Funny, I was looking into this as well and this topic pops-up.
So I follow what Roon recommends or at least automatically configured: Various Artists. The only additional parameter I set is add an additional artist which is the DJ mixing the specific album or disc.
The albums appear on the DJ artist page and are still considered VA.
@ericafterdark That’s what I was looking into doing - having the album artist as various artists, and having the DJ as a primary artist link.
For me, that’s not what Room has scrapes as default though. Many albums have the album artist and primary artist listed as the DJ. It does look tidier that way, but is less correct.
Because DJ Marcello wasn’t mentioned as album artist on the cover. Was also sorted into the various artists section in store, right?
This is not the same as with my example for Andrea Parker. @extracampine’s example might be one on the edge, but I think the studio/publisher made its intention clear by crediting the Mix-DJs on the cover.
As already written, the metadata providers and Roon just follow the given leads here.
Thoughts: It’s a different thing if a DJ gets a record deal for an album to show-of his/her skills and where he/she is free to chose the mix set (tracks used) versus a studio/label contracting a DJ to mix their latest hit collection of associate performers. It might be hard tough for others not involved to decide for a given album what was the case – so we have to go with the clues given (cover art credits, inlay credits).
Interesting, zeker. Whether the DJ is choosing the tracks or not influencing the album artist/artist. Can go quite deep here!
Just another bad(?) example for “Following the lead”:
Listed in stores, by metadata providers (all the ones I looked into at least) and Roon in the end as Show Me Heaven by Maria McKee. In fact, it is a three track take out of the soundtrack to Days of Thunder, all tracks performed by different artist – so a classic case of VA-single?
Also in this case it’s upon the user to decide if he/she is happy with that result or wants to change things in Roon (because all the others do it the wrong way). 
He is indeed not mentioned on the cover, but is on the back. It was also advertised as mixed by Marcello iirc.
Going by the credits as published on Discogs (DJ Mix, Compilation Producer) I agree that he should be listed as primary artist for that album (series). Sadly it looks like Roon’s primary metadata provider doesn’t know about that release and the metadata on MusicBrainz seems to disagree (only credited for DJ Mix there).
As everyone can participate on MusicBrainz, you might want to try and edit the entry there if the entry is wrong and Discogs has it right?
If he’s just mixed the album, rather than made or produced the individual tracks, then the album artist should still be “various artists”. He could then be added as a primary artist link, or one of the more specific fields. Thing is, it’s nice to be able to click on the DJs name on the album page to be taken to a page with all his works.
Yes, this is what I did.
Is what I interpret as
I can’t understand why an artist with a record deal should be denied the right to be credited as album artist.
I think it’s because “album artist” refers to the artist that made all the songs on the album. For compilations, there is no single album artist and so the tag is “various artists”. The issue is where to put the DJ. I guess “primary artist link” is the only option really.
Go tell that the classical fans that regularly have Composers, Conductors, Soloists, … listed as album artists. Roon seems to be the only source that allows for primary artist besides album artist at all (AFAIK mostly because of the mess with classical credits). I surely don’t want to search my Andrea Parker album in Various Artists.
Update
In an attempt to clarify things a bit more – but maybe makes the matter only more complicated: The Album Artist tag is not a specific credit per se (all the tracks in their entirety where performed by only those individuals and groups listed therein), that’s why so many different, specific credit roles exist and, as is often the case with metadata, the “whole mess” is just because there is no clear and easy to follow rule and therefore varying interpretations exist depending on genre/studio/publisher/label/popular belief/… . As I see it used in the wild, the album artist tag is possibly best described as some kind of dedication.
As I already wrote in the Andrea Parker example (here even more detailed), if you look into the credits tab of said album she’s listed as Mix-DJ (for all tracks, a performer credit) and as Remixing, Producer (for all tracks, two producer credits). So there is no misunderstanding that she did not perform all the tracks on that album by herself – there are individual Primary Artist/Performer credits for all the tracks (the same principle that is also used for VA-albums). But she is the only performer/producer credited for all tracks and so the common denominator/connecting link of the whole album.
Ah…I have a lot of local classical files but haven’t really tackled those yet. Another kettle of fish maybe 
In this Zero 7 example, one song is re-mixed by 5 different DJ/Remixers.
I think what this highlights is that in roon you can set credits at a track or at an album level or both. This is not uncommon. To me in this case it makes more sense to use performer credits like “Mix-DJ” at a track level and a producer credit like “Compiled By” at an album level.
I am sure the information is available if you look hard enough but I really couldn’t find who actually compiled the album and roon’s metadata suppliers do not seem to have made the distinction. It may have been a record exec, maybe he needed sign-off by band management or even the band. Contractual arrangements probably drove the choices. I don’t know. I have no doubt there are fans that do care about who made the compilation so apologies in advance but to be honest I don’t 
. So I just gave Zero 7 a primary artist credit as I just want the re-mix album to show up in searches on the band.
