The recent database issues some users experienced has got me thinking about what would be most upsetting for me if I lost my Roon database.
For me it would be the tags I included when I archived my CDs into plastic wallets and transferred them to the attic. My CDs were on numbered shelves (A1 - D15) with a sticker on the CD of its location.
I included this information as a tag on Roon as I had (and still have) a mental picture of the shelves and they indicate the period of purchase so a way I still often browse in Roon is by “shelf”.
Is there a way to add this information to metadata so that it could be retrieved in the event of failure - or for that matter if Roon folded or a better alternative came along.
Roon has very rudimentary tagging capabilities. If you want to build metadata, images, directory structures, labels and much more individually in an efficient, flexible and personal way, you have to look at Foobar2000.
The first step would be to export the tags with path.
Once the shelf is backed up in an Excel/Soundiiz spreadsheet, I will give further instructions to make the historical work more independent in future backup. Roon does not support automatic (re)import. This works only with ROONALBUMTAG and ROONTRACKTAG, but with more than one Value (Multivalue with ; is possible)
I therefore write all my information directly into the music file and take everything to any program (e.g. MP3Tag) that can also read my flexible tags.
Your only real option is embedding ROONALBUMTAG or some other file based tag in each track comprising your collection of albums.
If you’ve already embedded the tags in ROONALBUMTAG goto Albums view, select all, hit the 3 dot menu, select Export to Excel.
Open the spreadsheet and you’ll see a Tags column (last column in spreadsheet):
Now you’ll need to find a way to get those tags into your underlying files. I suspect @Uwe_Albrecht will have some ideas. Mine involve Python or bash, probably not your preferred approach.
Looking at it a little more closely, you’re likely to have to export tracks also and do a vlookup between the two tables to marry tracks to albums and thus be able to assign the ROONALBUMTAG to the individual tracks. The Tracks listing at least includes a path to the track, so you have something to work with. Why the path to the album is not included in the album export is beyond me as its absence only serves to limit the export’s utility.
With ROONALBUMTAG or ROONTRACKTAG it is very easy for computer users. Roon knows it, Excel knows it and Foobar or MP3Tag embed it with a few simple steps.
