I posted my concerns about this a long, long time ago:
Not that Roon hasn’t made great strides in many areas. But Roon remains an information silo for true curators - no custom file-embedded metadata in or out.
This frustrates me because work has to be duplicated. We know that these custom tags are in the Roon database - you can see them in track properties - and it just wouldn’t be that hard to make Roon capable of focusing on them.
Love Roon, this is my biggest frustration with it.
Somewhat related…
Tags are unfortunately not an ideal way of managing metadata, and can be cumbersome as well. But so far, there are no real alternatives.
I am exploring other avenues (in my free time), such as:
There is no easy way of doing all this.
One can argue about the structure of the metadata and where to host it.
But in my opinion there is no argument that metadata simply cannot rely on a fully automated process, and some level of curation needs to be integrated, and this is where i disagree fundamentally with Roon’s approach.
Of course, one could log in to MusicBrainz and edit all the data there, but MusicBrainz is not extensively used in Roon. 90 % of my identified albums came from Rovi, and for all practical purposes, Rovi is a black box.
Having done some work in this area for one of the industry bodies I’m not holding my breath waiting to see this adopted throughout the value chain. Too many egos and competing interests among the suits. Tried herding cats?
Yeah, look at Brexit to get a feel for that, lol 
100% in agreement. Mammoth task you’re taking on, and then you’ve got the issue of trying to get that data represented in tags so a player can leverage it.
I am just really collecting data for my own use…
There is unfortunately today not a single repository that is easy to use and sufficiently comprehensive.
As far as music players go, same situation. One must live with compromises!
I don’t know the solution, but this shows there is plenty of room for improvement, for a classic…
Roon’s track credits for Track #1, on the Tidal version:
And here is the ‘free’ Tidal app’s data for Track #1:
It’d be interesting to understand why this is the case. Roon is pulling metadata from numerous sources, there must be an ability to combine and consolidate.
Not sure they are licensed to use tidal or Qobuz metadata
Unlikely given the deep integration they strive for, but anything is possible where the music industry is concerned.
Given this thread, “deep integration” is feeling more and more like a marketing term.
Sufficiently well thought through models exist already. Musicbrainz (*) and Wikidata, as pointed out here by @Fernando_Pereira - and both offer a community and (some) curation. Both also come with the promise that if one decides to contribute things will not be lost should a business decide so.
The critical metadata complainer mass is probably too small for Roonlabs to act on it anyway.
As others pointed out that task goes probably far beyond what Roonlabs could deliver. Another reason for me to not contribute to such a solution would be that it would be closed source. The great advantage of adding data to - for instance - musicbrainz is that I can always get my work added to file tags too. There are enough tools out there which make it easy.
And that’s something Roonlabs should act on - creating stunning stuff without the need to have access to the most accurate metadata ever. Make f-ing use of what’s there already. (It might even inspire people to add / enhance metadata at one of the places which already collect it.)
(*) … and it’s not worth discussing that they still add composers to albums at places you wouldn’t want them. Because it’s not an issue if the data that matters is available too. 
DAs a retired MS developer I often muse about what a definitive db schema should be
While there are no standards nothing will happen , the various sources can’t even agree a standard for Composer Name and spelling , se the Prokofiev example the other day, how many variants were there 100 +
Don’t even go to Composition and groupings of such
Who should agree and own these standards? Record labels?. They have shown little interest to date
Why Roon? , I keep asking that especially when I revert to my JRiver library to be able to navigate my (not too big) classical collection
Tidal stays my hand for now but it’s unless Roon offers solutions to some of the major classical issues , box sets for example, I see myself more and more drifting back to JRiver where I can better define my collection and how I navigate it
Quite an issue you have raised
Roon owning the database and it being open are not mutually exclusive. Say Roon were to buy allmusic, the public could still create an account with them and do what they do now. But we Roon users could notify Roon of incorrect metadata and have them take care of it no matter where the data is located.
But we are in violent agreement that it should be possible to represent all info in Roon via file tags. Even if I never leave Roon, I want the info in MY files.
While I have no problem with getting allmusic data delivered by Roon I don’t see that allmusic itself is very open right now. So some changes to its ToS would be required.
Maybe the all- sites are even on the market, now that Taptica merged with 1R. But if it would be clever for Roonlabs to invest into owning a metadata service I still doubt.
+1 on this. Why not create a separate service like dBpoweramp has for ripping - AccurateRip. It could be called MetaCorrect or something. Users could invest time in this - but service would be free. Roon would be using the service and if a user would prefer not to re-new subscription at least they could use this service with other software providers that could use it too. Just a thought.
Well said.
Roon is too small a fish to be buying anything.
There are severe copyright concerns with user- or community- created metadata, depending on what you’re talking about.
HOWEVER, there are areas where it can work:
—if a significant number of users combine two artist entries, Roon’s DB ought to be able to take notice and then correct itself;
—artist/performer credits
—Organizational scheme (work/composition/part etc.) for classical music
There are, I’m sure, others. The concern comes with possible contribution of copyrighted material. Especially after the latest EU legislation…
