Is there a way to make the “Album Artist” tag the default artist display for My Library instead of “Artist”? For the way I browse my online music library, it is much more convenient browse by the “Album Artist” tag especially for Soundtracks and Various Artist albums which I have those names entered as the “Album Artist”. Have previously used JRiver and Musicbee with that tag enabled with no issues so it’s what I’m used to and prefer and would like to operate the same with roon.
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While I don’t think there’s a way to change the default, one option is to, in “My Albums,” filter with the search term “various artists” and save that as a bookmark called “Various.”
Does Roon not already use album artist? The list of artists only includes artists of which you have full albums in your library. Artists that only appear on tracks of various artists compilations are not included when browsing the Artists section in Roon.
You could try to set your metadata preference for Album Artist to “Prefer File” instead of “Prefer Roon”. You can do this on an album by album basis by selecting on or more albums, edit and then choose the appropriate setting on the “Metadata Preferences” tab. You can also enable this as a default in the library import settings.
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Roon uses “Artist” tag which is different and for my library a much larger collection than “Album Artist” tag.
Interestingly, it doesn’t pull in all of the albums that I have the “Album Artist” tag as "Various Artists. If I search for a missing album directly it comes up in search, but not that way. Weird, as I would think this wouldn’t be ideal, but should work.
I have already adjusted my library import settings that way and just tried it on 2 Soundtracks. Closed, reopened and no change. In fact, the 2 soundtracks that I edited the preference for show no preferences when I go to the Metadata preferences tab.
I don’t have that option in my Settings. Perhaps because I don’t use any streaming services?
Search works a little differently from Filters. Try double/triple checking the metadata in your files for incongruities.
Yes, I mistakenly did a Search. Filtering resulted in a much more comprehensive (complete?) list.
Very good. Now that’s what you want to save as a bookmark.
This is a generic setting in Roon, nothing to do with streaming services.
Can you please share a screenshot of your roon settings page
The field is the last field, at the bottom:
Name for compilation sorting.
Dirk
Yes, I see that now. Right in front of my face, lol. But set that option and I don’t get a “Various Artists” listed under the V’s.
If I go to Artist page and filter on ‘various’ I get this:
(I did add the picture myself)
If I click on the artist ‘Various Artists’, I get this:
If I click right to select the 1st album in my library, tthen scroll down to the latest album , press and hold ‘shift’ and left click , then I get 169 ‘Various Artists’ albums .
Yes, I’m just looking for ways to access “Various Artists” directly from My Library-> Artists menu. Thanks to the help of you and others on this thread I can access through the filter option, but I am used to other software where I can access it directly from Album Artist selection.
Have you tried to see what happens when in Settings - Library - Import Settings
you select ‘Pefer file’ for Album Artist
Dirk
Yes, I’ve had this as my default for a while now. Roon like most music library software defaults to using “ARTIST” tag which I what I think this setting is looking at. There is also the “ALBUMARTIST” tag available, but typically not enabled by default in most music software which is the feature I am looking for in Roon.
Probably not a common request, but I think what I’m looking for is the option so that Artists shown in “My Library-> Artists” could be displayed using either “ARTIST” or “ALBUMARTIST” tag.
I think you are misled! 
The Artist tag is used for focus, filtering and sorting in Artist view, where AlbumArtist is being used in the Album view for filtering, focus and sorting.
Have a look, and see if it fits?
My own tag for various artists albums is always AlbumArtist=“Various Artists” but the same seem to be used by the metadata services as almost all my albums are “identified” (and hence, got Roon-metadata).
As you can see in the screen shot, filter is on “Various Artists” and for this view i didn’t want to include “Classical” genre albums (The Focus button)
There are some badly implemented metadata however, making it difficult to make some sense out of the focus and filtering options.
Just take the “compilation” designation, you cannot apply it to just Various Artists-albums. There are always lots of compilation albums by a single artist as well.