All Roon playlists are now empty

Hi @support

I have just noticed that all the shared playlists that I have created in Roon are now empty, showing as having zero tracks :frowning:

I dont know exactly when the issue occurred but it may have been a few days ago, or possibly after the last update. But I did have some problems connecting to my backup location and I had to modify the credentials used by Roon to access the Music and Backup shares on my NAS. Can you please assist?

Thanks!

Actually I have just noticed that one of the playlists actually has one track still remaining… odd!

Hey @Tim_Rhodes,

How did you do this? Did you edit the watched folder or did you add a new one? Can you share a screenshot of Settings > Storage?

This may have happened if you added a watched folder instead of editing your previous one. The tracks would have been re-imported rather than updated, leading to duplicates in the database (and your playlists were tied to the original import).

If you have a backup from before you made this change to the NAS, the best option is to restore the backup and then make the change to the watched folder once more, this time editing the watched folder instead of adding a new one.

If you have any questions just let me know!

Thanks,
Dylan

Hi @dylan

Thanks for your response. I didn’t add a watch folder, I changed the credentials used to connect to the same /Music folder on my NAS. I did remove, change and then added a new backup folder at the same time, with the same credentials, but assume that shouldn’t have affected the playlists?

The SMB path to the imported files and the files themselves are entirely unchanged so I don’t understand why the playlists should have been affected at all.

There is also the question of how one playlist still retains one track… Suggests that something unexpected happened when it re-scanned the NAS folder?

I have restored the oldest backup I have (just over a week old) but the problem persists unfortunately.

Here is the screenshot as requested;

Hey @support, any chance of a quick update here please?

I get the feeling that my playlists are beyond rescue? Which would be a shame because a good number of them pre-date my use of Roon by about 10 years :frowning:

Lesson learned I suppose, keep backups for longer, or maybe just use Tidal for all my playlists in future.

Hey @dylan

Anything I can do to salvage my playlists?

Hey @Tim_Rhodes,

My sincere apologies on the delayed response here.

Can you share a screenshot of what you’re seeing when you view your playlists? Are they completely empty, or are the tracks showing as unavailable?

Additionally, can you verify that Roon is up to date on all of your devices?

Thanks,
Dylan

Hi @dylan

Sorry for the delay in my response, I guess its a timezone thing!

Sure here are the screenshots you have requested. The playlists are completely empty now, despite the path to the tracks being unchanged…


As you can see above they have zero tracks, apart from one playlist which has one track, and that track is a FLAC file on my NAS same as all the others!

All my devices are up to date;

Thanks for the info here, @Tim_Rhodes!

If you click into one of the playlists do tracks show up there as unavailable, or are they just completely empty? Can you share a screenshot of this?

Thanks,
Dylan

Hi @dylan

Sorry thought I made this clear, there are no tracks! Except for one of the playlists, which has 1 track left.

Perhaps I can clarify things a bit though; all the affected playlists are ones that had ONLY local NAS tracks in them. The TIDAL playlists are fine (probably to be expected) but what is also true is that playlists that are a mix of local NAS tracks and TIDAL tracks are also OK.

For instance, Bond Theme playlist from the screenshot above that had only local NAS tracks in it;

But another playlist that has both local NAS and TIDAL tracks is ok;

EDIT: In fact what it looks like is that playlists that were NOT shared (i.e. exclusive to a specific profile) are ok. Shared playlists (to all profiles) that had only local NAS files have been emptied.

Hey @Tim_Rhodes,

Just to verify, are these M3U playlists?

Are you able to find one of the tracks that should be in one of the playlists in Roon? If so, can you take a screenshot of it’s path?

Thanks,
Dylan

They were once m3u playlists. Although I don’t have the original m3u files anymore unfortunately.

The path to all the files is the same as it always has been;

\ds-home\Music<artist><album><nn Title.flac>

That hasn’t changed forever and certainly Roon has never seen files with any other path. Not sure why that matters?

Thanks, @Tim_Rhodes.

Just to confirm, are you able to find any of these tracks in Roon outside of the playlists? Can you navigate to one of the tracks that should be in the playlists from the Track or Album browser?

-Dylan

Hi @dylan

Yes I can find all the tracks in the Roon library that has always worked fine. The tracks have been rescanned but have always been in the same location on the NAS and Roon has always used the same path to access each and every track.

EDIT: typos, sorry originally posted from my phone as I have been away

Hi is there anything we can do to either recover my playlists or work out why the shared playlists with only NAS tracks have been lost?

Hey @Tim_Rhodes,

I had a meeting with the technical team to discuss this, and we were hoping to get a little more information here from you:

  • You mention that many of these were once M3U playlists. Were these converted to Roon playlists so you could edit them further, or are these still just M3U files that we are reading in Roon?
  • Can you share a screenshot of Settings > Library > Clean Up Library? (Note — Don’t actually clean just yet, just show a screenshot of the Library Maintenance window).
  • Can you go to one of the tracks that should be showing in a playlist, go to View File Info, and take a screenshot of the File Info window?

Thanks!
Dylan

They were once m3u playlists but I imported then in to Roon. I no longer have the original m3u files, I left all management to Roon after the first import.

Cleanup screen shot

To upload a shot of a track on the NAS that was once in an affected playlist I will have to post from something other than my phone, so please bear with me

Thanks

Just to clarify not all the affected playlists were imported from m3u files. Some were created natively in Roon. The commonality wasthat they were all shared playlists with only local NAS files added.

Private playlists with only NAS files are fine. Playlists with a mix of NAS and tidal tracks are fine.

Hi @dylan

Sorry for the delay. Here is the other requested screenshot, of Die Another Day by Madonna which was on the ‘Bond Themes’ playlist that I posted above…

I look forward to hearing from you!

Thanks for the info here, @Tim_Rhodes, and apologies for the continuing troubles here.

I’ve updated my report with this new info and have passed it back to the technical team for their investigation. I’ll update you once more once I receive their feedback.

Kind regards,
Dylan