Dr. Lonnie Smith is kind of confused with Lonnie Liston Smith, at least on his album “The Art of Organizing”. Well, Roon shows Dr. Lonnie Smith AND Lonnie Liston Smith.
Funny enough, the artist page of Dr. Lonnie Smith warns you not to confuse him with Lonnie Liston Smith 
Thanks for the report @Jaundka. This isn’t a bad equivalence, but is a bad attribution. I’ve asked Rovi to correct it.
John Collins (bassist from New Pornographers) vs John Collins (jazz guitarist) - I get the picture and text shown below when I click on the John Collins in the credits of New Pornographers albums and when I click on the John Collins in the credits of a jazz album (e.g., Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Harold Arlen Songbook):
Bach Collegium Japan vs. Bach Collegium Japan Chorus vs. Bach Collegium Japan Orchestra. For me, this issue crops up for the Masaaki Suzuuki box set of Bach’s Cantatas (50 SACD box set). Using Roon’s identification, the majority of the discs are attributed to Bach Collegium Japan as one of the “main” artists, but a handful are attributed to the Chorus or Orchestra.
“The Microphones” vs “Microphones” - the album/EP Tests is attributed to “Microphones” (though the extended metadata does show “The Microphones” as performing on the album).
Are these the same entity?
What is correct?
Looking at the CD covers for all of these discs, “Bach Collegium Japan” and “Masaaki Suzuki” are listed on the front - so I think it would be correct to say that these two entities are the “primary” artists.
As to whether these are all the same entity, I suppose that’s a little tricky. The Bach Collegium Japan is composed of the Bach Collegium Japan Chorus and the Bach Collegium Japan Orchestra (and the conductor - Masaaki Suzuki - as well, I suppose). Both the Chorus and the Orchestra (and conductor) are involved/present in all of these Cantata recordings. But I believe there are some other recordings on the BIS label (of various Bach concertos) where the Bach Collegium Japan Orchestra plays but the Bach Collegium Japan Chorus does not sing. From my perspective, I guess I would still consider the “Bach Collegium Japan” to be the primary artist even in that case - and then would list out the Bach Collegium Japan Orchestra under the orchestra field.
@John_McBride Thanks John. It looks like this is just inconsistent metadata from Rovi. I’ll ask them to review/correct. Sometimes they get a little picky, but on the basis of the back cover of the Vol. 4 CD, I don’t think that they will argue. They won’t like going though every volume in this series though…
I seem to have two Philharmonia Orchestras:
The links go through to two separate Artist pages, one with a picture and one without. Both artists were founded in Oct 1945. I have several albums by each of them.
I’ve noticed that Sigrid (the Norwegian artist Sigrid Solbakk Raabe) has a biography that appears to be correct, but there are singles and EPs by other artists also called Sigrid listed on her artist page within Roon.
John Williams (again)!
The John Williams attributions are getting better, but there are still a few issues. I’ve taken a screenshot of the appearances of the film music composer which still show a few albums where the guitarist is actually the right John Williams:
I think (from left to right) the guitarist is involved with Echoes of Spain, Live, The Great Guitar Concertos, and Duos.
The John Williams on the Billie Holiday album was playing the double bass, so I’m not sure is related to either of our two main protagonists.
The others look to be correct.
At the risk of going over old ground when I do a search on “Vienna Philharmonic” I get this:
Only Wiener Philharmoniker has any bio. So by trial and error I have learnt that roon refers Wiener Philharmoniker to other common equivalents.
What I would like is to be able to merge the equivalents in my library. But Wiener Philharmoniker is an artist whereas the others are performers so I cannot merge them. What exactly is the difference between an artist and a performer from a roon perspective? And why can I not merge them?
I have the same problem with all sorts of artists all over my library. Nothing was ever tagged in an idiosynchratic way. It was always just the back of CD cases or public lookups using EAC or CueTools. Clearly there are no standards and the problem goes all the way back to the labels but I don’t see anything on the horizon that is going to change that.
The consequence is I have just been reminded by “roon community” that I have now spent a year trying to tidy this mess up and that I am only about 30% through. That’s what “earning” the 1 year badge means to me. I always have the option not to bother but then I get very cluttered messy screens with all sorts of duplicates and it also filters through into a poor radio, discovery and focus experience. Not being able to merge artists and performers leads to a lot of work. I find almost every rip (and also conversions of cues, apes and iso’s) requires a manual “equivalents” grooming I would rather not do.
Is there any way round this other than laboriously and manually normalising my entire library to artist names roon understands?
I’m pretty sure this is a compilation album and no band called Beyond Inspiration… it’s part of the album name. https://www.allmusic.com/album/beyond-inspiration-tribute-to-uli-roth-mw0000459272
I believe the Mariinsky Orchestra is the same as the “Mariinsky (Kirov) Theatre Orchestra” who are the same as the “Mariinsky (Kirov) Theater Orchestra”, who are the same as the “Kirov Orchestra”, etc, etc, etc.
All recent albums appear to have used the name “Mariinsky Orchestra”.
Roon seems to default to the “Mariinsky (Kirov) Theater Orchestra”, which I would suggest ought to be replaced by the “Mariinsky Orchestra” as they now call themselves. The benefit of this is neither side of the Pond will quibble about the spelling of Theatre.
Hey everyone. With regard to different variants of performer names – particularly classical ensembles – please be aware that we are working on a much better solution for this. Our new solution will still present a “default” name variant (as chosen by our metadata providers) which you may or may not agree with, but metadata errors aside, there should be more consistency in this area. And if you don’t like the default, you can of course edit it.
For now, thanks for your patience.
Zodiac, a German retro rock band since 2012, is confused with a space disco band of the same name. I don’t care about others, but I’d like to see this German band properly described. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zodiac_(rock_band)
Hi @hgim82. Edit made for Zodiac. However, our current metadata providers don’t have a description for the German band.
Hi @evand. I’ve checked your “Beyond Inspiration” album; it looks wrong on allmusic.com, but is a Various Artists album in our metadata. Do you have a problem in your library?
Hi,
Can the 2 different artists know as “Maurizio” be separated and corrected.
Maurizio
Berlin minimal dub techno
aka Basic Channel. aka Moritz von Oswald
Is mixed up with this artist.
Maurizio
Thanks!
