Missing composition property: Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert. Example for a very common problem

[Suedkiez (Just a fellow user like you)]

Content you’re reporting an issue with

Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert (Live at the Royal Albert Hall)

Have you made any edits to this content in Roon?

In part.

• The Roon album title is “Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert (Live at the Royal Albert Hall” and I removed the redundant Royal Albert Hall.
• Added track recording dates and location.

Is the album identified in Roon?

Yes, The Qobuz download, Tidal and Qobuz streaming are all identified, but it seems like Tidal and the Qobuz download versions share one set of metadata, while the Qobuz streaming version uses a different set somehow. Although there is only one version in the list when you do Edit > Identify.

• Qobuz streaming has composition properties. Tidal and Qobuz download does not
• Qobuz streaming has 0 rating stars, Tidal version and Qobuz download has 4.
• Qobuz streaming has the correct recording date, November 5, 2922. Tidal and Qobuz download both use the incorrect album recording date that is printed on the CD booklet, November 5, 2023.
• Qobuz streaming has no TiVo review, Tidal and Qobuz download do.
• Qobuz streaming has fewer credits, Tidal and Qobuz download are more complete.

Is this content from local files, TIDAL, or Qobuz?

All three, and they differ

Screenshot of import settings

Description of the issue

This is a very common issue that does not just affect this album: Some tracks don’t have a composition property and then you can’t add it, either. In the case of this album, the Qobuz streaming version has it for all tracks, but the Tidal version and the Qobuz download version only have the property in the first track, so the tracks don’t appear as recordings of the composition and it is impossible to merge them into the composition manually.

The Cat Power album is a cover of the whole Bob Dylan Bootleg Vol 4, The “Royal Albert Hall” concert, so every track should be a recording of a Dylan track.

This is the hires Qobuz streaming version of the album. Every track has in its context menu the option “Go to composition”, and they are all recognized as recordings of the appropriate Dylan track. (Note: I had to manually merge some tracks into the Dylan composition, e.g. because track 2 is written “4th Time Around” in the Dylan composition but “Fourth Time Around” on the Cat Power album. However, the composition browser listed all compositions for the Cat Power album, so this was not a problem):

This is the Tidal version of the album and it’s the same for the Qobuz download version. Only the 1st track has a “Go To Composition” entry in the context menu, so only the 1st one displays the other recordings:

This is despite the tracks having a composer credit:

Because the tracks are not recognized as compositions, they are not listed in the composition browser and therefore not possible to merge them into the correct Dylan composition.

The same issue happens with the Qobuz hires download of this album that I just purchased and imported. So now I have better metadata in the Qobuz streaming version than the download version. But when I try to re-identify in the hope that a different offered version would fix it, there is only one version offered by Roon:

As mentioned, missing composition properties are a very common problem - apparently (as far as anyone could tell) the composition property has to come from the metadata provider, and if it does not, then you can’t make it appear, with the result that these tracks are never listed as recordings of a composition and no way to force it. This is hugely annoying. There are many discussions about this over the years, see examples below (and note the many links to other threads from these examples.).

IMHO, any track that has a composer should be a regarded as a composition, and the user should have at least the option to manually merge it into a composition. Online metadata will always be incomplete, so this should not prevent users from fixing it.

"Show library counts for recordings" not finding all versions of a song

Roon Core Machine NUC 8 (NUC8i5BEH), 8GB memory, 256GB NVMe M.2 storage, Roon Optimized Core Kit Roon build: v2.0 build 1244 Networking Gear & Setup Details NUC is ethernet connected to router Connected Audio Devices Number of Tracks in Library number of tracks: 4963 Description of Issue I have a number of songs with the same title by different artists on different albums. I have “Show library counts for recordings” set to “yes” on all devices. In the track listing for an a…

What constitutes a Composition?

I have a lot of cases where a song is not recognized as a Composition. What does it take to force a track to be a composition? Here’s an example. This is an Identified album of various artists. Note that Otis Spann is both a performer and composer (tracks 3 and 4). Note the submenu does not show Go To Composition: [image] Within Otis Spann I have him as Performer but not as a Composer: [image] And these two tracks do not show up in Composition menu option. Shouldn’t every non-cla…

[Wolfgang_Schneider]

I have the exact same problem with the files I ripped from my CD.
The album is cerrectly identified and therefore the composer is filled but just the first track is a proper composition.

[Suedkiez (Just a fellow user like you)]

Yes, it’s a ubiquitous problem. In addition to the links in my above post, further examples are in the thread where I posted the below explanation (and the other posts in this thread), the links to other threads below the post with the explanation, and further links from these other threads.

"Show library counts for recordings" not finding all versions of a song

If a track is not included in the count as an additional recording, click the three-dot menu on the right of this track. [image] Does it contain a “Go to composition” entry like this, which is a track that has other recordings? [image] Or is it missing like this? [image]

I thought I’d take the Cat Power opportunity to report it properly here

I note that this post by @joel from 2017 (with my bolding) doesn’t actually describe the current behavior accurately as far as I can tell. Maybe this means that the current situation is not as intended and there is hope to get it fixed

@joel

@David_Boyd Hi Dave. Under the hood, all tracks with composers are compositions and, indeed, you can view them in the Compositions browser (Menu → Compositions). However, we’ll only give you a link from the Album Details page if either of the following apply:

• There is more than one Performance of the Composition.
• We have some rich metadata about the Composition (typically a classical composition or a very well known popular composition; e.g. Eleanor Rigby).

