Is there a way to see only the official releases of an artist or group? I am seeing more and more junk under my favorite artists releases. What is going on? There are so many unofficial releases and stuff not even related to the artist. Is there a way to have the junk not be imported or something ?
Thanks
Any examples? Difficult to imagine what you are seeing
just take a look at Otis Redding releases. He only had a handful of official releases. Most of his library is unofficial, or compilations , or just repeats. I call those junk. This is just a small sample.
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You could pick any major artist and see tons of junkâŚhard to look through it all and itâs just a waste of time
Hereâs a good one-Toots & the Maytals, ridiculous
I see. Doesnât really happen with the stuff I usually listen to. These seem to have missing metadata that identifies them as compilations like the other 195 
To avoid importing them, one would have to be able to identify them, and that would need the data.
I just put the stuff I want into my library and then click the âmy libraryâ button
Can you try focusing on the label they were released under? Or maybe a range of years? Or some other option in focus? Tedious I know, but might narrow it down.
Yea, but when there are official release that just get released to streaming and if you look once in awhile like I do you to see if there is anything I donât have I then have to look at all the other junk to find it.
I thought of that, donât like the way it turns out. Still see junk
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Yeah I get that itâs annoying, the main albums section should be only the official and main releases
Yep, guess that cant be done. Just seems like recently this has become a problem. Guess there is no fix either.
I agree that discographyâs a mess 
Sorting by âMain Albumâ and âRelease Dateâ makes it a bit more manageable, but not a 1-click option.
I did wonder, particularly for artists with a high album count, if Roon shouldnât just separate out âMain Albumsâ from âAnthologiesâ (an instance of âCompilationâ where all tracks share the same artist? ) in the discography interface by default. Like they already do with EPs and Singles.
But I guess youâre always going to get exceptions like Grace Jonesâ Island Life or Bob Marleyâs Legend where an anthology/compilation is considered a key album. But they tend to be the exception and would I assume still rank high under the anthology sub-heading. If you think that is a good idea maybe open a feature request and see if it gains traction.
I guess Roon could also leverage (additional) 3rd party sources to help identify key albums and rank those higher. MusicBrainz for example has a slightly tidier list of key albums. Not saying that doing that is easy or without itâs own issues.
What about metadata preferences for albums, checking prefer file for all instead of Roon.
How do I attach a screen shot on iPad ?
As far as I have found: Open the forum reply box first. Switch to Roon, make screenshot - it will show as a thumbnail in the bottom right corner. Switch to web browser with forum, then hold and drag the thumbnail into the reply box. (The thumbnail goes away after some time, so I open the reply box first to avoid fumbling too long).
Itâs worse in the native streaming apps, roon do try to filter out the junk but there are multiple â â â â â â labels churning out this junk.
Maybe Roon already does, but given the issue is likely to affect popular artists most, I wonder if there would be mileage in harnessing Wikipedia / Wikidata to prioritise official / key / notable albums.
Given that Wikipedia / Wikidata discographies will have been manually created and have multiple people with knowledge of that artist(s) already arguing over what constitutes a notable work it feels like a fairly good source of data for solving this issue.
Iâm guessing Roon already has some experience using Wikipedia / Wikidata to power the biog pages.
Thinking of these Wikidata properties / instances in particular:
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Thank you.
Would changing the import settings for metadata preferences for albums from prefer Roon to prefer file make any difference in stopping junk from being imported?
That setting only affect the metadata of albums in your Local Library, not the popularity sorting / ordering under the âDiscographyâ tab. Which correct me if I am wrong, is the issue youâre facing / describing?
If youâre looking at the âAlbums in your Libraryâ tab, that list should already look fairly good as you manually selected them. So there shouldnât be a problem there.
The problem only exists when ordering âAlbums by Popularityâ under the Discography tab?
A solution, to sorting/ordering by popularity, seems to be for Roon to:
- Talk to their current provider of metadata (Rovi?) to see if they can get them to improve ânotable albumsâ for certain artists before delivery to Roon. (No dev work needed on Roons end; best short term solution)
- Leverage additional sources of data (see Wikidata suggestion above) to help improve ordering. (Requires dev work, ordering will never please everyone.)
- Prioritise any albums you have added to your Library in the Discography tag (Requires modest dev work and assumes that albums in your local library are more âpopularâ or ânotableâ)
- Allow user to tag certain Albums they have added to their Library as ânotableâ or âkey discographyâ (effectively a more selective version of above; not sure itâs very useful myself; unless it forms part of a larger Roon crowdsourcing/wisdom of crowds feature).
In addition, splitting out âAnthologiesâ and âBest Of Albumsâ (an instance of âCompilationâ where all tracks share the same artist?) and âLive albumsâ on the Discography page (see above) could improve display.
Iâm not sure Roon could ever 100% accurately identify and hence hide âlow qualityâ albums on the Discography tab. I donât think youâd ever 100% want to completely hide an album from Roon, too many edge cases.
But Roon could look at splitting out Albums considered ânotableâ or part of âkey discographyâ (see above for how) from the rest, on the Discography tab page. That woudl be a modest interface change and probably solve the worst of the cases.
Roon could even have a âOtherâ box that is toggle closed by default, which contained Albums that didnât meet a certain threshold (TBD). Or had been voted down by enough other Roon users (wisdom of the crowd) to flag it as such. Roon could conversely provide a mechanism to allow users to upvote it back into the main album section.
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btw. Roon is better that most of the streaming services own apps in this regard. That said, Roon is a premium / additional cost product that explicitly markets itself as having better metadata and offering a better user experience. Not suggesting for one second Roon drop everything and focus on this, itâs not a major bug-bear for me personally, but just because other products are worse, doesnât mean that Roon couldnât do it better.
ps. some of the above is probably better in a feature request, feel free to make one if anyone wants to, Iâve largely given up on them. In the short term I guess asking Roon to talk to their metadata provider is the quickest fix.
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I have no idea, none of the artists for which I have local files are being attacked by junk releases
Edit: as @j_a_m_i_e wrote