the developers spend a little time here on the boards reading and getting the feel for what you all are asking for.

You can read his full post here:

https://en.community.sonos.com/controllers-software-228995/the-hot-mess-of-this-community-forum-for-feature-feedback-request-voting-6798703/index1.html#post16193569