Why are credits missing on so many albums?

[mike (Mike Fass)]

I think I can understand some of the confusion in this thread, so let me quickly try to explain.

So, even once you’ve added an album to your library, Roon will still allow you to view the album “on TIDAL”, and this is considered distinct from the copy in your library, even if the same music is going to start when you hit play.

I detailed some of the reasons last year:

Why can't I favorite TIDAL tracks in a playlist?

when you add TIDAL content to your library, we treat it like we would if you had the files locally. Once it’s in your library, a TIDAL album can be marked as a Favorite, you can edit the metadata, etc, and it may or may not have the album’s entire track list as it appears on TIDAL. You are in control of the albums in your library, even if the content is streaming from TIDAL.

That said, the album in your library is distinct from the version on TIDAL, which cannot be edited, and will always have the entire track list. This is a subtle distinction, but for a variety of reasons we have to treat these as distinct, and you can always navigate to the TIDAL version of an album from a variety of places in Roon (like you would need to if you had a partial album and wanted to add the missing tracks.)

So, as a general rule, we ALWAYS give you a way to navigate to the non-library version TIDAL. This may seem confusing, but keep in mind that you may have only added a a track or two, or you may have edited the copy in your library. We need to give you a way back to the original, untouched album on TIDAL.

Reading this thread back, I can see how @Geoff_Mirelowitz ended up on an album outside his library.

Geoff, once the album was part of your library, you shouldn’t need to click over to TIDAL results. It should be available right in the main section of Search Results, and it should also appear in the Album browser, or the Recently Added section of Overview, all of which should take you to the copy in your library.

You really have to actively choose the non-library version once it’s been added, as described here:

• I searched for Sonny Criss. (I already know that the album I want – the bonus tracks album – is in my collection because I have chosen it in Tidal. But I do not know how to search my own collection, so I must rely on a broader search.)

• When my search results for Sonny Criss appear I go down the screen to “Tidal Albums.” Then “View All.”

In general, you shouldn’t really need to think about any of this, but to be clear:

• If the album you’re looking at has an Add To Library button, you’re looking at an album on TIDAL, and you won’t be able to edit, or set favorites.

• If the album has a Focus On Similar button, you’re looking at an album in your library.

Finally, to answer the question about credits, the reason is that you’re looking at the Bonus Track edition This is an area we’ve actively been working on, but what it comes down to is that there’s quite good metadata in our system for the Complete Imperial Sessions, but not for the Bonus Track Version. You can see the same thing on the AllMusic site, which has no reference to the Bonus Tracks edition at all.

Now, you might think the metadata for the former should carry over to the latter, and there are times where it might. But in many cases that’s not going to be a safe assumption, and in this case (34 tracks on the original vs 41 tracks on the bonus edition), the rules we have in place determined that we cannot confidentlyassume these two albums are equivalent… Which means there’s going to be very little data on the more obscure Bonus Tracks version.

In fact, from what I can see, none of our metadata providers have information for that version, which is why you’re seeing such sparse data. And obviously, we can’t show metadata that simply doesn’t exist in any of our sources. The good news is, if that data shows up in a few weeks or months, it will automatically show up in Roon.

Hope that helps!