Missing or Inconsistent treatment of Compositions and Composers

I recently added a few classical Tidal albums to my library. One Album contained a composition by Ruta, who is recognized in the Album view as the composer of this work.

However, his Work is not recognized in Compositions and the Composer Ruta is not recognized in Composers view.

Any idea for why the lost data? I am feeling a bit cheated at not being able to include all in my library in the various focus views i utilize.

The above is true for some but not all of the albums imported…

Showing the specific album metadata you are talking about will help otherwise it’s guesses.

Hi @hshrader,

Can you share some screenshots of what you’re seeing here?

Right! Screen shots below:
#1). Album from Tidal in my library
#2). Work I am seeking in Compositions and Composer I am seeking in Composer view
#3). Composer view w Rota missing
#4). Composition view w Rota / Divertimento missing.

I feel that I might be missing a bunch of my music, when Focusing, and hoping it will be a simple fix or misunderstand on my part.

Very grateful for your help.

I think the issue here is that you are only viewing “Classical” composers in the Composer and Composition browsers - for example, in the Composer browser, you have the Sort set to “Classical, Sorted by Name”, and thus you are only seeing 480 composers out of a total of 14,065…

I have works by Nino Rota in my library, and if I show all composers in the Composer browser, he’s there, but if I set Sort to show only Classical composers, he’s not… Similarly for the Composition browser - if you have “Only Classical” set, compositions by Nino Rota won’t show up.

Now, we can argue as to whether Rota should be considered a classical composer or not (and certainly I think there’s a case to be made - he wrote 10 operas and composed 5 ballets…), but for the moment, Roon does not consider him to be “Classical”.

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Thanks - this is quite clear.

Of course, it begs the question of why ROON’s metadata doesn’t or couldn’t see him as a Classical composer. What information triggers whether someone is considered a classical v non-classical composer?

Simple answer: I don’t know. It may come from Roon’s metadata sources, or be something that Roon decides for itself. @joel, @vova, can you help?

I would extend that question of where the info is picked up but also why a composer with Rota’s body of work would not default to Classical.

This might help the community understand if others (composers) would be at risk of non inclusion into the classical defaults.

Thanks for the follow up to Joel/Vova.

It’s picked-up from the composer. See also:

I have just noticed that my Nino Rota is everything under the sun as a performer (including Classical, Film Scores, Stage & Screen etc.). But no tags at all as a composer. Personally I associate him more with Film Scores (Godfather) but I hadn’t noticed before that in my roon anyway he has no composer tags at all, Classical or otherwise.

Hi @hshrader,

Right now, based on the information we have on this composer, they do not meet the criteria that determines whether the composer is considered Classical or not. We have some ideas about how we might improve this in these cases in the future, but we don’t have any timeframes for when such a change might be made.

Thanks for the report!

Hi @dylan,

Thanks for taking the time to reply. What is the criteria that determines if one is a “classical” composer?

Below I have attached two more screen shots where ROON’s metadata is not recognizing composers as “Classical.” Yet, their body of work is classical.

I understanding addressing this is not the priority at the moment. To make ROON the best Classical music manager - the best manager possible, I do hope you will assign some resources to fix. It does appear an error to me.

I notice that both the composers you have ringed in your screenshot have only their surname displayed.

This is most odd, because my Roon knows their full names and compositions, even though I don’t have any works by either of them in my library at the moment.

Are you using file tags for these composers? If so, try using their full names in the tags to help Roon make a full identification.

I cannot make head nor tail of any of this. As far as I can see none of my Classical composers have any tags at all. I only get them if they also have a performer button (in which case I get the tags including “Classical” under the performer button). I assume this is not what others see and it has something to do with my settings I don’t understand?

Hi @Geoff_Coupe,

You prompted me to look at this again and i made some discovery.

Firstly, i am not working with tags. The Album is imported from Tidal and i have done nothing more hoping it would set up nicely. Now - some new info:

  • I can select Trojahn and then Edit. At the Edit page, i can add his full name and indicate if he is a Classical composer or not.

  • However after doing so, ROON accepts him as a Composer but does not recognize him… That is to say with Strauss, you get info like a picture, DOB, DOD, Period and such. For Manfred Trojahn, there is no info. So…we are still not picking up on the database normally used. Not sure why this would be - whether he be labeled as classical or not. This connection of metadata remains underdeveloped.

  • When i indicate he is a Classical composer, then i finally do pick up him in the Composer (Classical only) view and pick up his composition in the Composition view. Nice that you can do this.

  • However… ROON does not fill in Period, Form, Instrumentation, Date… in the Composition view. And this is what i have been working for since i like to Focus on works of certain periods or form.

  • I also found that Period and Form can be entered in manually…but i have too many holes in my library and not enough inclination to comment the hours needed to curate.

I am not really complaining here (more a little disappointed), but thinking if this could all be cleaned - where composers were better recognized and all the info on Period, Form, etc could be filled… it would take our classical library access experience to a new level, which i think ROON would strive to do as THE innovator in the field.

Hello, @hshrader, I wonder whether, when you first imported the album, you had tried to fix the lack of composition data for the Trojahn tracks? I say that because when I load the album from Tidal, I see no composer metadata.

Now, if you did not already have Trojahn in your library, you would have needed to creat him. Unfortunately, Roon doesn’t match such user created artists with those of the wider world - a shortcoming.

One solution is add an album which includes the well known Trojahn first, in which case Roon will know about him when you edit the tracks of the Van Wauwe album. Alternatively, adding such an album afterwards, you could Merge the two Trojahn references.

Interesting idea! I wonder if there is a Tidal album on which ROON would recognize Torjahn the classical composer… That probably would do the trick. However, from Dylen’s note, i am thinking that the ROON Database doesn’t qualify him as a classical composer, at all.

When originally imported, i attempted no fixes. I only began to fool with it when i saw that he was missing as a composer.

There’s a String Quartets by Manfred Trojahn album, performed by Henschel Quartet. I think that should work for you.

I tried, but the album has NO composer info embedded at all! Go figure…

You’re right! Yet his credit appears on the Allmusic database. Oh well, try
Trojahn 5 See-Bilder instead. I’ve just looked using Roon and he’s there.