Allow users to import Tidal favorite ARTISTS into roon library (ideally let users choose artists, albums, and/or songs to import)

I have 950 favorited artists in my Tidal catalog, and I exclusively use artists to browse my Tidal library. When I want to listen to an album, I go to the artist page, and find the album. That’s how the process of music listening has always been for me, and I think most people think this way. Even if they think of an album they want to listen to, it’s in the context of that artist. In fact, the complete process for me is genre/category/mood > artist > album. I don’t use the albums or songs favorites in Tidal except to favorite songs when I hear one I like in a Tidal playlist, but then I add the artist to my favorites.

I just signed up for roon and discovered there were only 151 artists in my roon library in artists view, which is where all the action happens- focus view, tags, etc. I did an experiment to see why my 950 Tidal favorite artists were not listed. I went on the Tidal app, and “unfavorited” an album.The next day in artist view, it said 150.

So my conclusion is that any song or album you favorite, that artist gets added to your roon artist library. But it does not add any of the actual artists you favorite to the roon artist library. This has been confirmed by contacting roon via email by one of their incredibly kind customer service reps.

This is absolutely asinine in my opinion and a huge mistake by roon.

I can access my Tidal favorite artists, but I have to do the following: click 1. Tidal 2. favorites 3. artists 4. all

And then I get an alphabetical list of artists. Just like Tidal. Yay. But with 4 extra clicks.

I thought I could maybe circumvent this by tagging artists in this Tidal artists view, and then they’d show up in my tags and it wouldn’t matter in the end, but roon won’t let you tag an artist while in the Tidal > favorites > artists > all - view.

So basically my conclusion is that for Tidal users, roon is completely useless and accomplishes nothing. I might as well save 10$ per month and not have to sign in every time I launch my music app, and just use Tidal and hope they add customizable folders as I suggested to them.

I understand from speaking to the roon representative that roon doesn’t add favorited artists to the roon artist library because they don’t know if you want all the albums available by that artist on Tidal added to your roon library.

My answer is simple: LET US CHOOSE!

When first starting the application, or possibly later as well in preferences, but at lest when starting up, present Tidal users with a checklist that reads like this:

"Which of these favorites do you want added to your roon artist library from Tidal?

  • Artists
  • Albums
  • Songs

Let users choose or not choose any of these. I, for example would only choose artists because my Tidal albums and songs favorites I use just for remembering things, like the example I gave above where I add a song to favorites if I hear it on a playlist and like it, but I may not wind up liking the artist.

roon is useless to me, as I can’t get my Tidal library into it. And the only way to access my Tidal artists favorites in roon, I wind up with the same thing as I already have in Tidal and the whole reason I was excited about roon to AVOID: an alphabetical list of artists.

I really want to use roon to tag artists so I don’t have to navigate a list of artists. It’s impossible and a nightmare. Please Please Please add this simple checklist option feature, and the ability to import favorite artists into my roon library if I choose to.

Thank you!

I think this is known as projection. If everyone thought like that there would be no need for the album, tracks, genre etc screens.

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Simple . if laborious …

Goto your Artist , select an album then “Add To Library”, that artist will now show in your Artist view

Not ideal I agree but it works

I agree my Classical selection used to be

Composer>Genre>Album – Play

But Roon doesn’t make this too easy with the Composer View

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Explained that in another thread.

You’re the first I’ve come across that adds artists to a library. We all do this indirectly by adding albums to our library.

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Yes, definitely laborious… 950 times! Damn, not going to happen…

I WANT genres. I want my Tidal favorite artists in roon so I can add tags which is the closest thing to genres > artists > albums I can have at this point.

I’m the first person you’ve come across who adds artists to their Tidal library? Everyone else adds albums? Why? So when you’re browsing your Tidal catalog before roon you browse a list of albums? Beatles albums are spread out all through the list of albums, all Johnny Cash’s albums are spread out throughout the list of albums, all Elvis Presley’s albums, The Grateful Dead’s albums including all their live albums… that process makes no sense.

I am certainly not the only person who adds artists to their Tidal library. I promise you that. There are enough of us for roon to simply add a checklist of options so that importing from Tidal works with the way each person uniquely uses Tidal.

I am unable to get my Tidal catalog into roon and I don’t think that’s too much to ask for.

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Agree, I add albums, or tracks, not artists.

It wouldn’t be complicated to add tidal artists from tidal, but geez how much customisation for every little feature every body wants can be accommodated by a small team? Roon isn’t the Pentagon!
H

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Part of it could be that I’m kind of “old school” in how I listen to music. Many music listeners have now grown up with digital music purchasing and music streaming, and the concept of the album as a work of it’s own has faded a bit. I remember Sufjan Stevens even talking about having a kind of crisis of faith about the album format. But I don’t ever listen to “tracks”. I listen to albums. If a band has one good song I might use it in a mix if it fits (I still call them mixes not “playlists”) but I don’t ever listen to music and go find a specific track to listen to.

