Discogs as metadata source

[VOBOSHI]

Hello, all!

Please excuse me if this post in any way duplicates an existing Feature Request. I’m probably dumber than average, but I could not find any other post about this…

Has the development team considered Discogs as a source for metadata? I find that for Electronic releases, especially lesser-known ones, there are no Genres in Roon, while Discogs will (usually) feature Genres as well as Styles.

Thank you for your time.

[philr]

It’s coming.

Discogs data for UNKLE Sounds?

We’ve done some investigation and, as mentioned elsewhere, we are planning to integrate Discogs data into Roon’s database. We’re hoping to kick off this work soon, but I want to be clear about what’s involved. Discogs data is very very broad, and is likely to touch the vast majority of albums in the database, as well as adding a significant number of releases. One of the reasons Roon requires a subscription is that as our database improves, the information we display about your library is updat…

[Coz]

Has Discogs source been implemented yet?, my guess would be no I also listen to a lot of electronic music thats unidentified.

[joel]

Discogs data for UNKLE Sounds?

The underlying architectural changes required to integrate Discogs (and other metadata sources too) are underway, but it’s a big project with broader goals than just integrating additional metadata – think quarters instead of months So, we are laying the groundwork, but the actual work is still a little ways out. It will be worth it though.

[Occamsrazor]

Any update on this? Discogs seems to have a lot of information, some not available on Allmusic or Musicbrainz, that would be nice to get into Roon.

[Charles_Snider (Chas Sniding)]

Agreed, please!

[pscreed]

Count me as another interested in this effort!

[Henrik_Richter_Schie]

Is this still on the roadmap? It would fix soooo many of my issues with Roon (hopefully)

[bluhska (Marcus)]

Hello Roon team and @Joel as the member posting in this thread. Is there an update to including Discogs as a metadata source?

[joel]

Is there an update to including Discogs as a metadata source

Some things don’t pan out as originally thought and/or other things get bumped up the priority list. There is no update at this time other than to confirm that we would still like to incorporate some aspects of Discogs metadata; however it’s not just a technical or prioritization problem, and it’s not imminent.

[bluhska (Marcus)]

There is no update at this time

Okay, no drama. Are there other options in the pipeline that you might disclose? An overwhelming proportion of my collection is not identified or incorrectly identified, and before I begin to do it all myself I’d like to know if the situation will improve at all

[Fernando_Pereira]

I just posted a recent specific case elsewhere:

Unidentified album with excellent Discogs metadata

I’ve just acquired the album below, which has very detailed metadata on Discogs: However, Roon can’t find it, even with extensive tweaking of the search fields. This is unfortunate, because the album’s label, Clean Feed, seems to upload very detailed metadata to Discogs:

It’s not that I care about Discogs per se, but having no access to metadata for a very active independent label with 100s of albums is kind of sad. More broadly, what could Roon do to bring more independent labels into its metadata stream? Even when some metadata is available on Roon for many of the independent labels I buy from, it requires messing around with search fields to find it, and it is sorely incomplete. Very recent examples with very minimal or no metadata, not automatically identified (I have lots more):

• Ganymede, Matt Brewer, Criss Cross Jazz
• In the Shadow of a Cloud, Yelena Eckemoff Quintet, L & H Production
• Desert, Yelena Eckemoff, L & H Production
• Terrible Animals, Lage Lund, Criss Cross Jazz
• Outliers, Stephan Crump Rosetta Trio, Papillon Sounds (via Bandcamp)
• Shamania, Marilyn Mazur, Rare Noise Records

[Panagiotis_Koutris]

I have the same problem. Greek music is not recognized. But almost everything that I have is in discogs.

[bluhska (Marcus)]

I agree. Everything I’ve purchased from Bandcamp is never identified, or identified as a CD. It is making me reconsider my loyalty to Roon, and revoking my subscription.

[Speed_Racer (Threatened Dinosaur)]

Let’s all remember that Roon is NOT a metadata creator and will never have the staff available to do that job. That means Roon must leverage the data other companies have.

To do this, Roon must first get each company with the data Roon wants to agree to let them access it. I suspect this usually requires some kind of financial agreement which adds complications. Then, Roon must have access to the data in a way they can consume. This method can’t change all the time either. So this would probably require some work from the metadata provider. Finally, metadata owners may have “requirements” for those that access their data that may make it difficult for Roon to agree to their terms.

This all adds up to potential problems.

The path to take is one of patience, not threatening to revoke your subscription especially considering what Bandcamp is. Does anyone have metadata for Bandcamp downloads? As far as independents go, or any label, do they publish metadata? Or is all metadata either crowdsourced or entered by people at XYZ metadata company?

If the answers to this problem were simple, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I can see keeping this topic fresh and in Roon’s face. But, threatening Roon is not going to get anyone anywhere.

[Fernando_Pereira]

To add to your points:

• I’ve explicitly asked Bandcamp a while ago, they do not take or want to take responsibility for metadata.
• Some independents seem to provide metadata to for instance Discogs.
• There’s a vacuum in metadata from independents that some organization/company could try to fill, why not Roon? After all, most independents are adding (sometimes mediocre) ID3 tags to any digital downloads they provide, so it would not be so difficult to offer a simple metadata upload that ingests those ID3 tags in some convenient format (JSON?) and redistributes them.

[Speed_Racer (Threatened Dinosaur)]

If Bandcamp won’t provide metadata for their releases where are you going to get the data?? Figure it out on the fly? That’s not going to work.

Some independents? That’s not encouraging.

Why not Roon? I don’t think Roon wants to be in the data creation business. Roon is a consumer of data. Also, who would pay for it? Roon would have to increase prices to pay for the staff to identify, find, and enter the data. That’s not going to be cheap. I just don’t see a good business reason to take that on. I think Roon would rather lose a small subset of customers.

[Henrik_Richter_Schie]

Which is exactly why Discogs is the perfect place for Roon to get their metadata. It’s a user-driven, well updated database with usually all the info Roon needs and more, not only for independents but for everything, and an easy way to update whenever info/data is missing.

[Speed_Racer (Threatened Dinosaur)]

Which is exactly why Discogs is the perfect place for Roon to get their metadata.

Sure. Guess what, this has been addressed:

Discogs data for UNKLE Sounds?

We’ve done some investigation and, as mentioned elsewhere, we are planning to integrate Discogs data into Roon’s database. We’re hoping to kick off this work soon, but I want to be clear about what’s involved. Discogs data is very very broad, and is likely to touch the vast majority of albums in the database, as well as adding a significant number of releases. One of the reasons Roon requires a subscription is that as our database improves, the information we display about your library is updat…

Discogs as metadata source

Some things don’t pan out as originally thought and/or other things get bumped up the priority list. There is no update at this time other than to confirm that we would still like to incorporate some aspects of Discogs metadata; however it’s not just a technical or prioritization problem, and it’s not imminent.

So, as I said, it’s good to keep this issue in front of the Roon folks. But be fair in the process of doing so.