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Jun 7, 2026 3:16 PM UTC

Feature Request: Search to correctly return compilation albums in Artist results

The search results returned within the Android app should behave as they do in the desktop app and return ‘Album Artist’ within the Artists results for compilations...

Any compilation albums have the ‘Album Artist’ value effectivly excluded from Artist search results in the App. This is new behaviour for the app since the ‘May 2024’ release. Prior to this behaviour was correct. It remains correct in the Desktop app.

Details:

  •  On searching for ‘Various’/’Various Artists’ the Windows desktop application it, correctly, does what it always has done and returns ‘Varions Artists’ in the ‘Artists’ search results:

 

  • However, when the same search is performed from the Android app there are no results under ‘Artists’:

  • All other results (Albums/Songs/Composers ect.) are consistent & correct across both Android and Winsows apps.
  • Albums are correctly tagged:

Capitalisation, varying index grouping between album artist/compilation/both options or removing the ‘Compilation’ tag has no impact on the behaviour - except removing the ‘Compilation’ tag results in duplicate albums for each individual artist - as would be expected. 

However:

  • Tagging a non-compilation album with ‘Album Artist’ only:

    has the correct result:

     

So it would seem there is an issue processing albums with the ‘Compilation’ tag set for searches initiated from the Android app… I would guess this is also true of iThing apps too? 

Please can this be corrected, maybe alongside the other outstanding issue:

  •  

Thankyou for your time...

26 replies

kdowling
Jun 7, 2026 9:29 PM UTC

That is strange. It does this in the S2 iOS apps too. S1 apps, desktop and all third party apps that I’ve tried all get this correct. Just the S2 mobile apps that don’t.

Feature request or bug? It looks like a bug to me. So, if both Artist and Album Artist are filled in, ignore the Album Artist and only return Artist in search results. But if only one is populated, either one, then use that in search results. But only in the S2 mobile apps. I say bug.

 

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Jun 8, 2026 9:03 AM UTC

​@kdowling  Well I think bug too but I was being polite! 

Yes, s1 and 3rd party apps work correctly for me too and 'good' to confirm it is in iOS as well...

Hopefully ​@Sotiris C. , ​@Jamie A or ​@Corry P will be able to pick this up and progress appropriately🤞

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controlav
Lead Maestro
Jun 8, 2026 12:59 PM UTC

Desktop and third party apps (eg mine) use the UPnP Search API for this, and produce results the OP desires. For some inexplicable reason the S2 mobile apps use something else entirely, which evidently doesn’t work.

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Author of the leading independent Sonos apps for Android, MacOS, iOS, Windows and Xbox.
Jun 19, 2026 10:09 AM UTC

I have contacted second line support regarding this issue and thier reply:

We’ve confirmed that this behavior is expected. As a first step, please open the Sonos Desktop Controller and go to Manage > Music Library Settings > Advanced, then set Group Albums using to Album Artists.

If the issue continues after that, the affected tracks will need to have their Album Artist metadata updated. Using a value such as Various Artists usually works well for compilation or mixed-album content.

Which I believe is exactly what I have done. I have responded by referencing this thread to provide further detail missed in out discussion…

Just some added detail, album grouping is (and always has been) as suggested:

 

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MoPac
Headliner III
Jun 19, 2026 12:29 PM UTC

Mine seems to work correctly here ( IOS up to date ).

 

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Jun 19, 2026 5:12 PM UTC

​@MoPac Lucky, lucky... Assuming you are doing nothing different to me except being on IOS rather than Android?

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kdowling
Jun 19, 2026 5:27 PM UTC

I’m not sure what the difference might be, but searching Music Library for Various Artists here on S2 iOS does not give me any results.

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MoPac
Headliner III
Jun 19, 2026 8:32 PM UTC

​@MoPac Lucky, lucky... Assuming you are doing nothing different to me except being on IOS rather than Android?

Not sure if the search is different on Android.  Wish I had a Droid device I could test.  I’ll have to talk to one of my Droid friends to let me try their phone.  No one in my neck of the woods even knows what Sonos is.

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Jun 25, 2026 7:27 PM UTC

Well, the latest app release and I thought it had resolved this issue for 'various'/'various artists':

But it is NOT resolved as the above result only shows ONE (newly indexed) album:

Out of many:

ect. ect.

It is also not working for identically tagged collections using other album artist text, for example:

* Various Artists - Soundtrack

* Ministry of Sound

* Fabric (London)

This is after a library re-index 🤷🏼‍♂️

 

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Jun 27, 2026 7:54 PM UTC

A correction to the above post, the single album that I thought was indexed correctly (The Rocky Horror Show) was incorrectly tagged with 'Artist' set to 'Various Artists' amd the compilation tag was absent... Not totally my fault I hasten to add 🙄

Once corrected it disappeared so it would seem that Album Artist is ignored for compilations (or just ignored full stop?) for the artist search result section.

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