Artist name added to album name when using Music/Artist/Album folders ... help!

Hello,
I’m a relative newcomer to Roon having only used it for around 2 months.
I imported a lot of old MP3’s from an iPod during trial period to see if I got along with the software and interface. They all had embedded metadata and it all went without a hitch, loved the look of Roon, so bought in for the year.

I’m now ripping a lot of CD’s in FLAC, and also adding a lot of unreleased demo’s (I work in music) which are in WAV and have no metadata. I have used the same folder structure that successfully imported the MP3’s with previously - (Music / Artist name / Album Name / ).

I also tag the new files in iTunes as they import then move the folder from iTunes to the ‘music’ folder which is watched.

Roon is importing these new files but combining the Artist name and Album Name folder titles to form the Roon album title metadata.

e.g

Music / REES / An Evening In Yoshino EP /

Album title: REES - An Evening In Yoshino EP
Primary artist: Various Artists
Album artist: Unknown Artist

I assume that I’m missing something very very simple here and just being a bit of a dimwit, but any pointers would be greatly appreciated - I’m planning on importing a lot of music now i’ve committed to Roon for the year and don’t want to have to manually edit all artist names into metadata along with taking artist name out of album title metadata.

How can I get Roon to take first folder name as primary artist, and second folder name as album?

Many thanks in advance.

Graeme

Hello @Graeme_Stewart, thanks for the report! Can you send me a screenshot of how one of the albums look in Roon and how it looks in your file explorer/finder? I’d like to see what information from the tags is ending up where in Roon. Thanks!

Hi Nuwriy,
Screenshots attached

Screen Shot 2020-06-05 at 16.42.55

Hey @Graeme_Stewart, thanks for the screenshots! I’d like to get a copy of that media and try this for myself since the folder structure looks fine. Could you upload one of the tracks from your screenshot here so I can import it and check the file tags? Thanks!

Does the software you use for ripping have options for tagging track/album names and/or file names? May need adjusting.

Have done - will have uploaded in a moment or two.

@SKBubba I use iTune, and all seems to be ok there, but these never cary over when I move from my local folder on laptop onto my watched folder on my external drive.

I think the biggest problem is demo’s, unreleased records / things I am sent before release, and live recordings that come as untagged WAV files. I hoped that putting these in the correct storage folder structure would allow Roon to at least import the basics of artist and album correctly before I had to dig into more detail myself and manually add the deeper metadata.

Thanks @Graeme_Stewart, I’m submitting the tracks to our team now for further analysis. I’ll be in touch shortly.

@nuwriy was there any news here? I’m kinda reluctant to upload any more music and do unnecessary work until I know the answer to this.

Hello @Graeme_Stewart, thanks for your patience while my team investigates the issue with these tracks. The folder structure you showed me earlier in the thread looks good, so I wanted to verify the results with the team to make sure.

I believe the issue could be resolved by using a file tagging program to help Roon gather more information and identify these tracks. In testing your tracks we noticed that since there are no file tags, Roon is at a disadvantage when running the identification process.

This is expected behavior in this case but a file tagging program would go a long way in making a smoother experience for you with Roon. Please try one out and keep your existing file structure, let me know how it goes!

In testing your tracks we noticed that since there are no file tags, Roon is at a disadvantage when running the identification process.

I did run the files through iTunes, but I guess that wasn’t enough? Perhaps they didn’t hold the tags as they are WAV?

I don’t understand why if Roon can’t pick up any data from the file tags, e.g the file itself was called “A1.WAV” or “0.WAV” with no other info, it wouldn’t follow the simple file structure (which you acknowledge is set up correctly) for the basic information of Artist and Album? It’s clearly taking both pieces of information from the structure as it’s combining them, incorrectly, into one Album title…

I get a lot of my music as demo, pre-release, and quite a few live recordings that officially shouldn’t exist - they aren’t going to be tagged - pretty annoying that something that’s meant to be as sophisticated as Roon can’t be set to pick those very basic things out of the file path without me needing to go into another program (which I will possibly need to pay for too) and try that.

:pensive:

Mp3tag will do allyou need and it’s free.

1 Like

Hello @Graeme_Stewart, my apologies for the frustration here. Roon is reading the data on the individual track level and we require some tag info to help us identify the tracks in question. As you pointed out yourself, some of these items are pre-release and live recordings, which mean we’ll definitely want good tags to identify them.

While I can’t make any official recommendation, ged’s recommendation has worked well for other users on the forum and is definitely worth a try!

So basically the file structure is worthless?

Hello @Graeme_Stewart,

Roon uses a variety of data to identify and display content in the app. While folder structure is important, it doesn’t give Roon the full picture like file tags would.

For best results, ensuring that your files are properly tagged is important.