Hello everyone,
We made a change on how the compilation albums and albums with the same name but different artists are shown in your Music Library. This revolves around the Metadata tag Album Artist. I will explain below how the experience was before and how it will be after the change.
Metadata in a music library refers to the information associated with each audio file, helping to organize music efficiently. It includes details like song title, artist, album, genre, release year, track number, and duration, as well as technical data such as file format, bitrate, and sample rate. Metadata can also contain album artwork, lyrics, composer credits, and copyright information.
Before:
When there is no Album Artist tag set, albums with the same name but different artists were grouped together as one album. This introduced a problem where several albums with the same name but from different artists would show as one album in the Sonos App.
It is easier to understand with an example and screenshot:
Album “Unplugged”
Eric Clapton (1992) - A Grammy-winning album of acoustic performances, including a new rendition of “Layla.”
Alicia Keys (2005) - An MTV Unplugged live performance album showcasing Keys’ soulful renditions.
Before these would be grouped together as one album.
On the other hand, let's say you have an album called Electro Sound 2006, the metadata tags Album artist within the music files have no entry and each track has a different Artist tag. This was showing properly as one album.
Now:
Albums with the same name but from different artists will now show properly as different entries.
The advantage of the new way of grouping is, that each artist will have their own album even if the Album name is the same.
Taking the same example album “Unplugged” from Eric Clapton (1992) and Alicia Key (2005).
Now with the correct metadata will show up as separate entries in a Music Library.
Compilation Albums on the other hand, such as the example I mentioned before with the Electro Sound 2006 album that the metadata tags Album artist within the music files have no entry and each track has a different Artist tag, are showing multiple times.
In order to have this shown properly in one album as before, you will need to edit the metadata tag Album Artist using a metadata editor tool.
We recommend adding the text "Various Artists" to the Album Artist tag for each and every file on albums with various artists. Most tag editors will allow you to do this for all compilation albums in one fell swoop.