This has been there since at least 1.3. However, you will find that the basics of adding composers and merging versions will not necessarily lead to roon identifying the performance/track as a composition. That is the purpose of this thread. Why is this so hit and miss?
In many genres this feature seems to be of little interest to most roon users. Otherwise there would be many more complaints as the lack of composer metadata is even more prevalent than the lack of artist artwork in roon. There are a lot of gaps. It seems to be enough for most to identify only at the album level and not the composition level. But in other genres (Classical for example) it is very difficult to navigate roon unless the compositions have been identified.
Others, interested in other genres which are organised like Classical with a lot of âcoversâ are finding similar issues. For example Club/Dance where there may be a lot of âmixesâ and the music becomes difficult to navigate without some means of linking performances/tracks at a composition level.
I know. In my past instances, though, adding a composer did not turn the track into a composition if it did not have a âGo to compositionâ menu entry to begin with. Now it did, for this album at least. I just thought it might be helpful to add the observation.
Thatâs strange. I donât recall ever seeing that. A composition link without a âpile of disksâ symbol. But TBH I rarely use the âgoto composition linkâ and use the pile of disks symbol as the indicator there is a composition identification, so it is possible I never noticed.
To be clear:
- Album imported
- No composers in metadata, no âpile of disksâ, no âGo to compositionâ entry in track menu
- I added the original composers to the tracks manually
- The pile of disks appeared automatically*, and so did the âGo to compositionâ entry in track menus
Thatâs why I thought this was remarkable, never saw this before.
* That is, for tracks tracks with the same name as the original and whose original version (or other cover version) was already in the library. For others it appeared when I added the respective album. The one with a slightly different name could be manually merged into the original composition though (in the Compositions overview)
Ah. This is not considered remarkable by many here 
. The procedure you describe is exactly what many of us do on a daily basis, even several times a day. The issue is that procedure does not always work and we would like to understand why. There are several similar threads to this going back several years and there has never really been a satisfactory answer. Without identifying and grouping compositions in this way roon adds little value in certain genres like Classical and this is why the question keeps on popping up. In addition to what you describe it is often necessary to drill down further into unique identifying âcatalogueâ numbers to force roon to identify a composition. For example BWV numbers for Bach or K numbers for Mozart. Unpredictably that will sometimes not work either.
I actually use this feature for other genres than Classical but it is even more hit and miss as Composer metadata from the metadata suppliers is usually much more patchy with other genres than with Classical. It is really a great feature, for example, to make interesting covers playlists of your favorite music from your favorite bands.
Pity I never saw this, in the previous instances I tried, the adding of the composer never had an effect unless the track automatically had had a âGo to compositionâ already. So I hoped that something may have improved.
It is quite annoying that it does not work consistently. This feature was one of the things that convinced me to use Roon, but I didnât know then that it does not work consistently when the metadata is patchy (the common case for non-UK/US music, it seems)
Exactly.
I donât really know what to suggest. I was also excited by the possibility of covers playlists. I still make the effort now and then to plug holes in my composer metadata here and there. Nothing systematic though. There ae too many gaps. It would be better if composition identification was more predictable though when you do make the effort to plug the gaps.
I know, thanks for educating me. We can only hope.
One thing I forgot to mention, because your description of what you see still puzzles me.
You have got display composers switched on? By default roon will only display composers if you have a âClassicalâ or âJazzâ genre tag set. Otherwise no. I have that switch set to âalwaysâ. You can find it in settings under browsing preferences. Apologies if you have already done this but it may help others who stumble on this thread.
Yes, thanks, I already had Show Composer Credits: Always.
I also wanted to stress something that I mentioned in the earlier post, but had not done so in the second one*: After adding the composers, the stack of disks only appeared automatically for those tracks whose original (or other cover version) was in my library already. So that was not the case for some, but then I added an album with the original (or other cover version) and whoop-de-doo the stack of disks appeared
* edited this post now to add it