I think what you see is right (as in: as designed). If there’s a composer (or a 
) assigned to a track a composition entry will always be present. So “Go To Composition” will be shown in the ⋮ menu.
But only if the composition has some metadata you will also see the composition icon.
Now the form entry for Fido probably should be automatically set to yowls. But that would be a feature request. 
Yes, I understand. I often add “period” for example with classical compositions just to get the icon. But that wasn’t really the point of the post and I didn’t want to reduce the example to a classical case.
The point is, why are others in the thread not seeing the same behavior? By the sounds of things your roon behaves like mine. But for others apparently this is not the case. The main practical consequence is that several posters here cannot get a link of some sort to the composition screen (when they add a composer) and that means they cannot merge “orphan” compositions with something that does have metadata.
I am not consciously aware of having for example set some library switch that would explain the differences in observed behavior. I assume that is the most likely explanation or some other configuration detail I am unaware of. I have yet to come across a counter-example where adding a composer did not give me a composition link, but there is always a possibility I suppose. Has anyone got an explanation? For me, a large part of the point of roon is linking my library at a composition level so I would be equally as frustrated as the other posters if I could not.
I believe there’s no general problem here (*) - even so it feels to me that there are bugs or gaps in the matching algorithms. To get this sorted out it looks to me that it has to get looked at case by case. So many things which may cause trouble. Like Niccolòs problem at the beginning of this thread … there seems to be some kind of metadata mismatching going on. Well - but caused by what? Import settings (three settings available for composers, two settings for composition/part grouping)? Could be necessary to know this. Wrong metadata in the cloud or some other data point making it impossible for Roon to follow programmed rules (I’d suppose Roon would prefer to show Traditional instead of Trad. - just a guess)? Maybe in this particular case Roon has two possible compositions it could show for the single track and instead of deciding for one it resorts to show nothing instead?
Examining this takes a lot of time - and if not done with an identical data set reproducability is for sure an issue. And: will the investment into this kind of analysis lead to measurable improvements? 
(*) Except maybe that the precision Roon is able to deliver if left entirely to its own devices – always set to “Prefer Roon…”, no tags added to “help” – is not enough to satisfy a collector’s need. On the other hand side “enriching” metadata locally and taking care of one’s collection by merging stuff and so on has a high potential to miss out on future metadata improvements because local changes may block updates. How to proceed?
One’s more or less often left with the feeling that Roon misses out on delivering the rich metadata experience it promised. This has been discussed in depth on this forum; will things change in this regard? Is individual metadata correction - either by Roon or by end users - the way forward? Or more “adventurous” code for guessing connections between data? I’ve no idea. 
Just to add a little bit of meat to the discussion. I just tried @Niccolo_Terzi’s specific example of composer “Trad.” at the top of the thread. Once again I got a composition link as expected.
But I also got a “hit” in the composition screen:
I like Nicola have a lot of traditional music, both celtic folk and also a lot of early sacred gregorian chant. I also like to bundle my instances under the various “traditional” composer tags roon provides. It really helps to focus my experience of radio which otherwise can seem quite random. So I really get why this is important to Nicola. It is important to me also, I just seem to have had an easier time of it.
This is a specific example where we are both getting very different results. Surely this is not something random and there is some general underlying explanation? I would really like to know.
I’m afraid you don’t. It’s what I meant with:
From Niccolòs screenshots above I assume the album where that composition was unlinked is an identified one. Since the composer Trad. is shown, I also assume Niccolò did set the metadata preference for composer to either file or merge. It could be – remember: this is just some speculation – that this leads to a problem: Roon may know of a composition here with a composer Traditional but comes across a track where the composer is set to Trad. so something doesn’t fit. No composition shown as a consequence.
(It could also be that Niccolò changed the composer entry for “Traditional” to “Trad.” which would need a different string of guess …)
To reconstruct what happened you’d need to take more or even better all variables into account - some of which we do not even know (yet).
Can you please try this…
Find an identified album that has some tracks with a composer.
On a track without a composer, add one.
What do you see?
(Dusty in Memphis will suit)
Brian
PS if you can make it work, I will be eternally grateful
Hi Brian,
I will try that but I have already been experimenting so I have reconfigured my roon and will have to put it back together again first.
