Keith Richard is a Composer (Composer View) but Paul Simon is not.
I have two libraries pointed to Roon. In the Itunes library, i have edited out all composers except those associated with Classical music as defined by Genre. In the other library, i have not been so proactive and many pop / rock files have various composers.
When you view Composers through Roon, it seems that mainly, the Composers i have allowed via iTunes are represented and none of the second library’s much more extensive list of composers are represented. In this regard almost all (85%) of the Composers shown represent Classical works. yeah!
However, there are some exceptions, of which Keith is one. Why is it that Keith is recognized in the Roon Composer view for over 100 works when Mick is not recognized as a “Composer” at all. Why is Pete Seeger, Smokey Robinson and Johnny Mercer recognized but not Oscar Peterson, Paul Simon, or Elvis Costello?
If you do some site searches I believe you’ll find that the reasoning/logic is based on how many albums you have by a specific non-classical artist. So, if you have a lot of Stones albums, Keith will suddenly ‘appear’ as a listed composer. Why Mick doesn’t I don’t know.
Interestingly, you’re looking to purge the non-classical composers from what Roon shows you (no problem with that desire), while I have the opposite problem. I am disappointed that Roon (in an effort to save pop-rock fans from incredibly lengthy lists of multiple composers on lots of songs from appearing & making the interface ugly) has basically issued a behavioral ‘edict’ that “Roon will only show you non-classical composers via our in-house algorithm.”
I want to see all the pop-rock composers listed on all songs on all albums (and I want to edit them when they’re wrong)…I hope in the future (or better yet, for 1.3) there will be a way to enable/disable this.
Should also add that you don’t need to own a lot of albums by a group/artist for some of the songs to show the composer. For instance, let’s say you own one Byrds album. That album has a Dylan cover on it. You probably won’t see whether McGuinn, Clark, Crosby, Hillman, or Clarke wrote the other songs, but Dylan will show as a composer if you a): own a lot of Dylan albums and/or b): collectively, have a lot of Dylan covers scattered throughout your collection. At least I think it works somewhat like that.
I should note that for casual fans of non-classical music (usually people whose main interest is classical music), this Roon algorithm appears to work really well. Composers don’t pop up like bunnies all over your miscellaneous pop-rock unless Roon deems the composer ‘important.’ It’s just that in my case, I want the option to see every little bunny there might be…
I would like Roon to separate classical, jazz and other composers. The current composer view is of little benefit especially for classical which I want to browse by composer without seeing unrelated composers.
Have you tried selections focus and then classical from the composer view?
Roon’s definition of classical can still be quite broad but this helps a lot. If you want to go further then select rock and then click the plus sign to make it a minus sign. Do the same with jazz and this will eliminate those jazz and rock artists that did some “classical” as well.
This view is persistent every time you go back to composer but you can easily change it. Or if you want to easily get to slightly different composer views you can customize them with focus and then bookmark them.
@philr, interesting thoughts. Thanks. I look forward to exploring. I didn’t think about using Focus like that.
@trtlrock - Many thanks - I appreciate you sharing this information - also new to me. I also have no problem with your desire to be inclusive on Composers …but wonder how Artist or Album Artist does not satisfy…? Happy to understand but not requesting an explanation.
