I like the idea of supporting works in classical music: a symphony, concerto, or sonata. However, the way the app sorts works is very, very wrong. For example, it lists individual arias from Bach cantatas, individual songs from pop and rock albums, and individual tracks on jazz albums. This makes my works list unmanageable; with a library of some 65K tracks, roon shows over 12,000 works.
There needs to be some sort of filter for works. It should let the user choose which genres aren’t included, or it should be limited to classical, opera, etc.
Yes! This stuff is a little bit of work in progress, especially the work browser screen.
One thing we have learned is this: it’s not just Classical users who want to browse by composer, or by work. This browse hierarchy is how Dylan fans will find their cover recordings of “Knockin on Heaven’s Door”, how Jazz fans will figure out where all of their recordings of “Bye Bye Blackbird” are, and how all of us will gain access to the composers of the Great American Songbook.
Roon determines what constitutes a “work” in a few ways–and we’re still tweaking this:
If one of our metadata services identifies something as a classical work, it’s a work in Roon.
If you have multiple recordings of a piece performed by people who are unaffiliated to that songs composer, it’s a clue that the piece stands on its own as a work.
If we detect that a person has many works that meet the above criteria, then we conclude that they are “super interesting” and upgrade their other pieces to works in the app
We have some very cool classical-targeted browsing modes in the design phase that will help present this data better for people who are specifically interested in Classical composer and work browsing.
Interesting. So, since I have a bunch of Dylan covers, those Dylan songs that have covers are considered works? That doesn’t fit with the way I’ve always thought of works; groups of tracks that stand together. For pop/rock, that’s often just an album; for classical, it’s clearly more than that.
So theoretically a Schubert song is a work, because it is catalogued as such with a D. number. And his song cycle, Winterreise, is also a work, even though it’s 24 songs, because it’s got a single D. number. However, listing a single aria from a Bach cantata, or each of the Goldberg Variations as individual works, is just wrong.
But I’m seeing lots of songs listed as works, where I only have one version of them. To me, pop/rock songs, or jazz pieces, don’t really qualify as works, but I can understand the interest in grouping multiple versions; maybe a different term is needed. It’s certainly interesting to want to compare, say, all the recordings of Nardis by different jazz performers.
So your third criterion - upgrading other pieces to works - doesn’t really make sense to me. I have every Dylan album, but not all of his songs are in multiple versions; having them all listed as works just makes the Works list useless. Having 12,000 works in a list is not very browse-frinedly.
I’m certainly looking forward to more classical stuff.
However, listing a single aria from a Bach cantata, or each of the Goldberg Variations as individual works, is just wrong.
Absolutely. Something is going wrong there.
So your third criterion - upgrading other pieces to works - doesn’t really make sense to me. I have every Dylan album, but not all of his songs are in multiple versions; having them all listed as works just makes the Works list useless. Having 12,000 works in a list is not very browse-frinedly.
Yeah I get it. This is really tricky to tune. We want everything that Harold Arlen wrote to be considered a work, since he is a noteworthy composer, even if there isn’t explicit editorial data telling us that. It’s clear that doing that same behavior for Dylan is a little bit much, even if the data looks the same to the software.
One thing we’re considering is tightening up the automatic behavior and doing some manual editorial work to flag these “super interesting” guys.
I think that, ideally, this needs some sort of setting, so the users who do want lots of works can have them, and those who don’t want so many can have a shorter list.
I fully agree with KirkMC. This work issue is critical and if done right would be a break through for music management.
Classical Albums make little sense for me. I want to see Sym #1 as a work and Sym #2 as a separate work, even if on the same album. I want to be able to search Mozart piano concerto #21 and see all of these works (ideally by label, and performer), select one and play the 3 movements.
In my Classical library, all works are albums so I can get some separation from Albums that contain multiple works. Not sure how Roon will deal with the above and this last issue.
I am super excited to hear these issues seem to be understood by Roon and are being addressed.
I’ve been stuggling with works too. I had some CDs such as Lord of the RIngs Fellowship of the Rings soundtrack where all 16 tracks were considered a work. I think this is the way they were titled in the metadata, picking a different version of the meta data solved these albums.
However I have 1012 of items, (of only 1556 peformances) that only have 1 performance. This does not make sense. Very few of these tracks with only a single performance fit the classical definition mentioned above. For instance Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello appear a lot as does Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus.
Also I have many performances of a work being missed. For instance I have seven versions of the song Embracable You. Roon groups six of them together as a work and leaves one as a separate work with only one performance.
Also I have 4 versions of Layla. None of these are considered performances of a work and show up in works at all. However several other songs that appear across the same set of albums such as Little Wing do appear as peformances.
I just clicked on “Works” for the first time and now I wish I could unsee what was just seen.
Apparently “Works” is a good way to surface metadata errors and inconsistencies or maybe issues with the database. For example, I only have 1 instance of “Can’t We Be Friends” (In the Wee Small Hours) by Frank Sinatra in my library, not 163 “Performances” of it.
That being said, I could see a filter by genre option being helpful for the “Works” section so you could limit it to Classical or whatever genre you chose since I can see Works being beneficial for other genres where I have multiple mixes and remixes of a particular song.
@Ludwig has summed it up well elsewhere. Works work well when Rovi is providing the data, and not so well the rest of the time.
This part of the system is due for an overhaul. I don’t really want to get too deep into a discussion about current deficiencies because we know it’s not working well, and we have an idea of how it’s going to get fixed. Once we have a concrete plan, we’ll start a discussion here (much like we did with the new genre features) and get into the details.