I can reproduce at least partially Nicola’s “Trad.” example. Behavior seems to be dependent on at least 2 things (there might be others). Normally I have import set to “merge roon and file” composer credits. I also very rarely use roon editing features and extensively tag files before attempting to import them. I have this habit because I have a large Classical library and I just find that easier and quicker than trying to second guess the minimum edits that roon needs.
I have just set composer credits to “prefer roon” and reimported the same album as above. Now Nicola’s “Trad.” example fails and I can reproduce some of what he sees. I still get a composition link but now “Trad.” does not come up in the composition screen.
I don’t know if anyone experimented with these library settings and/or editing within and external to roon. I’ll try your example and also a library setting of “prefer file”.
You knew it doesn’t work.
If an album and its tracks are identified and Roon doesn’t have a composer for one of the tracks adding a composer to this track will not “create” a composition entry. The Roon metadata result will prevail. Since we can only unidentify whole albums but not single tracks there’s nothing to do for the mere user here.
I do know now … that’s a little different. Was hoping for eternal praise but as it turned out I’ve to wait for this. 
thanks guys for your work.
i add some infos:
-in my import settings, i do too have set to “merge roon and file” for everything (if possible, like composer)
in general, if in a identified album with NO composers/composition (or only some of them) i add a composer tag, I DO get a composition link and a composer link. like in @Tony_Casey example. but this is only in general, while there are A LOT (say… 10%) of albums where adding the composer tag is “useless”.
more precisely, it does not create the composition link. and it creates a composer link, but the link is not working.
let’s ho back to the first example of the thread. if i remove the composer tags the situation is this:
i could finally add “fido” as a composer in another album, and in that case (general case) a composition and composer fido are created. in that case, the link “fido” would work, but it would not point to previous track 8.
this is what i have experienced and understood.
as far as i understand, @BrianW see the same behavior. and it seems that changing the import settings could be related.
@Tony_Casey, could you please post a screenshot of your import settings?
I have tried a lot of combinations. Too many to post but unfortunately I can only confirm your experience. In your particular scenario I cannot get a working composition link so my library settings are not having an effect.
In this particular case and most likely all others with the same preconditions (identified album / identified tracks but some composers missing) the import settings will probably not make a difference. I had a look at allmusic: https://www.allmusic.com/album/la-llorona-mw0000359818 … Roon insists on what it knows from there: some tracks don’t have a composer. So no composition. No matching.
It’s once again incomplete metadata from allmusic. But maybe Roon could change how this is handled when one adds missing information. Ignoring it seems kinda rude…
Thank you for your considerable efforts. I expected the result though.
PS. I have reproduced your scenario with some leftfield settings. Please be patient I am responding on a longer post so you can see how it works.
I can produce @BrianW’s scenario. I have two roon’s one for travel and one for home and I struggle to keep the library settings correlated. I was puzzled myself why I was seeing different behaviours on the road and at home.
In this identified album only two tracks have composers. I added “Dusty in Memphis” to track 1. I have one performance and no metadata and I get this:
In order to do this I have the following library settings.
But the trick is that I then set the WORK tag as well regardless if the composition is single or multi-part.
I have actually posted this trick several times but it didn’t seem to work for anyone and that even included me. But I think in hindsight I hadn’t realised how many dependencies there are between the library settings and after fiddling about with it I had accidentally switched off a useful work around. The problem of course with workarounds like this is that there are no guarantees it will continue to work in future releases. I will be interested to see how everyone else gets on with this.
Apologies, I should have been clearer… I meant the album Dusty in Memphis by Dusty Springfield.
However, that’s not to detract from your putative work round. So, I tried changing my import settings - no change unfortunately. I couldn’t change the WORK tags as I was dealing with a Tidal album.
Brian
The WORK tag is the crucial step. I don’t have a TIDAL account. I thought it was possible to edit TIDAL albums as long as they have been imported to your library?
Roon-type 3 dot edits only I’m afraid.
Hmm, this trick should probably not get applied on a global level because preferring file grouping will have a negative impact on classical music. I’ve tried it with my test album and indeed it worked. I’m not sure how it impacts association with tracks which have additional metadata though. My example had none for already identified compositions so I couldn’t verify.
