OK understood.
But something is going wrong. If it is not the database, it must be something else.
I have three different Pi´s (3b, 4b) and different USB-drives. I have re-flashed the sd-card(s) morge than several times (v2.779) and everytime the behaviour is “bad”.
After scanning the disk´´s and building the library, when i try to select “artists” the green progress bar (top of screen) is advancing to approx 98% and then “stucks” there. Sometimes the Pi responds again after a couple of minutes and than everything works fine until next reboot. In many situations volumio will not find any “artists”, “albums”, etc. any more.
I have always double-checked with a small USB-Stick (approx. just 50 songs). All installations with this small amount of files work well and very fast.
So, there seems to be an “issue” when Volumio is trying to handle large amounts of files, whatever the exact reason is.