Does anyone else find it incredibly annoying that Roon removed the “Ignore Articles When Sorting” option? I recently started using Roon, and while it’s a great platform, this specific UI decision makes no sense to me. In the past, you could easily turn off this feature in the settings. Now, Roon forces a hardcoded rule that strips words like “The”, “A”, and “An” from artist and album names when sorting.
I use other ecosystems at home alongside Roon, and it’s creating a total mess. On my regular streamers, everything is sorted normally under the letter “T” (like “The Beatles” or “The Doors”), but Roon completely messes up this consistency.
Manually editing the “Sort Name” metadata for hundreds of albums is definitely not a solution. Why did they remove such a basic toggle switch that let users choose how they want to see their own library?
Has anyone found a clever workaround for this, or are we just stuck hoping they bring it back?
Are you sure an option was removed? I can’t remember that it was ever there as long as I have used Roon (end of 2020) and related feature suggestions go back to 2015. And as far as I can tell, it only ignores “The”, but not indefinite articles (a/an).
And yes, people have different opinions. (Though personally I have no idea why one would want to have a huge list under “The”, not to mention that for many artists it is not at all clear if the The is actually part of their name: "The Artist" instead of "Artist, The" for album sorting)
There is a feature request here:
At least in 2022 a reliable forum member noted that there was no option:
In 2015, someone asked to be able to ignore indefinite articles and in Dec 2024 it was noted that this might be inconsistent:
If you search for “name sort article” (no quotes), you will find other discussions.
Years ago, and maybe still nowadays if you searched ‘The The’ it was a nightmare. It may have gotten better before I stopped using Roon.
Other softwares like Lyrion Music Server can easily have their code edited or a custom Skin with better search.
I recently built my own software and focused a lot of attention on search. ‘The The’ would always be at the top of my lists by the time I got to ‘The T’ or ‘the t’
FWIW - Standard Filing Rules
Ignore Articles: Standard library and alphabetical filing rules always ignore “The,” “A,” and “An” at the beginning of a name.
Filing Format: They are filed as Beatles, The.
Digital Systems: Streaming platforms (like Spotify or Apple Music) and digital libraries automatically bypass “The” and sort them under B.
I am happy that Beatles sorts under B , Doors under D etc. As long as you know. Roon also loses Sir and Dame etc even though albums show the full honour on artwork
My understanding is that honorifics are relevant to the context in which they were issued. “Sir”, “Dame” is a civil honorific and is therefore relevant within the bounds of the bestowing nation.
In these cases, it is a British Commonwealth title so it applies to across Commonwealth countries.
Outside of those countries, it is acceptable to drop the honorific. A US edition of the album would be okay without the “Sir”.
Should the honorific be profession based (Eg. Dr), then it is relevant to show it when in context of that profession. If Georg Solti was a Dr in conducting, then the album should have Dr. on it.
What to show when using international based software becomes complex…
Agreed. I ignore the “The’s” when organising my CD’s. If not the “T” section of my collection would be comically large compared with all other sections.
I do, but I find it personally obvious that it’s better if I can rely on Beatles being under B rather than having to worry whether it’s Beatles under B or The Beatles under T.
For me, I’d rather not have to remember which one it is. But I’m not opposed to Roon having a switch, anyway, or an album sort order entry like there is for artists
Artists > Filter “xyz” > Select Artist > Artists Page> Discography > Play
So where the “The” is irrelevant . In my case , there are invariably too many artists (2427) or albums to scroll without some pre-filter. Without Filter both the Artist View and Album view would be useless
