If you search for “Bang on a Can All Stars” (a group derived from the first), you’ll get 24 albums, including “Music for Airports” – which is correctly attributed to “Bang on a Can”. (“Music for Airports” is in fact first in popularity.)
If you search “Music for Airports”, it comes up in Roon search.
It also comes up if you search “Bang on a Can All Stars”. Technically, it was an All Stars album rather than a Bang on a Can album. Maybe Roon is just a little more precise in its metadata.
Wikipedia also shows the album in the discography for Bang on a Can, which makes sense, as “All Stars” is a particular configuration of Bang on a Can.
With respect, I suggest that the question isn’t whether there is an interpretation where Roon got it right. Rather it should be whether when someone suggests Bang on a Can’s version of “Music for Airports” to me, Roon’s search interface to Tidal and Qobuz isn’t inferior to their direct interfaces.
All I was hoping for was a response from Roon to the effect of “thanks for the bug report. It will help as we continue to improve search.” That’s why I referenced the “search is hard” post. There was a time in my career when reported bugs for a living; it’s not something I do just to feel superior.
The Airport album was 1988. The Bang on a Can All Stars were formed in 1992, so I get why the OP is confused. So am I.
Bang on a Can / All Stars is at the end of the day a Classical ensemble and I see all the same issues from the way roon is handling the evolution of ensemble name equivalencing in Classical. Many orchestras with deep catalogues are more than 100 years old now or at least 70+ from the post-war period. Many have gone through numerous name changes, especially radio orchestras with both strong live and recording traditions.
The parallels of this case are striking but in an Electronic, Cross Over Classical context. In general roon will equivalence all Classical ensemble name iterations to the last “official” name however confusing this is in terms of album art, sleeve notes, or even the most commonly used name stemming from the most productive period of the ensemble. But its certainly not a uniformly, consistently applied rule. I don’t have the impression much attention was ever paid to this and it leads to all sorts of problems when searching based on album art. This case is far from unique or an “edge” case.
