So, it has now been over a year since Roon decided that Bruce Springsteen were no longer to be a member of his own band. Disbanded. And super annoying to those of us that have a huge collection of albums tagged with the proper, according to for instance Bruce Springsteen, tag that says Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.
Now Roon automatically and suddenly changed all those albums to the listed only as The E Street Band. No Bruce. Actually Bruce Springsteen does show, but not as a link no matter that the files themselves are taged with the full band name.
I’ve asked before and now again and will do so until I receive a proper answer as this is really annoying. Att left dewar Roon staff let me know if you will fix this or if I will need to try to find a halfway fix myself.
Screenshots below to show the issue.
Have you made any edits to this content in Roon?
Is the album identified in Roon?
Is this content from local files, TIDAL, or Qobuz?
Yes, this has been a long standing issue: “Bruce Springsteen” and “The E Street Band” are separate Artists in Roon. There is no Artist named “Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band”. This is not the case with other artists, e.g “Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers” is an Artist in Roon as you would expect.
I believe this is the root cause of the significant performance issues I have with searching in Roon. I have 533 albums and 13,000 tracks with Bruce Springsteen, and 350 albums and 10,200 tracks. All of the E Street Band albums also have Bruce Springsteen as a primary artist, either from the Roon metadata or because I added him myself manually.
My file tags in my local files are all have ARTIST and ALBUMARTIST as “Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band” and Roon typically translates that into two primary artists in each album, both “Bruce Springsteen” and “The E Street Band” separately. For some of the bootlegs that are not identified, it just picks up “The E Street Band” as the primary artist, and I’ve added “Bruce Springsteen” as an additional primary artist.
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers is a band whereas Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band is not. IOW, the E Street Band is a backing band that does not include Springsteen as a member (see below).
They appear on many Springsteen releases but are credited in just a few. Unless credited, the individual artists are usually listed. Clearly with bootlegs of live performances, where they are typically credited, the band should be listed with both performers as primary artists.
However, if the media isn’t tagged as such, it may cause problems.
The current line-up is Roy Bittan – piano, synthesizer; Nils Lofgren – guitar, vocals; Patti Scialfa – guitar, vocals; Garry Tallent – bass guitar; Stevie Van Zandt – guitar, vocals; and Max Weinberg – drums; with Soozie Tyrell – violin, guitar, vocals; Jake Clemons – saxophone; and Charlie Giordano – keyboards.
Incidentally, I’m another Roon user, and this is my take on this.
Martin, that’s an interesting point, I hadn’t thought of it that way. I hear what you’re saying, but to me it makes no sense to have the E Street Band be something else without Bruce.
In the Tom Petty example, there are certainly albums with him credited as a solo artist vs. as the full band title. The difference is the majority of the mainstream Springsteen albums are titled solely with his name and the band members are credited. Vs. Tom Petty where most of the albums are titled with the band.
There are a lot of other examples, e.g. “Elvis Costello and the Attractions”, “Graham Parker and the Rumor”, etc. and in just about every case, they are one artist, rather than being separate backing bands.
Are there other examples where a backing band that is something separate rather than one artist?
Martin, I think you might be missing a great deal of what’s the point. Bruce Springsteens albums are regarded, in general tagging, to be solo albums with a backing band. But the live releases are something else. And what I’m referring to is live release. In my case well over 500 of them.
Just to make clear, as you can see in my screenshots the media is tagged correctly. it is Roon that mess this up, not the tags. AND it was working perfectly until roughly a year ago.
Most tours were (are) credited to Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band. Indeed, Springsteen’s official website credits the band as a separate artist. Thus, my point about tagging. I join separate artists with an “&” whereas “and” is used for a single artist.
Ultimately, tagging is about personal preference, but I think Roon has it right in this instance.
Interestingly, Elvis Costello and the Attractions is Costello plus The Attractions backing band. Roon lists them both ways, but ultimately, I think it comes down to the way releases are credited.
Off the top of my head, there’s ANOHNI (formerly Antony Hegarty) and the Johnsons, and Bob Marley and the Wailers. The latter were an established band whereas the other is more like the Costello / Attractions example, i.e., they were collectively credited for releases.
I’d disagree here … the official website identifies them as a unique artist*, as does the RRHOF.
