Does anyone know how Roon identifies other instances/versions of the same song? It works on some of my tracks, and doesn’t for others. Both of the below albums contain the song Brown-Eyed Women. In one of the album views, it identifies 11 other versions (there are many more in my library) and the second album does not show any other versions.
Any suggestions on something I can do to get Roon to identify these as the same song? I find the feature useful, but it just doesn’t work consistently.
They should be identified by being known as a performance of the same composition. If you look into the three-dot menu of a track that is correctly identified, you will find a “Go to Composition” entry (where all known performances will be listed). But if you look into the menu of a track that isn’t, like “Brown-eyed woman”, it will probably not be there.
There are apparently two causes for this:
This second issue has been mysterious for years. Luckily, I have recently finally been able to make some inroads with the help of Joel from RoonLabs, who has identified one bug and fixed it recently, which resulted in some tracks being identified that haven’t been before.
However, it didn’t help with all instances of the issue, so there seem to be additional bugs. You can find my bug report with an example (most of which has been fixed) in the thread linked below. There, you will also find links to older discussions and instances of the problem. Joel has said that he will continue working on this, and I will provide additional examples for this as soon as a I find time. (Plus, I have been waiting for the new metadata after the first fix to be applied to my library - which seems to have happened by now, so next weekend I’ll have more to report).
I guess Joel will want to learn about your example as well. But first make sure that (1) your tracks have a composer credit, and it’s not just caused by missing this, and (2) the “Go to Composition” menu entry is really missing.
I’ll edit the review/edit the composition of the one not being picked up like others, and report back. Appreciate the reply.
Looks like there are variations in the “composition” for all of these versions. I’m guessing that I can just merge all the one-offs into the main composition? I’ll try that with this song.
It’s working. I’m going to the composition tab, and then sorting the compositions in name order. Usually there are multiple entries all with a little different variation of composers. I’m choosing the main one (usually there is one Roon identified composition that has the composer(s) all listed with the same name spelling and links to their own pages) and then merging the others into it.
It’s going to take some work to get all these fixed…but will be worth it for me. Backing up database now…lol.
I’ve been trying to get my Grateful Dead collection just exactly perfect too but their catalog is so vast I gave up.
I was unaware of the method you’re using though.
So thanks. I think. 
Ah, this is good then, and different from the issue I described. Yes, if you have composition properties, you can merge the compositions and all should be good. Make sure that you find the best composition with the most data (like a Tivo/Wiki description, if any) and merge the others into that one.
Right, exactly
I see what you did there.
As a fellow Dead collector, I appreciate the enormity of this task. But I’m making progress. Good luck in your quest.
@Suedkiez In addition to the easy fixes where the “composition” entry already existed in Roon and I could merge multiple instances into one…I’ve also run into numerous instances where the “composition” record did not exist…like you described in your post. Even when using Roon to add a composer to the track, the composition record did not get created.
I think I have a solution working for these. If I use a separate tag editor (I’m using Mp3tag), and add a composer to the file tag, then Roon is automatically rescanning and creating the “composition” entry for me. Once that entry is there, I can edit/merge etc to combine it with the correct “composition” entry.
Working so far…I’ll report back with additional results as I get further into this project.
Interesting, but of course not a solution for streaming titles. And it shouldn’t be necessary… 
Once you have an overview of things, it would be great if you could add this info along with examples to the thread that I linked above. Maybe it helps Joel track down and fix one more cause
Right…this solution would not help with streaming tracks. I’m using Roon only for managing my local file collection, so it works for me. And agree…it should not be necessary. Having to trick Roon into creating this “composition” record should not be necessary. I’ve also noticed that if I then delete the composer info in the tag info…Roon also deletes the composition entry.
This is going to be a lot of work, but will be worth it to me in the end. I’ll flesh out how this works for local files and add to the thread you have started.
Appreciate you pointing me in the right direction.
