Missing Genres but present in Albums

Hi Peter,

Have you tried to search for the French Genre? Click the search icon on the top right and type French. You may have to scroll down to find the Genre French (after albums, tracks, etc.).

Does that help?

Cheers, Greg

The search feature :wink:

But guess what: I just put together a small test library, reproduced a setup similar to yours, and what do you know – we have a bug here.

As I mentioned, turning off Roon’s genres doesn’t change the hierarchy. French is actually part of our Genre hierarchy, and since it’s a sub-genre for something that doesn’t exist in your tags, there’s no way to navigate there in the Genres browser right now :expressionless: We’re going to look into this, Peter – thanks for the report.

For now, the work-around is still to just edit the genre. You can search for the missing genres (or click the genre on an album or artist page), and edit it to be top level. That should unhide it on the Genres page while we look into this.

Thanks again for catching this @PNCD!

@mike So at least I am not crazy.
But this also shows why I could NEVER accept Roon meta data. You have French in Western European Traditions, which, along with Caribbean Traditions and African Traditions and ahost of others, rolls up into International as the top level Genre. Meanwhile Italian exists on its own as a top-level Genre. Other stand-alone top level Genres include Brasil and World. In my opinion, this is dysfunctional and all I want you, Roon, to do is let me use my consistent files tags and never see yours. It is a show stopper.

Okay so lets say I want the genre Celtic to be a top level one. So I choose the Celtic genre

click pencil

now what do I do at this stage?

if I click Celtic I get

if I select make top level genre I have

I’m afraid to save this as I’m not quite sure what it will do.

<this isn’t intuitive>

SJB

Ok John,

I’m brave!

No Celtic.

I selected Top-Level.

Now it shows.

Cheers, Greg

Of course I see Celtic as a euphemism for Irish and it’s good to see Paddy Maloney in the middle of your bravely instated Celtic genre.

Is your second screen shot of the Genre “Celtic” or International?

Slainte,

SJB

Ha! Yeah, the second shot is Celtic.

Before I made Celtic it’s own Top Level Genre, it was a Sub Genre of International. So, if I go and edit it again, I can put it back under International.

Cheers, Greg

Hi Peter,

I believe that the Genres Roon uses come from the same source as on Allmusic website. If you go onto the site and do an Advanced search, you can see the Top Level Genres as well as the Sub Genres.

Even though you are not using Roons genres for your albums, I believe that Roon uses your genre tags to try and match up with the Roon genre hierarchy. This can be seen when you go into Settings > Setup > Edit Genre Mapping. This area shows your genres on the left and it tries its best to match up with known Roon genres. If you see the Roon logo on the right, then it found one.

Caribbean Traditions is a known genre and it is a sub genre of International. Italian is not a known genre (although Italian Music apparently is). So it doesn’t know what it is and makes it a Top Level. Now you can edit it and put it under International, if you want. Conversely, you can take Caribbean Traditions and make it a Top Level.

You could probably take all your genres and make them top Level, but that may be too much.

I think the software is quite flexible, if not a little confusing. I don’t guarantee that everything I’ve said is accurate, I’m just a user like you.

Maybe @mike can check what I’ve said to confirm.

Cheers, Greg

Very good, I’ve got it now!

Not very intuitive or for the faint hearted!

SJB

@mike I am back in front of my system after a few days.
I am trying now to fix the fact that five of my Genres do not display as Genres because of a bug that Roon accepts that I want to use my Genres but still imposes its hierarchy so when my Genre tag matches a Roon Genre tag but without my using the Roon hierarchy it just gets lost!
Now you tell me the work-around is to is to “just edit the Genre…and edit it to be top level”. I go to an artist (Arno) in a lost Genre (French). What I see is this:


So there are many Roon genres that seem to be active despite my having made the setting for user Genres. I see my Genre of French. There is an edit box which lets me select a Roon genre. Nowhere do I see the ability to edit my Genre and make it top level.
I am away next week again but I would appreciate a definitive response so that I can get these Genres to display. Thank you.

As I understand it-
Don’t edit the artist, just click (or double click) the genre french to go to this genre.

Now click the pencil to edit the genre.
Select “choose genre” - again may need double click.
Don’t type anything in here just go to the bottom grey box and click “make top level genre” and “save”

Then go to the genres menu and French should show up just as Celtic did in the examples above.

SJB

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Thank you @Sloop_John_B. I can access the genre mappings and the genre French directly, as shown in one of the early screen shots. Hence I thought @mike was sending me through artist or album for a reason. I will try doing an edit on the genre in genre mappings when I return - this is what @Greg had proposed.

