Summary
Please add an option—similar to existing metadata preferences—to choose the lyrics source for a track/album: Use Roon-provided lyrics or Use embedded file lyrics (tags).
Background / Problem
Roon’s lyrics are great when they match our needs, but in real-world libraries they often don’t:
- Language mismatch: The lyrics shown can be in a different language than the one I want (e.g., translated lyrics when I prefer original, or vice versa). i.e. Language options for lyrics
- Errors / incorrect versions: Roon lyrics may contain mistakes, be incomplete, or be for a different edit/live version.
- User-curated lyrics: Many of us maintain our own lyrics in file tags (including translations, romanization, or corrected text).
- No easy override: Currently, if Roon provides lyrics, it tends to take precedence, and the only practical workaround is to make the album “Unidentified” or otherwise break identification—sacrificing the benefits of Roon metadata for the whole album.
This makes lyrics management inconsistent and time-consuming, especially for multilingual collections.
Requested Feature
Add a Lyrics Source preference, ideally at multiple scopes:
- Per track (most important)
- Per album (useful for whole releases)
- Optional: global default (library-wide)
Proposed options:
- Auto (default) – current behavior
- Prefer Roon lyrics
- Prefer Embedded lyrics (from tags such as
LYRICS/UNSYNCEDLYRICS, etc.) - (Optional) Embedded only / Roon only for strict control
Expected Behavior / UI Ideas
- In the track/album “Edit” screen (where other metadata preferences exist), add a dropdown: Lyrics Source.
- When set to “Prefer Embedded,” Roon displays embedded lyrics whenever present, and only falls back to Roon lyrics if embedded lyrics are missing.
- If both exist, optionally show a small switch in the lyrics panel to quickly compare (not required, but nice-to-have).
Benefits
- Lets users keep Roon identification and rich metadata without losing control of lyrics.
- Supports multilingual users and custom translations.
- Reduces support requests and frustration around “wrong language lyrics” and “wrong version lyrics.”
- Aligns with Roon’s philosophy of letting users manage metadata preferences cleanly.
Notes / Edge Cases
- Many users store translations or romanization in embedded lyrics. Even a simple “Prefer Embedded” toggle would solve most cases.
- If Roon can detect multiple embedded lyrics fields in the future, that could be expanded—but the core ask is just a source preference.
Example
I manually embedded corrected lyrics and my own translation for some tracks. Right now the only way to make Roon show them is to unidentify the album, which is not ideal. A per-track/per-album lyrics source toggle would solve this cleanly.