… and that’s the reason why you don’t see a genre for those qobuz albums; I think it works as designed. No genre file tags = no genres for imported qobuz albums.
An option: “Use genres from Roon’s database for Streaming services (only)” could help in this case – would be a Feature Request, I think.
I checked the genre matching (for the album above), Classical is matched correctly, but I don’t see “Keyboard” and “Concerto” genres. Is this what’s causing it?
I just changed to use the Prefer from files for most of the tags because the album order view is better for me.
Since you have Use genres from Roon’s metadata database set to No, Roon will not use it’s own genres for content that is added to your library, including streaming services.
Could you please let me know if your reply is for my question on the genre matching or the missing genre after import.
If you notice, I also have set the album artist, title, etc to prefer file but get the information correctly after importing from Qobuz so I presume that you are getting metadata information from Qobuz so why is genre Different?
I just switched back to use Roon’s genre and the genre is showing on those imported albums. May I know how are you getting those Genres? Is it because the albums are identified?
In this case I was specifically referring to the example in the screenshots above — Once the Qobuz album is added to your library, it doesn’t show genres because Roon is set to not use genres unless they’re from file tags (which there are none for a Qobuz album).
Prefer File is a bit different. As the name suggests, the preference is to use file tags, but if they don’t exist it will fall back to Roon data. Genres are a bit different, though — The option for Use genres from Roon’s metadata database is not a preference, it’s an on/off switch. If set to No, Roon’s genres will not be used.
We have a variety of different sources that this genre data may come from.
We do have this data from Qobuz for their albums in Roon, but they’re not actual file tags — They’re handled the same as data we would receive from other sources, so choosing to not use Roon data will cause these to not be used by Roon.
For best results, yes, I would recommend using Roon’s genre data.
They are not file tags because the come from the api, same as other fields from Qobuz and/or Tidal.
My understanding is that during album addition from Qobuz and Tidal as well as when new files are added, Roon picks up the tags and save it locally in the database. Is this correct?
Could you please let me know why the difference in process for the genre (or other fields if they have) between file based and api based. I just want to understand the reason behind why file based genre is saved as file’s tag but api based is saved as Roon’s tag.
No. That is not how Roon works. Roon is not using the streaming service API directly during the import process. By default, Roon uses its own metadata service (in the cloud) and, by default, populates your local Roon database (for your own Library) using Roon’s metadata.
This KB article on how Roon handles Genres might help to clarify further. Some people have curated their own local collection of albums and tracks (i.e. local files in local Storage locations) very carefully using file tag metadata. For them, Roon offers the option of letting them prefer their file tag metadata using Import Settings. See this KB article for more information.
Import Settings only apply to local files. They are not relevant for, and have no effect whatsoever on albums and tracks streamed from Qobuz or Tidal.
Thank you for your reply.
Unfortunately, I am one of those people who have curated my tags meticulously (borderline ocd, even I think)
I first use songkong to have the tags filled in, then, use metadatics to further refine it the way I like, then run a script running some metaflac commands on each tracks to even further refine the tags to the way I like them to be.
So I use most of the tags using file as to me it’s my best option.
It bugs me that this is now broken to me just because genre is not populating automatically for tracks from qobuz. (One of the implication is that there is no composed by information on each classical tracks, as you can see on my first post above)
That would have the effect of using the genres assigned to Qobuz tracks by Roon, and also use your file tag metadata for genres for your local files. Best of both worlds, I would have thought?
So “use genres from Roon’s metadata database” is used only for Qobuz/Tidal, and
Use Genres extracted from file tags is used only for file based.
Is my assumption correct?
I guess my confusion is from the “roon metadata database” wordings. It should be “Use Genres from Roon’s database for Streaming services only” as @anon47919701 suggested earlier.
First, Roon uses genres as applying to Albums. This is different in meaning to the ID3 tag. The ID3 genre tag is used to define the genre of an individual track. There is no ID3 tag that has the meaning “genre of the Album”.
If you have both settings on then Roon will simply use both sources (its own metadata service and the ID3 genre tags - if they exist in your local files) to generate what it considers to be the genre of each album as a whole. So you’ll almost certainly get additional genres appearing.
Genres have a hierarchy, and if you have the “use genres from file tags” set on, then you can edit the mapping of this hierarchy to suit yourself. See here for more information on editing genres.
I understand that the genre from Qobuz is not a tag, because it is not file based. But doesn’t it become part of that track/album’s metadata (regardless of the source)?
So it is not possible to use genres only from files and Qobuz?
May I know what you do with the genre you get from the api?
In any case, I’m using the setup Geoff suggested and it seems to work for now.
“Known to Roon” means that Roon has identified the album or track, and has metadata for it in its metadata service (the Roon database in the cloud).
“Known to Qobuz” means these are albums and tracks in the Qobuz streaming service, with Qobuz metadata. Because Qobuz is integrated into Roon, then by definition, all the Qobuz albums and tracks are known to Roon. Because Roon uses metadata from a number of sources, Roon’s metadata for the Qobuz albums and tracks could, in theory, be different, but I suspect that for the majority of cases it will be the same - Roon will simply re-use the Qobuz metadata. However, only the Roon Labs team can give the definitive answer here.
“In your library” means the collection of albums and tracks that goes to make up your Library. Some of these will be local files (Albums/Tracks in local Storage); others will have been added from Qobuz. Some (most) of this material will also be known to Qobuz and/or Roon, so there are overlaps.
Because of these overlaps, it is not possible to “use genres only from files and Qobuz” - the Genre settings are additive (the purple area), and not exclusive. If they were exclusive, then the Venn diagram would look like this:
Only, if you can live with Roon genres added to your local files as well – which may not always be the preferred way, like when one maintains a genre system which differs from the one Roon uses.
A setting to use Roon genres only if there are none present (like for streaming services) could help, but as mentioned, that’s not part of the current feature set.
I’m not sure it would, because surely the end result will be the mixing of genres (Roon’s and your own) in any case. The best that can be done is to edit the hierarchy to reflect your preferred genre hierarchy and list.as far as possible.