Hey guys – I really appreciate all the feedback here, and I would agree that the current design is heavy on flexibility but could probably use some work with regards to clarity.

I can appreciate that @PNCD’s goals here are absolutely reasonable, and I can understand why the hierarchy seems unnecessary when you just want to see your 27 genres – we definitely should be giving you tools that make that simple.

Simply flattening the hierarchy for everyone isn’t really an option – there are people with a hundred or 500 genres, and Roon’s genres need to start with some kind of structure and work for everyone, including people who want to mix Roon’s genre information with their tag data. The current system is designed to give people a comprehensible starting point that can be edited as needed. It also is designed to ensure Roon’s genre information goes well beyond standard classifications like Jazz.

We’ve made a lot of progress since launch to accommodate file tags and allow for the mixing of Roon’s metadata and tag data, but we know there’s more to do. This thread has made it clear to me that we need to clarify (and likely expand) our genre editing functionality, and that the current UI for editing of “parent genre” is confusing.

I’m going to spend some more time thinking about this, and I also want to mention we’ll be fixing the bug that @PNCD reported above for 1.2 – it’s not the simplest fix but we will get it done soon, if not before the next release.

Feedback on all of this is welcome, guys. For now, @Greg has nailed the workflow – if you want any genre to be “top level” right now, you’ll need to click the edit pencil, click the Choose Genre button, and then on the Pick Genre popup, choose Make Top Level Genre.

@mike I was not suggesting that Roon flatten its hierarchy nor that Roon do away with its metadata. The issue is that Roon presents itself as allowing clients to opt out of the Roon metadata construct and even to opt out of the genre metadata sub-construct. The genre initiative has bugs but it seems also to be confounded by having genre attributes spread through the Roon application. It is not enough to go into Settings and choose Genre from File Tag. The Roon structure is still there and can emerge in the event of a bug or by someone going into edit and making a mistake.
I think metadata is hugely complex for Roon and you have done your best to make a rich metadata available to clients. I think the complexity of how users wish to integrate their controlled metadata alongside or instead of Roon metadata is at a whole other level. I also think that the number of clients who are interested in this are quite small - most will just be very grateful for what and how you provide them with metadata. In my opinion, you should come up with a clear scheme by which clients can choose to control specific metadata elements or not - binary control. Make that control clear and in one place and never try to mix or ‘enhance’ one with the other. Try to avoid ‘rules’. Simple and direct opt-in or opt-out choice.

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@Mike I have followed the recipe above and now the previously hidden Genres are displayed. The only existing anomaly is that Jazz Vocals is displayed as a Genre but when I select it or search for it a null set is returned. I do not use this Genre tag in my files and I do not know where it comes from inside Roon when it returns a null set. It is not a problem to me and I am just reporting it as an anomaly that appears now that I have created top level Genres for my missing Genres.
Edit: Here is what it looks like if I select Jazz Vocals:


Jazz Vocals does not exist in any tags of any files in the library.

Ok, well, we’re getting closer :smile: And for what it’s worth, the genres bug you reported has been fixed for our upcoming 1.2 release :tada:

I could probably ask for a few more screenshots, but I think I’m just going to follow up via PM and get some logs. That should give us a better sense of the issue here. Your patience is greatly appreciate Peter!

No, Mike - thank you for your patience and persistence. I appreciate it very much, especially as I know that my pre-occupation with my own Genres is not shared widely among Roon users.

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Hey @PNCD – we took a look at your logs, and if you can believe it, you may have found another bug here :blush: We’re still confirming and reproducing the issue with a smaller set of media to confirm, but it seems like there should be an album displayed on this page.

From what we’re seeing it looks like the genre Jazz Vocals may be present in the tags for Disc 3 and 4 of Ella Fitzgerald - Twelve Nights In Hollywood. Can you check the files and confirm?

@mike
Attached is a screenshot from J River showing the tags for all tracks in disc 3 and 4 plus the columns showing Genre and Style - those are the only two fields that Roon treats as Genre, as I understand it.
I did a Library Maintenance in Roon and the Jazz Vocals Genre no longer shows up.
Anyway, it seems to be a self-healing bug. Thank you.

Hi. I post my problem here since I suppose it is related. If it’s not, please feel free to move where it belongs, or just let me know and I will try to find a better fit.
My problem is also there are some genres missing, but in my case they are missing from the search menu. I can assign it to tracks, albums and artists, but cannot not set it as parent genre, for example.
So far I have identified two cases: tango and salsa. Below there is a screen capture showing the “edit genre mapping” section, where you can see how “Tango” exists as a genre, but it doesn’t show up in the search menu, It should appear as a subgenre of “Rioplatense”.
Thanks for any help in this regard.

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