In my collection, the metadata in Roon is almost always better than in the tags on the physical files. From time to time I export files to use in a portable media player. I’d like the metadata tags on those files to be replaced with the nice clean data from Roon, instead of the messed up tags on the original files.
Licensing with the metadata provider most likely disallows it. You are basically renting the metadata when using Roon.
I hadn’t thought of that. I’m sure you’re right.
There’s a number of ways that file tags simply come up short trying to capture our rich metadata. The most obvious example is multiple performers with the same name – when you’re using file tags, there can only be one Bill Evans – but you can read about some of the other distinctions here.
That said, when you use the Export feature, we’ll will write out your files using the metadata you see in Roon. There’s just no way to overwrite the tags in your files directly.
I understand there’s no way to replicate the richness of Roon metadata in file tags, but it would be nice to have the option to replace a few main tags with the Roon value, e.g. the album artist(s), album title and composer.
In any case, I’m glad it’s not a licensing issue.
We used to do more “organizing” of peoples music with Organized Folders, but no matter how scary and red we made the warnings, we found that people were repeatedly surprised when Roon made irreversible changes to their files.
So, from here on out, the only way Roon will likely ever make changes to your files is when you use the program to permanently delete them from your hard drive.
The export feature will update file tags in a new copy, but other than when deleting, we won’t ever modify your files in any way.
I’m not sure I’ve understood correctly - are you saying the metadata tags on the files are changed when doing an export?
I’ve just exported some files to an SD card to use in a player. The folder and file names match what’s in Roon, but the metadata tags don’t appear to.
I think we have a regression here – this definitely used to print files with tags that match what’s you’re seeing in app.
We’ll take a look, thanks for letting us know!
Thanks. I love it when a feature request becomes a bug report.
Just confirming that this is still happening in the latest release… is a fix slated for a future release? Thanks
Yup, some work on this happened last week, and we’re kicking off QA on the changes this week. Should be released soon, assuming no issues are found.
Thanks for your patience @matt!
Hi @mike
Sorry to report this still isn’t working for me. I did a quick spot check; some albums which have no composer set on the original file, but were identified in Roon, were exported with no composer.
Does this album have composers at the track level, or the album level?
Keep in mind that Roon has a lot of rich metadata at the artist, album, and composition level that won’t be exported to tags, as we documented in this article.
The recent work was focused on making sure performers/artists in Roon translate properly to file tags during export, but we do have some other improvements we’d like to make in this area, so that tag export can be as rich as possible.
That will take a little more time, but if we’re missing composer tags, that may just be a bug. Confirm that you’re seeing track level composer information missing from the exported files, and we can take another look. And thanks again for all the feedback @matt.
All works on the album are by the same composer, so I guess the composer is at the album level?
When I click on a track and choose View Credits… I see a composer:
But when I click on the same track and go to Edit -> Edit Track -> Edit Credits there’s no composer.
Definitely looks like we should get a composer in the tags after export, and I am getting them on a similar album in my collection.
Can you upload one of the exported files somewhere and send me a link?
Thanks, for the media @matt – I can reproduce 
Will open a ticket and follow up when this has been looked at by a developer. Thanks again for the nice crisp report here! 
Just reviving this topic for the benefit of anyone who comes across it… this works as expected now, Roon’s metadata is nicely copied to file tags when I export.
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It would be better to give us the ability to export directly in place.
Unless you explicitly choose to delete, Roon will never modify your files. If you want Roon metadata printed to file tags, you’ll need to make a copy.
I believe this feature is currently working as desired, so I’m going to close this thread.
If you have additional requests related to export or printing of file tags, let us know in a new Feature Request. Thanks!
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