Hope that helps.

[Wolfgang_Schneider]

Thank you - especially the last posting mentioning that every track with a composer should be an composition for roon was unknown for me.
Has there beeen any reaction from Support team so for regarding your ‚ticket‘?

[Suedkiez (Just a fellow user like you)]

Nope not yet

[joel]

I’m not 100% exactly what is happening on your Roon Server, but this is probably what’s happening:

1. Ironically, the Qobuz HiRes streaming album has the worst metadata on our Cloud servers*. It has no linked compositions, but it does have Dylan as the composer on every track. On your local Roon Server, the Server’s composition equivalence code kicks in and seems able to match up every composition to existing Dylan compositions in your library.

2. Clearly, the backend composition equivalence code is not working as well as in the Roon Server (or at all). We need to investigate why. If we can resolve this in the Cloud, you’d have no work to do in your library.

3. I think (but would need to verify) that the presence of a single identified composition in the Cloud metadata (on track 1) prevents addition / equivalence of a composition on the local Server for any other track on the album. There would have been some logic in coding things this way but if this is the case, we may need to revisit this. This is the metadata used for the TIDAL version and the Qobuz download version.

* As an aside, for some reason, this isn’t the same metadata as the TIDAL and Qobuz download version; we need to look into that.

[Suedkiez (Just a fellow user like you)]

Thanks, and if you can fix this example, I would be very grateful.

But just to emphasize again, the missing composition property (no „Go to composition“ in the track menu and hence no way to merge into existing compositions if Roon doesn’t get it right) is in no way limited to this album and I can provide endless examples (some of which in the many linked threads). Something seems fundamentally wrong here

[joel]

@Suedkiez

just to emphasize again, the missing composition property

Noted. /10char

[Wolfgang_Schneider]

Hi Joel,

thanks for your reply. Just as further information: I got the same problem with the same local album and I don‘t have a Tidal or Qobuz subscription.

[joel]

Yes, it’s not specific to streaming content.

[Suedkiez (Just a fellow user like you)]

Thanks. If there is ever anything you need to understand this, any amount of details, any number of examples, or anything that I can do, hit me up

[Wolfgang_Schneider]

After changing the multi-part composition grouping to prefer file, almost all compositions are recognised:

I have no idea why two compositions still are not recognised but at least most of them are now.

[Suedkiez (Just a fellow user like you)]

Interesting, in particular as I don’t know why this album would have multi-part composition grouping at all

I’ll try this later with this and similarly affected albums

[Suedkiez (Just a fellow user like you)]

Fourth Time Around is probably not recognized because the composition is called 4th Time Around. But if this note shows a composition property, it should be merge-able in My Compositions.

Don’t know about Tell Me Momma. Maybe because of the parentheses?

[joel]

We found and fixed a bug which was preventing composition identification Cloud-side. Our apologies there.

I have on my list to sort out those two remaining tracks.

[Suedkiez (Just a fellow user like you)]

Tonight will be a very exciting evening

[Suedkiez (Just a fellow user like you)]

OK, back home now and the fix works for me as well, thank you! - except the 2 tracks. And I see now that these 2 tracks still don’t have a “Go to composition” in the track menu, so it’s not just a naming issue like “Fourth” vs “4th”, but something deeper.

And I was unsure and curious if the fix was specific for the Cat Power album or a more general thing, so I did a quick check for some of my other problem albums, but apparently it did nothing for them. Not sure if it should have, I guess not.

Just for illustration a quick example, and as mentioned I can do lots more whenever you want me to I obviously don’t expect you to fix them all individually, but this is just to illustrate that there is clearly something fundamentally amiss that goes far beyond the Cat Power album:

Giant Sand - Purge & Slouch (25th Anniversary Edition):

My local version of track 2, Bender, is a composition (and so are all other tracks on this album):

But the Qobuz version isn’t a composition (and neither is any other track) as long as it is NOT in the library:

But lo and behold, after I add it to the library it suddenly is (although the “performances” count is supposed to show numbers for performances in the library and not in the library, so clearly they are not expected to be):

However, a live version of the same song, Bender, on Giand Sand - Goods & Services is NOT a composition, NEITHER in my local version nor in Qobuz although the Qobuz version IS in my library. But the Carly Simon song next to it, track 7, is a composition nevertheless:

[joel]

@Suedkiez

I was unsure and curious if the fix was specific for the Cat Power album or a more general thing

General.

@Suedkiez

I did a quick check for some of my other problem albums, but apparently it did nothing for them. Not sure if it should have

The updated metadata might not have been pulled into your library for all of your albums yet.

[Suedkiez (Just a fellow user like you)]

Fabulous I’ll keep checking

[Norman_Spector]

The funniest part about this is that the whole Dylan album was mislabelled when it was first issued – the concert having actually taken place in Manchester!