Bye Roon, why I am not renewing my subscription

I’m not sure if the world lacks identifiers. Just for the fun of it look what’s listed as identifiers for the Boss: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1225

More seriously: two things you might check out when cataloging information according to your needs is really important:

  1. What libraries do - there’s quite some interesting information available, librarians have often to do with cross referencing stuff in meaningful ways, and across media.
  2. Have you considered using the web api of Roon together with a homegrown metadata solution? It might work …

Its not the identifier as such but what data is linked to it. You can see in that example that you can link the musicbrainz ID with the AllMusic ID, and also the wikipedia pagem

Unfortunately neither Roon nor LMS use these ISNI identifiers.

Using web apis to add data in a web page is very limited.

What I meant was more along this line: having some browser interface which incorporates your information and playback control to Roon.

Understood but it is not so simple. Say you have information in a tag, or a file in your music folder, that information is not known by Roon, so even if you can link it to an album in Roon when you display an album (not sure that would even be possible) you cannot use Roon search to look it up (i.e. show me all the albums where x played). You may end up developing a program that has to scan your entire library, which is complicated, and then you are no longer really using Roon.

I was thinking of this:


as a starting point. You could use the Roon infrastructure, grouped zones and what not. But it’s not simple, for sure.

Stephane, I am just surprised that you paid a subscription for three years instead of buying a lifetime. I would have made that decision after a year whether it was worth the investment.

3 years ago Roon was less of a “standard” than it is today, and i believe a lot of people, like me, chose not to pay a lifetime subscription immediately.

As it has been said here, there is a lack of alternatives. I had high hopes that “Tonal” would pick up but it did not. I started working on my web page 6 months ago.

stephane, is your webpage visible? i’d like to see what you’ve done.

No it is not, i probably have another 6 months of work to put into it but will put it on the LMS forum when it is fully operational. It is limited in what it can do, by LMS, and requires some good quality tags behind.

As i mentioned, some information i have yet to figure out where to put in my tags (as there are a limited number in LMS, you need to juggle around with them).

My purpose here was not to discuss this.

As mentioned, Roon does some things very well, and i just wanted to emphasize some aspects in which it could do better.

I did not expect this thread to develop as much as it did, and am somewhat comforted to see that correct metadata is relevant to others as well. It is not a thing of the past and as pointed out on some of the links i posted, there is hope that things will improve in the music industry. Things are evolving, and music applications will need to adapt and evolve as well.

Rovi is a great source of information. I have a lot of respect for contributors of AllMusic, who share their passion for music in their reviews. But Allmusic is not a perfect metadata source, far from it, and that should be understood. Its acquisition by Rovi has not improved on this, on the contrary.

I only started being interested in this topic a few years ago, and spend the past year or two “curating” my collection, and plan on continuing as i discover and acquire more music.

Best to all, and hoping Roon will take note of some of these points.

I would imagine (?) SongKong pay some fee to Discogs asit is a commercial use

Maybe Paul can Comment

Sex and Drugs and Rock Roll , the song of course :laughing:

To underscore how complicated this issue can get, in the US, the question is whether a compilation involves some minimal degree of creativity. So, for those who remember such things, a “white pages” telephone book (which just lists names in strictly alphabetical order) is not copyrightable, but a “yellow pages” telephone book (which organizes businesses into types) likely is.

Probably not the “fully automated” system anyone might be looking for, and really only suitable for technical users who can handle the command line - but I heartily recommend Beets as a means to process audio files before importing them into my Roon library. It’s been mentioned on these forums a few times…

While it also relies on MusicBrainz, you can also resolve metadata from Discogs and Beatport. It will handle all sorts of things around fixing file tags and normalizing metadata, fetching art etc. The plug in system and the community around it have contributed an enormous amount of capability to the solution, and it gets better and better with time. Plus, it has capabilities far beyond file and metadata management - it’s very powerful and flexible. Python-based plug-ins mean you can write your own solution if you’re so inclined.

http://beets.io

It does have a good bit of duplication with what Roon can do for you when importing files, but offers much more for the power user.

Thanks for the suggestion. I have to say that I am doubtful that the solution could be found in tagging software. The experience of many here is that though Roon does read one’s tags, it is not really designed to work based on tags.

Roon’s model is simple, and that is what makes it so attractive: load your albums, and enjoy.
Based on the fact that Roon mainly uses AllMusic, and that AllMusic is incomplete and sometimes inaccurate - what do you do when information needs to be completed/corrected ?

Today’s “tweaks” (prefer tags, split box sets, merge artists, etc…) are not the solution - in my opinion. But whatever alternative is found, if any, it should be as simple as possible (and within the “law”!).

There are some good suggestions in this thread. The first step is for Roon to recognize the issue and perhaps open up the discussion with their client base to exchange on these topics more openly.

Now I am going to be singing The Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” the rest of the day. I thought only magazines had the “cancel my subscription” protest posts, but I guess not :slight_smile:

Tell that to the artists - they are the ones getting “screwed” in this. It is estimated that between 25 and 50% of royalties due are misallocated because of incorrect/insufficient metadata (streaming or even sales). Its better to burry your head in the sand (or in your headphones).

Completely with you here. If I want to dig deep into Miles or Billie Holiday, Ike Quebec - it’s just not there. But it is out there and this is a premium product. Expecting way better from Roon on this area. Years and still not there.

1 Like

So I buy a lot of music, mainly pop and rock, and frequently I will buy from the artist’s website direct. I used PledgeMusic for a time, and fortunately all the artists I supported there got their money, but now just go direct. It’s a bit more costly but I hope that, in some small way, it helps offset the loss of revenue from what the streaming services pay.

I also tend to be out of the house a lot and, although I have my music server set up to stream my owned content to my phone or computer offsite, I still stream from Tidal or Spotify, hoping, again, that in some small way they get a bit of coin out of it. Maybe my thoughts are misguided in this area, but, I try.

It never occurred to me about the metadata, mainly because the artists and songs I listen to, even back to classic rock stuff of the 60’s and 70’s, always seems to be properly coded in my apps, so I never perceived a problem.

I am also undecided if I want continue using Roon, and yes, my only issue is not being able to use my own metadata in the event there is something wrong with what’s provided. Simply add my vote as a feature request.