As we all now (and many regret) ROON tags currently do not feature boolean searches, i.e. if I apply two tags, ROON will show me everything that has either tag1 OR tag2 (whereas I might want to see something that has tag1 AND tag2. Now, while I was trying to find a workaround, I noticed something odd: Let’s say I tag an artist, let it be Pearl Jam, with the tag “Debut Record 1991” (I know it’s nerdy to do that, but hey, who are we kidding here?). Now, when I click on a Pearl Jam Album, say Vitalogy the album will not have that tag, which I think is correct. However, when I go on the album browser and then apply the tag “Debut Record 1991”, all Pearl Jam albums will appear. Why is that? I should think that in the album browser only those tags should appear that are actually applied to an album?? So in my world, if only artists are tagged with “Debut Record 1991”, the tag should show no results whatsoever in the album browser.
This is also the case the other way round. For example, if I have tagged Vitalogy with “CD” (meaning I own it as physical CD copy), and then use that tag in the artist browser, Pearl Jam will be shown. Again: Why?
I understand that in some circumstances you might want to see all artists that have albums tagged in a certain way and also albums by artists tagged in a certain way. But isn’t that a more unlikely use case than wanting to differentiate between artist-tags and album-tags? Shouldn’t there be more options?
All such problems would of course go away if finally there were boolean searches …
I knew that tags “propagate” from artist to album, which I used to allow searching for albums based on artist nationality (“Italian jazz”).
But I recently found a few cases where this got messed up because of “reverse propagation”: I found Bill Evans show up in my Nordic Jazz list, because I had a Swedish artist correctly tagged based on nationality, and she did an album with Bill Evans and that album got correctly tagged Nordic, butthen that flowed to Bill Evans and to all his albums, and then it might flow to the musicians he played with, etc.
This is tricky. The flow of attributed is valuable. But hard to manage.
@Danny has talked about upcoming changes in the database structure to allow querying for artist nationality in albums, without having to hack about with tags.
“Tag propagation” – I like it when things become academic I guess the problem really lies in the fact that items become automatically, but invisibly tagged. For me, the tag function should be the one thing that only works manually. If you tag it, it’s tagged. If not, it’s not. Everything else just leads to messing the whole thing up.
And another tag-related problem: When I tag an album and then later make a different version of the same album my primary album, the tag disappears. Or, even more weirdly, it does not disappear at first, but if you click on it again at a later point, the tag is not there anymore.
Also, if in such a case you use the tag filter in the album browser, this album will not show.
HOWEVER, if you use the same tag filter in the artist session, the artist of that album will show.
To give an example, I apply the tag “CD” to Destroyer’s album “Poison Season”. Then I see, oh it has a better Tidal version, add that to the library and make that version my primary. The “CD” tag will be visible at first also in the Tidal version of that same album. BUT: It will not appear in the album browser when I filter with the “CD”-tag. AND the tag will not be visible when I click on the album at a later point. BUT when I use the “CD” filter in the artist browser, Destroyer will be displayed.
Now, we can talk about the pros and cons of tag propagation all day long, but that’s just a plain old bug.
Just noticed another tag propagation problem. When I tag a playlist with “tag1” and then focus on “tag1” in the album view, all albums from which tracks have been taken for the playlist show up. I realize this is more or less consistent with the behavior described above, but again I don’t see why this would be desired. In my world, only albums tagged with “tag1” should show up in the album view. Seems straightforward, but Roon doesn’t do it.
I guess the problem really lies in the fact that items become automatically, but invisibly tagged. For me, the tag function should be the one thing that only works manually. If you tag it, it’s tagged. If not, it’s not. Everything else just leads to messing the whole thing up.