My understanding is that roon is (self assessed) GDPR compliant. If that’s the case, how do I get access to my usage/listening data?
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Hi @Thomas_Sola,
Reading this, I don’t believe Roonlabs have access to it …
But let me tag @support to follow up with you.
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Thanks, @Carl. On that note, I was thinking most specifically about:
Information about your music collection… Information about what music you play. For the development of radio and other features, Roon builds musical taste profiles based on your play history.
I can’t remember the exact details, but I think that Roon knows exactly what was played, but they can’t link that data to an individual user. In other words, the ‘your’ in ‘Roon builds musical taste profiles based on your play history’ is plural rather than singular.
So my listening affects others Roon radio? No wonder there are a few complaints…
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I suspect it’s a bit of both.
The new Home page details much of my recent listening activity specifically and can slice and dice that by which artists, albums, genres, by day, etc. Then they aggregate that into “top” artists, albums, by week, month, year, and all time. So there’s some data that definitely qualifies as personally identifiable info. (I’m reminded how a couple of data scientists used Netflix user rating data to identify a handful of users even though the Netflix data was anonymized.)
How that figures into suggestions and recommendations, i.e. the “tastes”, I think you’re right. At that level it probably gets anonymized into more general trends and linkages and we affect each other’s experience.
In any case, we’ll see what support says. I’m not expecting they have a distribution method for this data set up but it would be cool to see, if they do. GDPR is a bit messy. The lawyers I’ve worked with would absolutely include this kind of data but that was back when GDPR launched. There were a lot of open questions still and I’m sure some more definitive real-world examples have come up which might have changed their thinking.
There’s actually a lot of “smarts” in group data, especially in higher-dimensional relationships leading to connections that are harder or impossible to see when looking at simple averages or the like. But if it’s not analyzed well, you could just end up with a popularity contest, in effect. But, babies and bathwater, right?
I don’t use roon radio so I can’t speak to any issues there. I know I have seen complaints. Fortunately it’s the kind of that can improve over time, especially if they have a good machine learning system set up.
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You might find this thread from a couple of years ago interesting. Many of the issues you mention were discussed in quite a lot of detail.
Thanks, @DaveN. I have seen that but it’s all over the place and likely outdated. At least as of 1.8 and the new Home stats they show. I see where Danny says the analytics are anonymized but that’s what Netflix said too and it was still possible to identify users. Though that’s probably a legal hair I haven’t the time, money, nor inclination to fight anyone on. I’m just interested in a downloadable version of what they already put on the new Home page. Maybe the connection to GDPR was my own red herring.
Anyhow. Thanks for taking the time to search around.
Yep, some clarification regarding that point would be useful.
There’s a copy of it sitting in your Roon database directory. Remember, while we have cloud services, we also have your Roon Core to hold data and make decisions. Most companies don’t have this type of heavy “server” sitting in your home. The Roon Core’s data is by nature GDPR compliant since it’s data you already have access to.
That isn’t available… it’s generated on the fly. But even if it was stored, the data you are looking for is held as IDs, and not actual metadata.
It’s a good angle, but most GDPR requests from most vendors will not get you usable data unless the data you produced is actual content (text postings, photos, etc).
The thing you want is an exportable version of Roon’s screens, which doesn’t exist.
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Ah, thanks for that clarification, @danny. That all makes sense. Appreciated.
Just a little feedback then. I was asking because the data on the new Home isn’t that useful for me and I was hoping to just slice and dice it myself for more insightful connections and patterns.
I don’t really need to know how long I was listening on a given day. Can’t say I’ve ever wondered if I listened to more music last Tuesday vs yesterday or by how much.
I’m not sure what to do with the most listened to artists or albums. I already have a rough idea of what I’ve been listening to.
I’d really love to see the hidden patterns or not obvious connections that could be derived from all that info though. The old Discover page may not have had much intelligence in its suggestions but at least it threw a lot of albums in my face in one view and there was a high percentage chance I’d see things I hadn’t thought of in a while. The new home hardly shows any suggestions at a glance except for my recent listening but, as I say, I already know what I’m listening to.
Not saying the new Home wasn’t the right choice for your target users. It’s just my experience. I still get crazy useful leads when I click through on the links in artist bios or “similar artists” and whatnot. And the new filtering is great.
Thanks again though for the follow up and explanation. Stay safe out there.
I’m likely misreading your comment (the use of “old”), but just to check that you know you can still access the ‘Discover’ screen (the blue panel at bottom of the Home page)?
I love the Discover page as well, sometimes I just want a more random selection. 
If you were willing to examine your play history in more depth outside of Roon, you could export your play history as an *.xls.
There isn’t a specfic option to export a selection or all tracks from your play history to a spreadsheet from the ‘My History’ page (it can only be done one track at a time - perhaps something to do with the way Roon handles streaming v. local music files), but you can select the desired tracks in your play history, then add those to a playlist.
From the specific playlist listing, you can select and export those tracks as a spreadsheet.
The included fields are somewhat limited to Artist, Album, Album Artist, and Composer.
I think a Feature Request is in order: for an export straight from the ‘My History’ page, and to include Genre, Release Year, etc…
Edit: request now made:
Thanks, @SimplicityCompass. That’s good to note. I didn’t realize anything was exportable. I don’t generally use playlists so I appreciate the pointer.
Those fields are a bit limited for the kinds of insights that would interest me but might be worth playing around with for fun.
I will hop over to your FR and add in a “Me too, please”.
Take care.
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