Seeing as Rovi is a major source of metadata why not add support for their Mood and Theme metadata - would be great to be able to browse/ filter/ playlist using these.
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Great idea!
It’s definitely feasible. The thing that stopped us from doing this last time we discussed it (admittedly, it has been a while since moods came up) was that the data is kind of lame, and we didn’t see a whole lot of value at the product level:
- Moods/themes data is at the album level, not the track level (where it belongs, IMO)
- The tagging behavior on the part of individual editors over at AllMusic seems to be extremely subjective.
- Albums are tagged with way too many moods/themes, so it’s not clear where to put them in the UI without creating tons of clutter.
If they had tagged at the track level, it would have been a goldmine for radio.
Any thoughts on these issues?
A feature in the hopefully upcoming metadata editor which enables us to tag a certain mood at track level - this information is then synced to the Roon cloud and shared among all users, thus creating our own Roon mood database 
Albums were tagged with this Mood info from Rovi for all albums imported into Sooloos
Personally, I found that I couldn’t see the Wood for the Trees…way too many moods per Album…and I can’t see Rovi changing that to per Track
Overall, it felt like a good idea superficially…but trying to use the data in a practical sense in Sooloos was impossible IMHO…and I don’t see how that might change in Roon
Applying Moods to e.g. 100,000 Tracks in Roon is a mammoth task in order to make it useful…and even then, I’m not sure how useful it might be
To me, the “Music based on Mood” is a nice idea on paper…but implementing it practically is very difficult and time consuming for the user IMHO
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This is where Lyric analyzers and measuring the technical properties of a song that may indicate it’s mood are good tools to have. Really that comes from true love of and listening tomusic.
Such data is by definition always going to be subjective so the underlying value is also necessarily subjective, and it’d definitely be better at track level but that’s probably a pipe dream.
If the feature was to be supported I’d list moods and themes underneath genres (with the option to remove from display for those that don’t want it). Start with Rovi’s metadata and make it possible for users to deselect individual mood/ theme tags so that they no longer apply to the album in question.
Having said above, however, if it’s strongly felt to be of little utility then perhaps it’s a moot discussion.
Good comments. The other challenge is what kind of mood are you in and where do you want to go? Many people cannot accurately describe there current state, it’s locked up in their feelings.
I believe that Gracenote has tagged music on a track by track basis as this is what plex seems to be using.
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/205000118-How-do-I-use-mood-information-for-tracks-
Imagine being able to search Tidal for the "Most Listened + Energetic Dreamy +,Rock songs released in the last 10 years.
Also adding a most listened mood radio which would include my most listened local songs matching that particular mood and recommendations from Tidal.
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Wonder how they went about it. A few years ago Gracenote purchased and then killed MusicIP which was pretty damned good at playlisting based on acoustic analysis of your music library. I would not be surprised to find they assembled a mood list and then assigned moods to individual songs by using the MusicIP algorithm to automate the selection/ matching.
This seems to be Gracenote’s mood thingy:
Reading the above-mentioned it seems it is indeed a combination of MusicIP analysis technology and metadata driving Gracenote’s offering. With MusicIP as it was back in the day you could define moods by selecting a representative sample of songs and it would create a binary file representing the acoustic properties of the sample. You could then use that binary file as a seed to automatically seed a playlist. It generated great playlists, may be worth looking into.
I agree where you’re relying on a 3rd party to provide the metadata, however, I’d find it very useful to be able to add/edit mood tags to tracks which then enables me to focus on selected mood keywords for browsing, playlisting and/or Radio. I’d have no issue with the Rovi moods being shown as a default so long as I can add/remove to taste by track down the road. It’s be a great way to be able to play back music that means specific things to you the individual.