On a regular basis I buy new albums (download). I some cases they are “unidentified” by Roon.
Below to examples:
Meta tags are all OK:
And this does not fix the problem:
Torben
And if you click Identify Album in the album editor, does it find anything appropriate at all that you could choose? If not, the album is simply not known by the metadata sources.
Neither AllMusic nor Musicbrainz know an “Eszter Lukacs” artist at all, so …
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If the Artist labels or Artists don’t submit metadata to Allmusic or MusicBrainz not much Roon can do. Lots of smaller artists don’t have any metadata presence. Not something I worry about really.
Although you can add to MusicBrainz yourself, then in time will be identified by roon.
In fact all MusicBrainz data is submitted by users, they have no automatic record label feeds
A bit strange - as an example - your can buy Eszter Lukacs everywhere:
Torben
I have submitted to MusicBrainz, and Roon picks up the info pretty quickly (a couple of days). It’s a little tedious but for me preferable to unidentified albums, which annoy me. There are scripts which fill in Discogs and bandcamp info, and this site which takes the info from streaming services https://atisket.pulsewidth.org.uk/ Entering the basic info for pop music is pretty easy (compared to classical). That said this took less than 5 minutes
Release “So Nice” by Eszter Lukács - MusicBrainz
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You are right - it did fix the problem for this album.
That leaves me with 5-6 other albums who are marked "unidentified”.
Torben
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It doesn’t really change much. Identified only helps if there’s more metadata online than artist and album name
However, if you are lucky - having submitted the basic information to MusicBrainz then over time other editors may improve the release by adding more information
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The ones that are missing are not some unknown artist - that is what I find strange.
Torben
Sure. Or one could add it oneself, if interested. Just saying that an unidentified album doesn’t hurt Roon, and there are many identified ones that have no actual credits, which in itself isn’t much better than being unidentified
Yeah, but my point was that actually in the long run it is alot better because once those releases are in MusicBrainz there is a good chance they will eventually receive some care and attention, if never added less so.
Also, if roon can actively match an album to MusicBrainz that lessens the chance of matching it incorrectly to something else.
Also, consider this. If every roon user were to give up 1 hour to add just 10 albums to musicbrainz that would be alot of new releases, and everyone would benefit from now getting matches to previously unidentified albums that were added by someone else with the same missing album.
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Yes yes, I understand all that. I was taking about the actual current situation that Torben has right now. He’s free to treat that any way he wants
Hi Torben,
I am one of MusicBrainz’s volunteer editors and have now added 4 of your 5 missing albums to MusicBrainz for you. 4 because Carmen Gomez’s album is already in the database. Your albums should be recognized in 2 to 3 days.
I did this to show that you can do this yourself with a manageable amount of effort. However, you shouldn’t take the matter too lightly, as mistakes once made sometimes last for years and nothing is worse than a sloppy entry.
Personally, I am of course grateful for every man who helps maintain the database. As I said, if you follow a few rules, it’s not difficult. Simply create an account and read what the rules are in the MusicBrainz StyleGuides.
And no, don’t enter a classic album until you have (a lot of) experience. But with an account you can always see how others have done it and learn from it 
Question: Why did I become a MusicBrainz Editor? Because it nerfed me just like you when my albums weren’t recognized. It now looks like this to me when I display unrecognized albums in Roon
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After the album has been identified, it shows what versions that are available - in my case Qobuz. That was not the case before.
That is a nice benefit.
Torben
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Yeah because if it can’t identify the album it can’t tell you what its other versions are. But you could have grouped them manually
Hi Torben,
this is precisely one of the advantages of having the album entered in the database. All services that use the database (including Qobuz) can thus establish a link to other albums, the artists and everyone involved. For a computer scientist (like me) this is the obvious task of a database.
Let’s take as an example the latest album by Chinese pianist Yuja Wang, the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, which I entered about 5 weeks ago. You can find it if you search for the album: Rachmaninoff: The Piano Concertos & Paganini Rhapsody. In addition to the individual sentences and pieces, you will find disc symbols with a number on the right side.
As you know, these are links to other recordings by other artists of exactly this movement. This isn’t automatic, it doesn’t happen by itself. All of these links must be entered into MusicBrainz by the editor.
So if I enter a classical album, that must be done. To give you an idea, I’ll show it in a screenshot:
If you now click on one of these links, you will end up with the sheer number of further interpretations. The number next to the disc symbol shows the number of recordings entered in the database. The same goes for artists, composers and everyone involved. All of these have to be entered into the database so that the software accessing them (in this case Roon) can also show and link them.
Besides, you can better imagine what to expect when entering a classic album
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Than I am lucky I don’t have any classic albums
Have a nice WE
Torben