I am wondering about the term “also performed by” which is used for some tracks when it comes to classical music.
I first came across it today on the Jacqueline du Pre EMI collection. I have the album intentionally left unidentified, because there had been composition errors on the identified version.
I have set Jacqueline du Pré as Album Artist and have the Artist tag left blank based on recommendations from @joel . The Soloist tag is populated
Now what I see for a particular disc is the following:
Although I understand the logic applied I’m not sure I like it that on work level Jacqueline du Pré is left out as soloist because she is already tagged as album artist. What I do not understand, however, is why on track 9 Gerald Moore is labeled as “also perfomed by” whereas Daniel Barenboim in the other works is labeled as “performed by”
The files are tagged with Soloists “Jacqueline du Pré; Daniel Barenboim” and Jacqueline du Pré; Gerald Moore", respectively. Why does Roon interpet this differently?
I also have this boxset. I get the same results as you do for track 9 of disc 4 when the disc is left unidentified. Like you, I have difficulty understanding the logic behind the “also performed” mention for Gerald Moore, when “performed” is assigned to Daniel Barenboim.
In my case, “Album Artist” is set to “Jacqueline Du Pré”, and “Artist” tag is set to “Jacqueline Du Pré; Gerald Moore” (whereas in your case, you are using the “Soloist” tag for the same purpose). I guess repeating or not repeating Jacqueline Du Pré in the Artist/Soloist tag because she is already identified in the “Album Artist” tag is irrelevant here. In what context was this advice given to you ?
As a final note, if I identify the album using the following match, using edition no 1 :
I get the following metadata :
Note that this time, Gerald Moore is treated similarly to Daniel Barenboim with a correct “performed by” mention. But if I match the album with edition no 2 of the above, the “also performed” problem reappears.
This type of inconsistency is pretty annoying, and it would be interesting to understand where it originates from. @joel Any hope that this can be fixed once the Roon metadata engine is revamped ?
I got the advice to leave the Artist tag blank by @joel some time ago. Therefore I try only to maintain Soloist, Ensemble, Conductor and the Album Artist tag.
I am also finding numerous examples where there is one main “album artist” that is accompanied by a variety of other artists across the album tracks. But the credits are inconsistent. It seems almost random that sometimes the secondary / accompanist / soloist is credited as “also performed by” (correct) or the very confusing “performed by” (incorrect).
Why is this happening? Is there a way of ‘forcing’ the much more intuitive and comprehensible “also performed by” behavior in these contexts?
I also find the general rule that artists are not displayed at a work level if they are already displayed at an album artist level maddening as well. I know that the information most of the time is available on the credits links but I don’t really understand why the information is hidden if you would just prefer to see it. Maybe there should be a ‘verbose’ mode. A bit like the options for composer display. I find it a particular problem with vocal music where there might be a lot of soloists with different vocal ranges that are not superstars and you are unfamiliar with them. For example, Lieder albums with alternating sopranos / mezo sopranos. It can often end up being quite a bit of detective work on albums with a lot unfamiliar soloists to figure out who is doing what which seems to defeat much of the point or roon. What I often do is I delete the “album artist” so I can see who is doing what at a work level. But this causes a lot of other problems as the “album artist” seems to be key to the way roon groups and searches in other contexts. Ideally I would prefer to keep the album artist but have various “verbose” settings so I can also see them at a work level if I wish. Is this a feature request that makes any sense?
Have you tried adding “Primary Artist” credits on a track level? That brings stuff forward which is already there, although I haven’t tested methodically to see in exactly which situations this works.
And just to be sure, your albums all have a Classical genre, right? That affects how credits are displayed, and may be worth experimenting with.
Thanks Ludwig. I am travelling at the moment. When I am home I will try both of those but . . .
I often experiment with the primary artist field at both album and track level trying to get rid of duplicates (also other artist categories such as instrumentalist or ensemble). But I cannot really see a pattern and I haven’t noticed the effect on “also performed by”. When I am home I will experiment again.
As it happens, historically, I rarely tagged “Classical” as it had no meaning with the library managers I was using. I would tag “Classical/Symphony, Classical/Chamber” etc. I use roon tags as well so it would be rare I think that there was no straight “Classical” tag but I will check.
