Multiple entries for same Artist [Solved]

I have old recordings (including from tapes) with a mix of a given artist songs which I digitalized, and which of course will not appear in any database so the “unidentified album” mention is expected. However when I manually change Artist name (manual edit preferred over Roon in Album settings), it still does not associate this artist album with the same artist’s other albums. For example I have lots of Rammstein albums (identified) and one unidentified. I manually change the latter into a Rammstein album (which works fine), but then when I search the keyword “Rammstein”, only the identified albums pop up (and not the one I manually renamed “Rammstein”).
Am I missing something ?
Chris

If you manually changed the tags using software other than Roon you will probably have to do a rescan on your library for it to pick up the changes.

Thanks for the response, but I made the changes using Roon.

Hi @hdls,

I’ve had similar problems with dual ID. The Australian band Pony Face has two entries for me, EP’s under one and Main Albums under the other. I have read that ensuring all albums are identically tagged works for for some users, but it didn’t for me. In any event, albums by the same artist ought not need to be identically tagged anyway; talk about limiting career options …

I’m not sure what the answer is at a technical level, but some kind of Merge Artist functionality where users can let Roon know that multiple artists really are the same person/band is needed. Let’s leave a notification for @mike and @jeremiah and see if there’s any news on this front.

Edit: I changed the name of the thread so it comes up more readily when searching this issue. If you prefer the original name, just message me and I’ll change it back.

Hi andybob,
Thanks a lot for your response, so apparently as you say this is inherent to the program and there is hope that it may be solved in future issues - glad to hear that as I just “converted” from 1-year to lifetime Roon membership.
You are right - this really comes down to being able to force-link albums as emanating from one single artist - be it a singer, a band or even a DJ.
Thx,
Chris

The devs have said that they are not finished with metadata by any means and will be looking at it again in a future release. I suspect that there may be multiple sufficient causes for this issue (Gurrumul, for example, has two bio’s indicating metadata provider involvement). That can make the difference between it being a bug fix or something requiring a deeper rework.

I find it a frustrating issue because it goes to the heart of what Roon can do and I wouldn’t want prospective new users to get the impression that there was some fundamental flaw in the software. Most of the time it does a great job in finding artists, which is why the exceptions stick out.

They did a great job already. I have never seen such an intuitive product. It would be nice if Roon could give some guidance on how to structure the file library to get the best results in the future. I do realise that DNA-classification is a piece of cake compared to the taxonomy of a classical music library but Roon will have to make some decisions sooner or later. Personally, I hope they look at Musichi for a good classification scheme but everything is fine for me as long as it communicated and supported.

I have some issues with unique data labelled differently . They are easy to solve in several ways but I have no clue about the best way or the implications for future use.

Two distinct situations on which I seek guidance :

  • searching for Karajan delivers a strange result. One work is tagged as Karajan and that comes up as the top result (so Karajan is top result and opening Karajan gives one work) However, the item ‘Herbert von Karajan’ has approx. 25 results and sits hidden under artists (two additional clicks). So I hope they will use some quantification of the items found to present the result, and introduce some bias towards search results on which they have metadata.

  • my library consists of two parts : an organised part and a junk part. The strange thing is that the junk part is actually better usable Roon. Hits in the junk library provide metadata on composer, conductors and genres. While genres are easy to map on Roon genres , that apparently is not the case for composers and conductors. So what should I do : rename all ‘Bach, Johann Sebastian’ to ‘Johann Sebastian Bach’ to allow ‘works’ to do its magic, wait for a Roon provided solution (six months is ok, but not a year) or something else that I currently don’t know of.

I have the exact same problem (Karajan in your example) for many classical pieces, usually the more famous composer the more problems (Bach is the best example for me).
One question: about your two libraries, are they sitting in a watched folder or an organized one ? (for now I only use a watch folder, a little paranoia coming from early iTunes experiences where previous libraries were completely messed up by iTunes - one of the many reasons I definitely turned away from them).
Chris

I use both. I took copies first (been there, done that, still hurts) and use a watch folder for the well kept library and organised folders for the junk part. They will improve the search routine in time, but let’s hope they give early guidance on how we can prepare the best and avoid duplication later on.

Let’s hope they use the Bach family and the Strauss family when they test classical music functionality. If they can handle those names, then the other composers are probably OK. Except for that guy ‘anonymous’ off course. He shows up everywhere and screws up every search-related functionality :slight_smile:

Hi @hdls and @Georgethesixth ,

Mike has given a useful explanation of how the metadata can create multiple entries for the same artist and what can be done to fix it at the moment.

Edit: I’ve marked this Solved for the moment, so the devs don’t see it as an open issue when browsing the Support forum. Mike’s post sets out the most that can be done at the moment. Future editing capabilities are intended in a later release. If you have any particular issue and seek further assistance please feel free to post here again or open a new thread.

The major learning point was that I had to learn to organise the import in such a way that it facilitates ‘content enrichment’.

To recapitulate the issues. The Brel box set ‘Suivre L’Etoile’ consists of

  1. CD’s that are exact copies of previously issued CD’s for which enriched content (CD review) is available.
  2. CD’s that are almost identical copies, but with some bonus tracks added.
  3. CD’s that are published for the first time.

Based on my previous experience with Musichi, JRiver etc, I started from the idea to create one album with 21 CD’s underneath. I actually succeeded in doing this, by preparing the box set on the file level. Using Mp3tagger, I added disc number and disc total. Afterwards, I created a directory for the box 'Suivre… '. The CD-directories were named ‘Suivre, disc’ followed by the disc number. With the mp3tagger, the album names where made identical to the directory and the file name was changed to “discnumber-track number - title” Roon detected the new files and created one album with 21 CD’s. Mission accomplished. identification was a bit tricky because there was French download version, a US download version and the French CD-version.

This approach worked as I hoped it would and it keeps the interface uncluttered (one icon represents 320 tracks). The drawback is that there is very limited content enrichment.

So In the end, the hybrid approach gave the best results.
I deleted once again the album using Roon.
The directory names of the previously separately sold CD were renamed to their original name and the tags were updated accordingly.
For the Type1 CD’s, I just had to click ‘Identify’ and the magic happened.
The Type2 CD’s asked a bit more : validation of the added tracks.
The Type3 I kept together in one album like in the first scenario. Tagging them looked like a major pain : I had to match approx. 100 files manually. Luckily I went to bed and in the morning the identification was ok.

While playing around I always deleted the tracks in Roon, change or restructure data on a local disk and then upload the package to the watchfolder again. I learned quickly that Roon doesn’t like it when a file- or folder name is changed once it is the database. At a certain moment I had to recreate a file structure just to be able to delete the metadata.

The next release contains changes making edits more robust to file system movement or naming.