"a.k.a." - how is it supposed to work?

Support
1

I’m a bit confused by the function of the “also known as” label. A few observations:

  1. If an artist is known under different names and each of this names has an own entry in Roon, shouldn’t each of the entries have the other names listed as aka as well? Example:
    AFX aka Aphex Twin, The Tuss
    Apex Twin (no aka)
    The Tuss (no aka)

  2. Why is the a.k.a. text not clickable? It looks like a link, and it should be one.

  3. In a few cases, the main name and aka are identical. E.g. “Klaus Schulze aka Klaus Schulze” (incidentally missing his Richard Wahnfried alias).

  4. Sometimes, the difference between alternative artist names is vague, and they would be better off under one single entity. Probably a question of metadata but maybe also personal taste. E.g. Arthur Brown a.k.a. The Crazy World of Arthur Brown.
    The longer I think about it, the more I realize how complex the handling of alternative names can be. Sometimes, an aka is just another name for the very same artist, sometimes it’s only for certain collaborations or maybe even different music styles.

A.t.m. it looks as if not all metadata is linked up, see 1), 2) and 3). Point 4) is certainly more of a fundamental problem / decision. Just a thought: group all aliases together under the main name and allow users to toggle aka’s on and off.

2 Likes
2

Thanks Jaundka,

Excellent questions; let’s flag @joel to see if he can assist with them.

3

@support Please let me bump this up, and add a toggle to remove this “feature” from the Artist page.

Flat out, this is mostly wrong in every instance I’ve seen. Wire aka P’o? No. Jean Michael Jarre aka Pop corn Orchestra? Sorry. King Crimson aka Discipline? Nein.

Again, Roon should strive for CORRECT data not “best”…

5

Somehow I’ve ended up with Michael Jackson, aka W. A. Mozart.

I can’t for the life of me seem to find any metadata that would be making this happen. So I can’t get rid of it.

I mean, some would say MJ was a musical genius, but saying he actually was Mozart it taking it a bit far!

6

:sunglasses:

2 Likes
7

Haha, riiiight!

But because of that slice of nonsensical lunacy, I’m (/we’re) just stuck with it in Roon?

8

I would like to add that this metadata function (of several artist names) almost always affects Artists that do not have Latin names, like Greek artists for instance. In their case, it happens very often that they have several entries with their name “romanized” in different ways (depending on album, etc), so we end up with several aliases. This happens also when AllMusic and MusicBrainz choose a different main artist name for the same artist.
Roon seems not to take into account these aliases, and I’m obliged to manually merge them.

Merging is not a problem per se, but I hope there will be a more consistent solution for processing aliases in Roon, one of these days… :slightly_smiling_face: