That rises for me the question: how bad is it in your case? It sounds like you have quite a lot of albums missing meta data.
I don’t know how much it is in my case but not as bad to think about not using Roon any longer.
I agree that it’s a problem, but no one entity is going to fix it. The labels are usually in the best position to enter metadata into MusicBrainz or TiVo, and if they can’t be bothered my issue is mostly with them.
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For jazz recorded prior to 2000 it’s not all that bad, i.e. there’s usually lots of metadata available.
For jazz recorded this century it’s pretty bad and getting worse with most new releases.
For recordings by Taylor Swift or any other major pop star it’s not an issue at all. There’s enough metadata available to choke a horse.
There are lots of errors in these, though, if you look closely, like name equivalence etc.
I’ve Roon Lifetime and have almost 30 Roon Ready devices. I’ve never been into the metadata or ever compiled a playlist. I use Roon for its multi-room and grouping capability and my wife uses it much of the time in her clinic. In my main 2-channel system I use Innuos Sense with Qobuz native and NAS files. I don’t ARC because I prefer to use public transport and read a book.
I have a strange way of choosing music. I go to concerts, hear people play, come home and search them. I buy things called magazines that come in the post every month, I read the reviews and articles and select from there. I suppose you could call it an analogue approach to digital music selection.
For me Roon is too much information most of the time, the most important thing for me is album booklets and I sometimes get a little irritated if they are missing.
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I created a new topic to try and address the metadata issue: Blame Game
Certainly true, but in case of the latest album published just a few days ago, I would give that a bit of time. If there is anyone being interested in that music contributing to MusicBrainz, I would expect more data to appear sooner or later.
For the 2018 album ´Bridges´ I found pretty consistent and more or less complete data on Discogs:
It shows how valuable a roon connection to discog´s database would be, being aware of the enormous difficulties when it comes to legal issues as well as identifying valid metadata on discos from duplicates and metagarbage.
I fully understand your dissatisfaction but I prescribe a huge portion to the fact that you are referring to albums which are not sold in mass quantities, published by record labels who seem not have interest in complete, consistent metadata. Don’t know why this is more widespread among Jazz labels and some minor classical ones.
I think roon team absolutely cares, but they might also have data indicating that this is not necessarily an issue concerning a large fraction of their subscribers.
Would not say that. Some genres like Electronic, Prog-rock, even hiphop for example, these artists seem to have a pretty loyal fanbase caring for metadata on MusicBrainz even if they sell small quantities as well. With classical music, many labels have been pretty keen on delivering metadata to libraries and other sources in the past so it is not a widespread problem (it is more the questionable quality of metadata in this case).
Jazz unfortunately is somewhere in between and artists seemingly not selling huge quantities miss to have a fanbase being into extensive information crowdsourcing.
None of these are exactly minority genres, in particular not hip hop
Did not make myself clear, mea culpa. You are certainly right that Electronic and HipHop are mainstream genres per se. I was more referring to artists within these genres who are having a very small but loyal fanbase not bigger than the aforementioned jazz musicians, maybe being just local heroes. The chance to have complete metadata thanks to loyal fans being into contributing to MusicBrainz is astonishingly high in my experience.
I think it’s very spotty even there. There are usually credits, but they contain artist equivalence errors even for stuff like Missy Elliott or Bob Marley. Smaller ones may have credits if someone cared but often there is nothing. Even some huge artists may have nothing if they are not Anglo-American and don’t have a nerdy fan base.
Re metadata, Roon is useless for anything but major acts. Even classification of genres is laughable [If memory serves me right Bedless Bones was classified as “country” LOL; rather is synth pop, EBM, coldwave, ambient], there are missing artist photos, missing cover art, and adding anything in is a PITA, then needs to be approved, so is not instantly available. What’s the point? I use Roon as a glorified music player, but for information rather go to discogs or Bandcamp.
The irritating thing is that the information is out there, just needs to be linked. Roon re-inventing the wheel is a fools errand.
Completely disagree. There are a lot of subgenres and independent acts which have well-curated metadata, and it is great fun using roon when listening to them. Discography and composition list work flawlessly and logically with most of artists and composers and that is a great improvement compared to any other database including Wikipedia and Discogs.
