Music Library Stored on WD MyCloud Home - Songs Not Properly Categorized

  • 28 December 2020
  • 9 replies
  • 626 views

Just picked up a WD MYclloud Home NAS. I loaded my music on the WD My cloud. When I went to play the songs from the Sonos 1 controller, I noticed that there a lot of songs that were not properly categorized by Artist and Album. It lists the tracks as unknown artist and album.It seems like the metadata is missing.  My music files were moved from my iTunes folder where it is saved by Artist/Album/Song title. The folder/files on the NAS look exactly like they do in the iTunes folder.It looks like it is happening with all my iTunes files that are MPEG audio files. I am using the S1 controller. Any one experience this and have a solution? Thanks!


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9 replies

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Hi @DaKeyz,

Welcome to the Sonos community. Thanks for reaching out to us about your concern and letting us know what you have done so far. Let me share some information with you.

To use a NAS drive with Sonos, the NAS must support the SMB(v1)/CIFS file-sharing protocol. The SMB protocol is a network file sharing protocol that allows applications on a computer to read and write to files and to request services from server programs in a computer network.

To further help you out with this, I'd like to ask some questions from you.

  1. Any update or changes you made recently with your network?
  2. Were you able to access the NAS drive from your computer?
  3. Have you tried removing and re-adding your music library?
  4. Have you tried recreating the SMB(v1)/CIFS file sharing permissions on the folder on your computer?
  5. Have you configured your firewall to work with Sonos? 
  6. Do you have an antivirus installed? You may need to check the firewall configuration settings to ensure that it's not blocking Sonos.

Sonos only supports XML, M3U, WPL, and PLS playlist files created with software like Apple iTunes Music. Make sure that the Playlist file name does not begin or end with "_" (underscore).

Let us know how you get on with the advice above and run a diagnostic report. Kindly include the confirmation number in your response for us to check. If you have any questions about this. We and the community are always here to help.

If some songs are OK, then sounds more likely to be a problem with the metadata. Have you had a look at the problem tracks with something like mp3tag?

I am having the same problem.  Did you find a solution?  

I went into the MyCloud Home library to re-tag by hand but the metadata is showing as correct there.

 

My Cloud Home supports the SMB(v1) protocol. 

On every query I have seen on this sort of issue, the answer has been that Sonos has correctly indexed what is there, and it is the metadata that is the problem.

Could you give a couple of examples of where you believe the metadata is OK and Sonos has indexed it incorrectly please?

Not sure to whom you are directing the question.

 

But examples include Sonos repeating the Genre info so "Alternative" becomes "Alternative Alternative";  or removing the artist's name so "Buddha of Suburbia" becomes unknown artist rather than david bowie:

I agree that missing/wrong metadata must be causing this. Sonos does not add, change or remove any information, but only reads what the metadata provide. In the tagging program you use, try comparing the metadata of a song displayed correctly to a song displayed incorrectly.

Not sure to whom you are directing the question.

 

But examples include Sonos repeating the Genre info so "Alternative" becomes "Alternative Alternative";  or removing the artist's name so "Buddha of Suburbia" becomes unknown artist rather than david bowie:

In the first example, it is possible that there are multiple genre tags that your viewer isn’t showing.  Multiple genre tags are quite common, as single definitive classification is often impossible.  So a (mistakenly) repeated tag in the metadata is a more likely explanation than Sonos inventing it.

In your second example, are both the Artist and the AlbumArtist tags set to David Bowie?  My suspicion is that you are looking at one and Sonos is using the other, and that one is missing or wrong in the tags.  There can also be oddities around whether the tag is ‘AlbumArtist’ or ‘Album Artist’ - tagging programs can be a law unto themselves.  In the tags is the album categorised (rightly or wrongly) as a compilation album?

There is necessarily a degree of guesswork in my suggestions.  But on the evidence provided so far, I think the jury is still out, at least.

I suspect that is correct at least in part.

I was already putting it to the test by scrubbing the metadata for 1,000 songs (a subset of a bigger library) using MusicTag and then doing a song by song quality control.  so I will have complete confidence in the underlying data.

Then I will erase what is on my MyCloud Home and the copy the scrubbed songs to it.

That should confirm or eliminate the metadata as the culprit.

I suspect that is correct at least in part.

I was already putting it to the test by scrubbing the metadata for 1,000 songs (a subset of a bigger library) using MusicTag and then doing a song by song quality control.  so I will have complete confidence in the underlying data.

Then I will erase what is on my MyCloud Home and the copy the scrubbed songs to it.

That should confirm or eliminate the metadata as the culprit.

Fair enough.  I certainly would not claim with any confidence that my suggestions are definitely correct.  I shall be interested to see what emerges.