The Metadata Blame Game

No, because that’s not true. These recordings may well have metadata associated from TiVo and Musicbrainz. It’s just not coming from Tidal

:joy: :+1: yeah

I think we are not. At least I am not, I gave up using the recording list or classical composition for example as it was mainly delivering garbage.

For popular music on the big services the situation is not that bad. Apple Music and Spotify seem to master their metadata much better than others, so whoever is annoyed by any chaos elsewhere could switch to one of these if she or he wants a sufficient metadata experience.

It is pretty sad that for some genres like your favorites the situation is that bad. But I doubt that pressure from whichever side would help that. There are simply not enough subscribers who would be willing to quit because of such issue.

No, I am aware of the dire situation. And even if one would prefer not to speak of ´revenue´, even some cents are a symbolic reward for independent artists and for labels having lots of contractors it might even be more than symbolic. Encouraging these to provide better data to earn at least a bit might work.

You can see that streaming fees are heavily discussed when Apple Music is announcing to reward Atmos content with higher fees. This is in numbers even less relevant for independent artists but their labels are protesting and the discussion is ongoing, even if no one would earn much with that.

Whilst it may make you feel better you are now in the realms of “axe grinding” which is against the Roon Forum rules as I’m sure you know full well.
Your point has been made many times and acknowledged.
Please refrain from making any further posts that are in the same vein.
Thank you for your cooperation.

One way street.

We ask regularly, and occasionally we make progress, but our leverage is limited.

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See below:

Thank you for responding. Now I don’t like Don Quixote and at least know that the lack of metadata is a real issue being noticed by many Roon users and Team Roon. Hopefully bringing this issue into the light will yield tangible improvements.

I was commenting on the fact that DSPs, labels, and commercial metadata providers, have metadata standards, and editors, and quality control procedures, that crowd sourced providers don’t have.

//fullstop

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for classical, there actually is a standard that most labels have agreed upon. that does not mean they adhere to it

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It’s not a roon or steaming issue. One can use any of the aggregates to get “some” of the info. Bottom line, all the production info, NOT just a few “fields”, needs to come from the creators (artist, labels, producers etc…) per a system/standard and included with the dig files. Anything else is just a band aid.

I would love to see the metadata for new releases include full discography information but for now I would be thrilled with a just a few meaningful fields like the names of the musicians. Improving metadata will proceed in a series of baby steps so we must be patient but nevertheless keep on applying pressure for more complete metadata.

Can I pose a question to those with the most experience in metadata (both the flow of data and past business models)?

What are the incentives currently? And can you envision a system in which there were incentives for more complete and accurate metadata (even if the business model doesn’t quite work)?

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My own personal desire for metadata is more meta :slight_smile:

I’d love to see artist disambiguation solved at the macro level decisively.

It’s very disconcerting to see John Williams (conductor) mixed up with John Williams (guitarist), or the multitude of Creams combined… it happens with any artist or band with a shared name. And it happens a lot in a large collection.

Recognizing that this happens upstream from Roon, surely there must still be a way to fix this at Roon level… would love to see some attention paid here at a systematic level.

For me, the metadata issues as reflected through this thread and elsewhere in the forum are the single biggest obstacle to Roon delivering on its promise.

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Independent artists & small labels have no incentives for this, it’s just overhead for them. Their main revenue streams are from live performance, CD and vinyl sales. Digital distribution for them is just streaming, a way to publicize their work, as radio once was, not a significant revenue source.

Let’s take a typical case, Dave Douglas’s Greenleaf Music, fairly successful as such things go. They just released GIFTS. The album page has nicely detailed information about tracks, performers, composers, production. However, AllMusic has only a skeletal entry, and there’s no data on this release on MusicBrainz or Discogs. That’s the typical state of affairs. Dave Douglas makes the likely rational calculation that hiring someone to upload metadata to somewhere is just a cost that does won’t sell any merch. After all, I bought the album (digital download via Bandcamp) anyway, in fact I had pre-ordered it. There you are, I’m a bad disincentive to him and the 100s of other independent artists I patronize via Bandcamp.

@Fernando_Pereira
The Greenleaf page lists:

Tracks 1,2,7,8,9,10 – written by Dave Douglas
Dave Douglas Music / BMI

Tracks 3,4,5,6 – written by Billy Strayhorn
Bill Strayhorn Songs Inc.

If the label or whomever sends this album to spotify for example without any meta/info, then Dave, Billy prob won’t get credit or paid from spotify streams, yes?

No. There are multiple mechanisms in place to flow revenue to songwriters. It’s complicated and interesting. But it does not rely on metadata.

Now it’s time to come Roon’s defense.

Roon does often show that are different with the same name. However that requires the all too often broken search function (aka the magnifying glass, not the filter aka horn) to work :rofl:

Anyway here’s a screen shot of the results for “John Williams” to show what I mean:

Music is like any retail business and retail business depends on advertising. The artists know this but they don’t like it but they still sell merch with their band name on it. Maybe they don’t realize this is a form of advertising. From my perspective, metadata is a form of advertising. How do we know to go looking for more music by James Brandon Lewis if we don’t know he is the amazing sax player on Dave Douglas’ Gifts? That’s the incentive. Record labels and artists need to understand that in this day and age metadata is advertising.

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How do y’all define metadata? in my world, it’s descriptive data, identifying the Artist, Album, Track, Original Release Date, Genre (and sub genres), Style (a sonic, not editorial, attribute), Mood (also a sonic attribute), Tempo (may contain, but not solely, BPM) UPC/ISRC codes…

much of what I see discussed in this thread falls more accurately under than category of “Credits”.

and Reviews/Bios/Imagery are yet another category.

And then there is the discography information: place and date of recording, engineers, producers, record label, etc. While as important as the “credits” information, discography information is still pretty useful and nice to have.

Back in the good old analog days, mastering engineer, mastering lab and which pressing run the LP came from were considered pretty darn important as well.

Of course obsessive audiophiles also wanted to know all about the equipment used for the recording, right down which manufacturer’s wire and cabling were used. :+1: :grin: