Album Type/Bootlegs

I want to split Bootlegs out from the Main Albums, which are official releases.

The Bootlegs switch doesn’t do this. What effect is it in fact meant to have on proceedings?

I found the setting “Album Type” which I have set to “Other” because it’s the only one which fits… The effect of this is that the albums in question are now under “Singles and EPs”. Better than nothing, but a bit of a weird result.

Is this all as expected? @mike

Yeah, right now, the Artist page only has the two sections – Main, and Singles and EPs.

We’ve had some requests to add more sections or more control over how albums appear and are arranged, but for the moment that’s how it works – album types (like Single, Main, Other) affect display on that screen, while “flags” (like Bootleg, Live, etc) don’t.

If that little mic after the name of each track means bootleg, I’m wondering why? The majority of the tracks in my library are noted that way although all my albums, except three downloaded files, were ripped from CDs that I purchased (the hi-res files were purchased too).

Am I missing the meaning of the mic? Or the meaning of bootleg?

Russ

It means Lyrics are available for that track, under the “3 dots” – nothing to do with Bootlegs, which is an album level classification

Thanks Mike. Now I remember reading that. Too much to take in all at once but loving roon.

Russ

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OK, understood.

I’d find expansion of this feature very useful. In particular simply making sections according to the album types would be an excellent first step. Is there already a feature request for this somewhere? @andybob

Just out of interest, why is “Bootleg” not an album type? What does it denote? The literal meaning is that it is an illegal live recording: do you see that as something that can be on a “Main” album? What’s the Roon understanding of these concepts? Just curious, to understand your structure.

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There are official bootlegs!

Not for “section by album type” specifically that I recall but there are a couple of threads for greater customisation of the album screen:

That’s a marketing term. In my world those would just be called Live Recordings. A bootleg is by definition not official. YMMV. (And makes no difference within Roon of course!)

I just submitted “official bootleg” to http://www.oxymoronlist.com. No idea how long it will take for it to show up.

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Hi @Ludwig,

Here is the proposal I wrote a few months back:

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/artist-page-split-main-albums-by-properties-studio-live-compilation/18805

Personally, I consider it to mean anything that’s not an official release - it could be a main album (like most live albums) or it could be a single or EP.

The most common usage would be live stuff like Grateful Dead bootlegs, but I’d also use it for unofficial main albums like The Grey Album, or white label singles, or leaks of anything from this list, for example.

For classification purposes, I’ve always thought of “album type” as a comment on length – Main vs EP vs Single. Soundtrack is an oddball in there (which I believe we are going to change), and Other is sort of like “none of the above”.

The flags in Album Focus (under “Other”) are more flexible properties that can be applied to releases of any length, like live singles, for example. These flags can also be quite subjective.

For example, is a Bob Dylan bootleg still a bootleg once it’s officially released? What about albums from the 60s that were recorded in the studio but were dubbed with fake audience noise and released as “Live!” – is that actually a live album? These are choices our metadata providers make, but which we can all edit in Roon.

This isn’t to say that a section for Bootlegs, or Live albums, or more customization, or anything else couldn’t be added to the Artist page – just a quick rundown of the data we get and how it informs the current design.

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Yep that thread is worth a read Jan! I’m still really keen on more organising options on the artist page, as has been discussed elsewhere!

Just to follow on from @mike comment above -

I would agree that bootlegs are anything that is not an official release. They could be of varying lengths - anthology length, album length, EP or single length or perhaps just a single track.

I think that it is imperative that we have a bootleg section on the main artist page - i.e. section alongside the existing “main albums”, “singles and EPs” and “with various artists”. Of course, as with the other sections, the bootleg heading/section would only appear if there are items to populate it.

Live albums would come under either the “albums” section if they are an official release (e.g. Pink Floyd’s Pulse), or the bootlegs section if they are not.

On that note, and echoing comments from various other threads, I would similarly add “soundtracks” as a section, as well as “collections and anthologies”.

Finally, I’m not clear on why the albums section is called “main albums”. I find this terminology confusing and unnecessary, and would change it to simply “albums”.