This is an album of remixes (different DJs/Remixer have remixed one or more tracks of the album/primary artist). So technically it’s still the same track performed by the same group or individual, just mixed differently (a “remaster” but in a creative way) often also containing new samples provided by the remixer. So not what I would understand by the term “DJ mix album”, where a series of tracks is mixed by a DJ to overlap/match/blend seamlessly into the respective next track in the series.
Using Mix-DJ instead of one of the Remixing credits seems to be wrong to me for such cases and I would have expected from Roon to get this right for identified albums (and a check reveals it should be identified actually).
Why did you have to tag this album yourself? Did the typo (Remixed versus Remixes) maybe trick Roon’s auto identification? Was the quality of the provided metadata insufficient or poor?
When I look into my library, all such albums I own are identified in Roon and (IMO) correctly tagged without the need for me lay hand on album credits. Example:
Maybe you have misunderstood my post? I haven’t re-tagged anything in this album.
The typo in the title has come through because I have Album Title set to prefer file because I have a consistent convention with Classical music that I find easier to navigate. I have now corrected the typo, so thanks. But it didn’t stop roon identifying the album and there was no significant editing / tagging on my part.
My own personal preference would be that on an album of this type where the mixing clearly has a creative or stylistic intent rather than a purely engineering intent that the credits would reflect that. A performer or even an arranger credit of some sort rather than a production credit. Quickly checking this album I can see that the mixing credits are production credits:
But I hasten to add I am not in the slightest motivated to manually tag albums of this sort and will generally just accept what roon identifies. I might change the primary artist if I prefer to navigate in a different way or add a few genres for much the same reason. That doesn’t means that I agree with roon’s or roon’s metadata suppliers or your preferences or choices for that matter.
Yes, (re)mixing and (re)mastering are considered to be studio/production steps/tasks.
DJing, on the other hand, is considered a performance and was performed live on stage in front of an audience in order to be perceived as a (then) new type of performance art in the first place and ultimately to receive its role name DJ (Disk Jockey). As other musical performances too, it can also be done in studios and/or without audience, a typical case when taking/creating recordings.
But watching one or more individuals live on stage while they are remixing a single track? I wouldn’t consider buying a ticket for that show. 
Many do, including myself. But clearly as part of a larger disco come concert event. The point you make doesn’t make any sense and isn’t even related to the point I was trying to make.
So, trying again. I listen to a lot of different types of music and what is “mixing” varies between genres. I would like to be able to distinguish between this type of mixer:
And this type of mixer
Clearly one is a sound engineer and he is not selling tickets to watch/listen to him mixing Yo-Yo Ma’s latest master tapes. But 20 years a go I would have paid to go to a live mixing by one of the Bugz in the Attic’s collective on the Zero 7 mix compilation. This is obviously an extreme example but I would in general prefer that production mixing and performance mixing or even composer mixing were separate somehow in roon. That distinction, or how to achieve that in roon is not clear to me.
Yes DJs and producers – depending on the occasion.
Many musicians are multi-instrumentalists but if they only play the guitar on a given album they also only get credited for playing the guitar. There are composers that are also performers but if they only act as composer on a given album they also only get credited as composer. There are performers that own their own studio/record company where they also act as producers for other performers, clearly they don’t get credited as performer if they only acted as producer on a given album.
What you asking for is having a given group always credited as performer no matter the actual roll they had on a given album. That will likely never happen, at least not automatically.
See also:
I really don’t understand where you are getting that from or how you could possibly draw such a conclusion from anything I have posted. I like many other have multitude examples of artists with multiple roles. Singer-Songwriters anyone? I have 19,000 plus composers in my library, the vast majority of whom also get performance credits. It’s just one example. My preference is that all artists are credited with all roles they have performed.
It turns out that roon is able to distinguish between performer remixers, composer remixers and production remixers:
Performer:
Composer
Production
The above are just examples. Roon supports a lot of variations on mixing and remixing in all three categories of performer, composer and production.
My experience is that these distinctions are not clear in roon’s metadata or applied in a consistent way. Some who are expert in these genres may have some examples where the distinctions are clear. But that is not what I see. Having said that it certainly doesn’t motivate me to re-tag or edit in any significant way. I usually make the primary artist whoever compiled/mixed the album and delete Various Artists because I don’t like the clutter and its not adding anything. I only really use Various Artists for large boxsets of original (unmixed) tracks. Others appear to do things differently. I think some simple rules of thumb like this are closer to what the OP was originally asking.