*Said Springsteen: “After six years, I’m looking forward to seeing our great and loyal fans next year. And I’m looking forward to once again sharing the stage with the legendary E Street Band. See you out there, next year — and beyond.”
Interesting point and “&” vs. “and”… and I think you’re right in that it comes down to how the releases are credited. Yes, “The Attractions” is a separate artist, but only because there is one album, King of America, that is credited to “The Costello Show featuring The Attractions and The Confederates”
The Bob Marley example is different - as you say, “The Wailers” was an established group that Bob Marley was a member of. Then they became “Bob Marley and the Wailers”, who Roon considers to be a stand alone artist rather than “Bob Marley” and “The Wailers”.
So I still think it should be “Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band”…
Is this when included in the release artwork or all releases they perform on? I concede that live performances are usually different, but there needs to be consistency, and I favour the existing state of affairs, and handling the E Street Band the way MusicBrainz does, i.e., two primary artists.
First of all since all live recording are tagged Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band from the source. Except for the recent tour for some odd reason. So I’ll give you that! But still don’t agree.
But as you might see on the screenshots that’s not the only problem here.
IF there is two primary artists here, the both should be links, right?
But they’re not. Only The E Street Band becomes a link if the album is tagged Bruce Springsteen & (and) The E Street Band. So the Bruce Springsteen part just sits there, without a link at all.
Isn’t that odd?
Two artists … Crazy Horse released, for example, their eponymous first album. Likewise, The Promise of the Real or to give the full title, Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real, are a band in their own right. In both cases, not a single artist.
Anyway, I’m happy that Roon largely mirrors what MusicBrainz does. YMMV
Yes, you’re right, but Roon doesn’t se them that way.
Instead they have unified artist links.
Which Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band doesn’t.
So it doesn’t make sense really.
Create an account, make some edits, and wait for others (who, most likely, are fans of a given artist) to vote for changes … but you’d have to demonstrate that the current artist relationship is incorrect according to the MusicBrainz documentation.
@HeavyMetalDrummer I would argue that --any inconsistencies in the data entry from artist to artist aside-- the MusicBrainz approach is correct and I support their current data model. In particular, this allows for a MUCH cleaner album artist string model in Roon.
If you start zealously changing MusicBrainz data for this to suit yourself, chances are that you are going to have those changes voted down and/or get your MusicBrainz account banned from making changes.
How many edits do you have here and/or are you preferring your own album artists? What happens if you undo those edits or prefer Roon metadata? The results might actually be quite good.
Interesting, I knew nothing about MusicBrainz or how it worked until now, and I was half joking about “getting them to change it” (hence the emoji). But as I looked at their documentation, I saw this about “How to Split Artists”::
“Please make sure the artist should be split before entering the edit! Established bands (like Emerson, Lake and Palmer) shouldn’t be split; this is intended for short term collaborations that don’t merit their own artist page”
One could certainly argue that in the Springsteen example, this is no short term situation, and there would not be an E Street Band without Bruce Springsteen. But nevertheless, as I now understand MusicBrainz, someone proposed this edit, it was voted on, and that’s it, so case closed, regardless of how inconsistent it may appear with how other artists are handled.
Interesting… As I’ve been thinking about this issue, I believe more and more that it is the cause of the significant performance issues I have with searching in Roon (see ROON painfully slow after update with large library sizes [Roon Investigating] - #78 by HeavyMetalDrummer for more details about the on-going issue with libraries that have artists with large numbers of albums and tracks, e.g. I have over 500 albums and 13,000 tracks for the various combinations of Bruce Springsteen and/or the E Street Band.
As far as the edits I’ve made in Roon, I have not changed the album artist designation or preferences, whatever Roon interprets is what I have. A large number of these albums are bootlegs so they are not identified, so Roon is looking at the album artist from the file tags, which is “Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band”, and in some cases it will usually make the primary artist link “The E Street Band”, but other times “Bruce Springsteen”. I’ve made an edit to all those albums to have two primary artist links, adding one or the other of those entries so that both are linkable from the album page.
Do you think that could be causing performance issues?
I’m also thinking more and more that maybe I should just remove all these bootlegs from Roon and just access them via another player when I want to listen to them (which is not too frequent).
