All songs in an album listed as separate albums

The new app has been slow to appear but Sonos support thinks it should have been everywhere yesterday.

80.10.06 (Android)

Release date: 15/10/2024

 It’s firmware causing this compilation issue.  The firmware fix is 16.4.2.

I still have the problem.  Each song in a compilation shows up as a separate album on Sonos, but not in Apple Music on my Mac.

Port:

Sonos OS: S2

Version: 16.4.2 (build 81158074)

Hardware Version: 1.29.1.9-1.2

Album has one album artist, mixed composer, mixed artist.

 Get the tagging program MP3 Tag and check to see that the Album Artist tag is the same for all tracks.  Should be something like Various Artists for compilation albums.    There is a setting in iTunes/Apple Music to have it look at the Album Artist tag, but I don’t use either Apple program so I don’t know about that setting.  Others here should be able to impart that information.

This continues to be an issue. It’s so ridiculous this has to be raised in a forum.

I absolutely cannot recommend anyone touching SONOS. What an absolute crap show this is turning out to be.

If your testing doesn’t cover this type of scenario, then shame on you.

Horrendous!

MoPac -

Thank you.  I’m having much more success using the program MP3 Tag.

I’m still puzzled, I thought I had made the changes using Mac’s Music program, but it didn’t match what MP3 Tag listed.  I didn’t try to verify if it was me or the Apple software, but changing to MP3 Tag did the trick.  What a pain.  ‘Tis often a challenge when software comes from 2 different vendors.  I’m not sure who is to blame this time, but things were working well with Sonos until the dreaded update that messed up everything so I suspect Sonos.

Many thanks!  I can search by album again!

I can report this issue is still NOT fixed. See below screenshot from the Max desktop app.

This is an album called “Tenor Arias”. It’s tagged as a compilation. Track artist is registered as the composer. What this broken software is doing is showing each different Track Artist as a separate album. I added this album some months ago and still haven’t listened too it because I simply couldn’t find a way of seeing the entire album without navigating via the folder location and given I have several thousand that ain’t straightforward.

 Make sure the Album Artist tag for that album is something like Various Artists.  The Track Artist tag as composer is fine.

With those still having a problem, have you re-indexed your library since the firmware update?

Yes. I used to schedule the index but it stopped working some time ago. Now whenever I change anything on any of my music files I re-index.

I’ll have a test of  MoPac’s suggestion.

Ok. So I had a look at that. The Album Artist tag on that particular album was BLANK and when I change it to “Smell My Farts” (Yes I'm a 59 year old child!) then it works

When I change the Album Artist tag to SPACE then I get this

That’s better than multiple albums but would rather the album name be listed.

I use Metadatics to tag my music files. I know I can export a report and then should be able to see which albums I have the Compilation tag set and then on those I’ll update the tags For Track vs Album Artist.

Am I like to see any other issues here? I always want to listen to an entire album so if I can’t remember the name of the album I’ll locate it by Artist - What I’ve had recently is doing that will show ONLY those Track Artists on any particular album and then you can’t show the whole album like you used to be able to. Am reluctant to undertake a major update of tags if it creates other problems

If anybody likes messing with data and would also enjoy snooping on my music/audio taste here is a Google sheets export of all my tracks available and indexed on Sonos residing on my NAS.

I’ve deleted many of the columns I don’t think are relevant and sorted by Artist, Album, Track Number as far as I think I need to.

I went into the desktop Sonos App and navigated to Music Library - Albums and then scrolled the entire way through the list. In the Google Sheet I’ve filled the column A (Album) in red if Sonos has duplicated the album (Well it hasn’t duplicated it as such as each row contains a different track).

I was hoping it would be really obvious what logic dictates which albums display this unwanted (by me!) behaviour but I’m not seeing it. I would say that I think the list is better (possibly a lot better) than it was in that fewer albums are now showing as multiple records. I wouldn't mind so much if each of these records were actually just the same WHOLE album repeated so I could play the whole album but they aren’t and they also aren’t in track order.

Things I note in the data:-

All duplicate records = All have PARTOFACOMPILATION as “1” and all have COMPILATION as BLANK

However the reverse of those isn’t true so can’t just remove those flags

So if you have time, skill and the inclination anybody fancy taking a butcher’s?

Many thanks in advance

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AL7maDHlxQ8DOFNLCsJrbTrbx57le3yI-BLzYjsVtW8/edit?usp=sharing

So, it seems that the latest versions now group compilations correctly if the Album Artist is set to something like “Various Artists”, but…

It completely ignores the “Part of a compilation” tag. See screen shot below:

This used to work fine. Is it possible to have this feature reinstated please?

Thanks

I’ve gone through and updated all my albums so when I scroll through via Music Library - Albums I’m only seeing a single record for a single physical album (remember those!).

I think the critical thing I’ve found is that if an album is NOT marked as part of a compilation then if a track artist changes a new record is listed for that Album Name - This foxes the problem of Albums with different artists but the same name (Eg I have an Album named “Forever” by The Spice Girls and ANOTHER by the same name from Aled Jones) being combined into a single record. 
The problem with this logic is how to categorise albums by a single artist (or band) where there are collaborations - If the collaborative artist(s) is listed as Track Artist then Sonos sees that as a separate album if PARTOFCOMPILATION is left Blank. This can be fixed one of two ways - 1) Mark All track artists as the releasing artist but then you lose the information of the collaborator or 2) Mark album as PARTOFCOMPLIATION and note Album Artist as “Various Artists”.

I know this whole logic is really tricky especially for classical works. I still haven’t fully adopted a consistent approach - for instance I may acquire a version of Elgar’s Cello Concerto because Du Pre recorded it, or Kanneh-Mason so I may record the track artist in that instance as the soloist or sometimes it’s the composer. This is the main reason why I’m focused on the ALBUM - I pretty much always want to listen to an entire album, all the track tracks and in the order in which they were presented when released.