Finding Neverland album has strange Primary Artist values

[Chris_Gelatt]

This is clearly coming from a bunch of different lists of people being listed as the “primary artist”, but it doesn’t make for a very useful value. Any chance this could be looked at? It’s the Finding Neverland recording with the original Broadway cast (product ID 602547430908).

Thanks!

[joel]

@Chris_Gelatt Thanks for reporting this Chris. This album is a bit of a mess. To help me figure out what’s going on, I need to know exactly which metadata Roon has pulled down from our metadata service. The following are useful:

• The Roon album cover
• The number of tracks
• The (Roon) track titles
• Whether or not you are preferring local (file tag) metadata for anything.

Also, please would you post a screenshot of your ARTIST file tags? Even if you are solely relying on Roon metadata, we do pull information from your file tags.

[Chris_Gelatt]

Sure. The Roon album cover is:

It has 21 tracks, and Roon’s titles for them are:

Finding Neverland: Act I: Prologue
Finding Neverland: Act I: If The World Turned Upside Down
Finding Neverland: Act I: All of London is Here Tonight
Finding Neverland: Act I: The Pirates of Kensington
Finding Neverland: Act I: Believe
Finding Neverland: Act I: We Own the Night
Finding Neverland: Act I: All That Matters
Finding Neverland: Act I: Sylvis’s Lullaby
Finding Neverland: Act I: Neverland
Finding Neverland: Act I: Circus of Your Mind
Finding Neverland: Act I: Live by The Hook
Finding Neverland: Act II: The World is Upside Down
Finding Neverland: Act II: What You Mean to Me
Finding Neverland: Act II: Play
Finding Neverland: Act II: We’re All Made of Stars
Finding Neverland: Act II: When Your Feet Don’t Touch the Ground
Finding Neverland: Act II: Something About This Night
Finding Neverland: Act II: Neverland (Reprise)
Finding Neverland: Act II: Finale
Finding Neverland: Act II: Play

I haven’t set any preferences for local metadata on this album for anything (and just double-checked that), so it should be preferring Roon’s for everything it can.

Looking at my artist file tags for this, though, it looks like that’s probably where these are coming from. I didn’t realize Roon pulled info from those. In track order, here’s what they are:

Original Broadway Cast of Finding Neverland, Howard Joines & Emily Grishman
Matthew Morrison, Howard Joines & Emily Grishman
Kelsey Grammer, Teal Wicks, Matthew Morrison, Howard Joines & Emily Grishman
Sawyer Nunes, Christopher Paul Richards, Hayden Signoretti, Noah Hinsdale, Howard Joines & Emily Grishman
Matthew Morrison, Laura Michelle Kelly, Aidan Gemme, Sawyer Nunes, Christopher Paul Richards, Alex Dreier, Howard Joines & Emily Grishman
Aidan Gemme, Matthew Morrison, Laura Michelle Kelly, Sawyer Nunes, Christopher Paul Richards, Alex Dreier, Howard Joines & Emily Grishman
Laura Michelle Kelly, Howard Joines & Emily Grishman
Laura Michelle Kelly, Howard Joines & Emily Grishman
Matthew Morrison, Laura Michelle Kelly, Howard Joines & Emily Grishman
Kelsey Grammer, Teal Wicks, Carolee Carmello, Howard Joines & Emily Grishman
Kelsey Grammer, Howard Joines & Emily Grishman
Matthew Morrison, Kelsey Grammer, Howard Joines & Emily Grishman
Matthew Morrison, Kelsey Grammer, Aidan Gemme, Christopher Paul Richards, Sawyer Nunes, Alex Dreier, Howard Joines & Emily Grishman
Matthew Morrison, Laura Michelle Kelly, Howard Joines & Emily Grishman
Kelsey Grammer, Laura Michelle Kelly, Matthew Morrison, Howard Joines & Emily Grishman
Sawyer Nunes, Aidan Gemme, Christopher Paul Richards, Alex Dreier, Howard Joines & Emily Grishman
Matthew Morrison, Aidan Gemme, Howard Joines & Emily Grishman
Kelsey Grammer, Chris Dwan, Matthew Morrison, Aidan Gemme, Howard Joines & Emily Grishman
Matthew Morrison, Laura Michelle Kelly, Carolee Carmello, Aidan Gemme, Christopher Paul Richards, Sawyer Nunes, Alex Dreier, Howard Joines & Emily Grishman
Carolee Carmello, Matthew Morrison, Aidan Gemme, Christopher Paul Richards, Sawyer Nunes, Alex Dreier, Howard Joines & Emily Grishman
Original Broadway Cast of Finding Neverland, Howard Joines & Emily Grishman

I didn’t see a setting to override those in Roon, though. Would my only option here be to edit the tags on my files?

Thanks for getting back to me on this, by the way.

[joel]

@Chris_Gelatt

Hi Chris,

The metadata for this album does not have any track level Main Performer credits, so we look for them in your file tags (even with Prefer Roon selected for “Main Performer Credits” in the Library Import Settings).

What we actually have here is a conflict between Roon’s metadata saying “there are no Main Performers on these tracks” and your ARTIST tags which are inherently ambiguous (ARTIST tags in general, not yours!) and which Roon takes to be Main Performer credits.

In short, you’ll need to edit your tags to clean this up. Exactly how you do this is up to you (including whether or not you consider there are any Main Performers on each track). The quickest way to do this whilst retaining your tag information could be to copy your ARTIST tags to PERFORMER tags, then delete the ARTIST tags. However, you may of course want to split these composite artist tag entries into one tag entry per artist.