Yes, there are some voids and there is bad metadata especially with some niche genres. Some things like artist pictures, composer of a particular track and alike are missing in some cases, albums like bootlegs, DVDs and vinyl rips are not identified automatically. But does it stop you from enjoying the main features of roon? Me not. If it is necessary to add some metadata manually like covers, composers or main artists, I gladly invest this time as this is the case with less than 5% of my collection.
We all know this is not realistic. Metadata in chaotic form and from various sources is not usable by a structured database like roon.
What I think roon team could do in future is to offer additional identification and focus/filter tools estimating the quality of metadata. The focus filters ´has cover´, ´has genre´ and ´identified´ are a good start for everyone intending to improve his or her roon library. I could imagine more routines like that, e.g. ´has composers´, ´has main artist identified´, ´has corrupted artist names´ or alike.
If I could filter for such deficiencies, I could easily throw out or put in quarantine albums which do not meet the requirements for smooth roon experience. Maybe even by the help of an automated routine like ´hide all albums w/o consistent metadata´.
What I personally find more annoying than missing metadata is inconsistent and wrong metadata. That is especially the case with identifying classical compositions and showing recordings on the composition list. With Tidal, the latter has become unusable, but I would not blame roon for that and I still use it with my local library.
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The joy of capitalism is that you are not compelled to use the service and have other choices. I stayed with a family in the old communist East Germany many years ago. If you wanted to purchase a particular popular album at the time I was there, you also had to purchase an album of the Red Army Sings. You could not buy one without the other. To be fair, my musical tastes (almost entirely classical) would have preferred the Red Army Sings album to the popular album being sought by my East German friends. We seem to have forgotten what alternative systems actually offered
I do enjoy Roon (have a lifetime version) as a Flac player at home. And that is about it.
I focus on weird new music, guilty as charged, but for me, roon info is pathetically weak. I am currently traveling, so can’t provide specific examples, but I looked at it enough to know that it is true for my collection of ~10K tracks.
Have not looked at classics, but suspect the same here, as I am into niche classic specifically HIPP baroque and strange strings (viola d’amore/spadalla/gamba, baryton, tromba marina, …). I added several of my CDs to discogs in the past 2-3 years, which is a good indication that it is very niche.
Re import from other dbs, Discogs is highly structured and should be possible to merge info. I have no clue about standards in music dbs, I work mainly with natural history dbs with Darwin core standard data model, but it should be possible.
Happy it works for you, but realize, that others like me find roon info much below par.
Could you please - later - give an estimate which percentage of albums in your library are unidentified plus those being identified w/o basic metadata?
As we seem to partially share the love for obscure ancient music, I can tell you situation is not bad at all with that one. Very much depends on the record label if there is a full set of metadata on MB but the chance is usually high.
I have less than 10 albums (out of several 100) falling into that category being completely not recognized or showing empty metadata so I had to add it manually. The risk seems to be higher with coproductions of public broadcasters or concert venues as they seem not to be eager to complete metadata.
I doubt that. Discogs is a very good source from the perspective of a record collector being interested in specific releases of an album (and I use it a lot for that purpose). The moment you dig deeper into reliable information on composers, musicians and links to other artists, it gets as messy as can get.
Of course you are 100% correct. Capitalism often, but not always, offers choices.
Modern capitalism, as practiced here in the USA, often does not follow one of capitalism’s basic principles - one pays a vendor for “something” and that “something” is provided by the vendor. Way too much caveat emptor going on these days.
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499 (7%) of my library is unidentified. It seems that it is a combination of classical, Bandcamp, and split up box set releases. Sometimes it is frustrating because the Qobuz version is favorited but my purchased file cannot be identified (even if I flag it as a version of the album in Roon.)
I could spend days upon days of cleaning up my library in Roon. Unidentified albums, incorrect artwork, missing artwork, etc. but I really can’t find the time. There are too many other music library projects in line before it: cleaning LPs, ripping Blu-ray audio and SACD, etc. I hope it isn’t the main culprit for having a slow moving Roon UI, but I just don’t have the time.
Splitting box sets is a recipe for ID errors.
Many may look like an original album release but often track timings vary or even worse the dreaded bonus track that makes the split different to the original.
It’s very common on classical back catalogue boxes , “complete recordings of X” where original LPs are padded from 45 min to 70 min . The list is endless, Brendel, Karajan etc.
Currently the best advice for boxes is to leave them alone, that way Roon stands a chance of IDing the box set
Taking this view I am < 1% not IDed , most of which I can explain.
Hopefully the new look at box sets may fix some of these shortcomings