I am reluctant to be such a bringdown, but I have become convinced that the metadata that Roon is licensing is simply terrible. There are so many errors and inconsistencies that it NECESSITATES the ability of the user to, by default, prefer the user metadata to Roon’s as the music is being scanned.
I could give so many examples of particular errors I think I could persuade anyone that such a default import function is required.
(I might be able to convince the great people at Roon to find a better source of data but perhaps there simply isn’t one that is better than their current source. So in that case again I plead for a choice to prefer my own, carefully cultivated and maintained metadata over the poor metadata supplied by Roon and imposed on my library.)
I tend to agree. I was under the impression that Roon uses open community based sources just like Plex and Kodi, in which case you can’t expect much. But if they’re actually paying for it, something ought to be done.
At the very least there needs to be easier and faster ways to fix the errors we report. My question is, what does Roon do to fix it? Send a request to the source or fix it in their database? I can see the first option taking forever.
Maybe a specific metadata fix request form needs to be created. Status updates would be received by the originator. These request should be public so we don’t create duplicate requests.
However, this is a less than desirable source for classical music, since most of the new releases are re-releases of box sets, which are often international editions, that AMG may not have data for.
Gracenote gets many more hits than AMG for classical music.
Plex uses Gracenote with their premium music library. To be honest I though it did a better job at matching than Roon did. Too bad everything else about Plex’s music playback sucks.
Here’s an example of an error that is inexcusable though trivial.
Kevin Hays has an album called “New Day” that shows up in Roon as unrecognized. When I tried to match it, it turned out that Roon knows of a Kevin Hays album called “A New Day.” That ain’t the name! Where did it come from?
Discogs has way too much data, I would think, on so many versions of each album, but US and international, in various formats. Their data is generally of high integrity but it’s hard to imagine being able to scrape it for this purpose.
Currently allmusic has errors and is missing a lot of releases, but so will other metadata providers. None of them are 100% complete or error free. @brian commented in one thread that they were in contact with their providers in order to get incorrect data fixed in a more efficient way, so roon is taking the necessary actions.
One solution would be to combine metadata from various services. Discogs has been requested several times, especially by completist that have all version of one album this is of great benefit. Combining such large databases will quickly become a behemoth of a job and even then there will be “issues”. Also can recall a comment from roon (brian?) that it is not their intention to become a second allmusic, which is sensible.
That leaves the option of manually correcting, adding, editing your own metadata. To be honest I would like to do this to certain degree, but foremost I want to listen to my library and not constantly groom my metadata for whatever reason.
Would be interesting to have an open discussion on this topic.
Sadly, I’ve got to agree. Certainly, for classical music the metadata is pretty much useless for many of my albums - nearly all of which are major label releases. The Roon player is the best there is, but it does call into question the annual price charged for such poor quality metadata.
A number of users have asked for an option to prefer own metadata by default so I’ve opened a feature request thread to discuss it.
This thread can continue general discussion about other issues raised in Dan’s post.
The metadata providers are listed in Settings/About/Copyright Information and don’t include community based metadata so far as I am aware. Roon certainly pays Rovi (All Music Guide) for metadata, that’s one factor in the annual/lifetime costs.
@mike also recently referred to the need for improved metadata error reporting. What would you guys like to be able to do in that regard ? I think a template report that built up a database that remembered prior reports for an album would be good.
The theoretically forthcoming “complete metadata editing” (i.e. the ability to link with/to and/or edit ‘items’ to/from Roon’s layers) should theoretically solve this, for those who deem it important. Personally, this capability cannot happen fast enough to suit me.
AMG is horrible, and has been getting worse for several years. Discogs, as noted above, would certainly bring value, if the useful info could be ferreted out from the massive noise generated by having hundreds of variants of many releases. Can’t see that being easy.
fwiw I listen to 95% pop-rock; the problems with the current Roon product are by no means limited to classical music.
possibility of a roonuserdb? Some kind of… I ripped cd’s of Simon Rattle and dbpoweramp couldn’t detect metadata; but I could fill in the data of the cd’s booklet, so other people can take advantage of it. Why pay?? It’s other peoples metadata.