I also tend to like artists who put out good albums, so I want all their albums. There are a few exceptions that would cause roon problems like the millions of compilations released for artists like Elvis or Luis Armstrong etc. I’m not interested in all those millions of compilations. But those artists are few and far between.

I’m not that old though geeze, I’m 37.

I’d also like to point out that this forum is not frequented by non-roon users or people for whom roon does not work, like me. So just because there are several posts here by people who don’t need this feature request doesn’t mean it’s not in demand. This forum isn’t an accurate reflection of music listeners out there.

I think it’s completely normal to favorite an artist without favoriting that artist’s albums or songs. I also prefer to favorite artists and primarily think about music in terms of artists. I would imagine most of my Tidal library is favorited artists. I seldom favorite songs or albums.

I feel Roon being a user focused company focused around enhancing the user experience of music listeners should understand this point of view.

I shouldn’t have to favorite an album in Tidal in order for the artist to show up in Roon. Roon should match my favorited artists with that of Tidal.

Also, I find it annoying that I can’t favorite an artist in Roon without first adding an album to my library. The heart will not even show up next to the artist until I do this. Why should that be necessary? Let me favorite an artist whenever I want? Why make things complicated?

The whole Tidal / Roon integration is sadly very mediocre. This is one problem. Another huge one is playlists. Separate playlists on both platforms, so annoying. Common Roon, you’re a great platform but users still want to listen music outside their own homes (away from their core). Help us make it easier. It’s a premium service, it’s not cheap. Integrate Tidal better please!

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Now I have noticed this topic and I am surprised to read something like that.

My whole library is based on artists, I was never interested in adding albums, that’s why in Tidal I don’t even have a single album added to favorites/library, only artists.

Adding all of an artist’s Albums/EP’s/Singles one by one to the library doesn’t make sense (although I could select for an artist all the albums once - via Focus - Local) because I probably already have half of the albums in my personal library and there are artists who have a few hundred albums/singles and in this case I should add and then continuously check at least 1-2k artists that I am interested in to see what’s new in their discography. Now I do this directly through the Tidal app. because it’s easier for me.

How do I see Roon should work? After I add an artist to Roon’s favorites, Roon will add the entire discography of that artist and automatically add and notify me when something new is released by that artist appears in Tidal/my library.

Sorry for any mistakes, English is not my native language.

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Yes, I also add artists to Tidal (or Spotify, or any other service).

I actually found this thread because I couldn’t figure out how to tag my artists in Roon (other than the handful of ones for which I own local copies). So in that sense the thread is very helpful. I find it very stupid that Roon won’t take Tidal artist lists into your Roon library.

In fact, I ONLY put a track or album into my Tidal (or Spotify, or any other service) library if I DON’T like the artist. So I find it annoying that those artists are listed in my artists list in Roon. I noticed that phenomenon before trying to use tags and coming here.

Oh well. Maybe I won’t use Roon. Maybe I won’t use Tidal either. Spotify hifi is coming “later this year” after all!!

Tai

I listen to albums so never add artists only albums, Roon like most library software is album focused. By adding one album you are adding that artist as well. Same does not go for just adding an artist so is absolutely pointless in my view, but we all think differently.

If I add a soundtrack, I don’t want to add all the artists from that soundtrack (could be many, many). Not sure what you mean by ‘same does not go for just adding an artist’ - by adding an artist, I am adding all their albums equally, including their future albums. And all platforms I’ve used give me separate lists of artists and albums and tracks. I add artists that I like, and add albums/tracks when I don’t particularly like the underlying artists but just like those albums or tracks. I find the comment that what many people have voiced wanting to do, all with clearly valid reasons, is “absolutely pointless” is somewhat offensive, particularly when your own view is so tersely and ambiguously offered. But I guess we all think differently!

Why would I want all of the artists discography if they only made one decent album . This mentality doesn’t make sense to me. I never went in a record shop and bought the entire catalogue of an artist based on one album I like.

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Exactly - if I only want one album because I don’t like the artist in general, I add the album - and NOT the artist. I don’t want them in my artist list. And if I like the artist then I add them and not just one album. I guess you do understand exactly the view of the folks who want this feature, just that you tend to not like artists.

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Very simple and it’s not about “mentality”, I listen via Roon + Tidal exclusively Left Field Pop, Indie Pop/Rock, Alternative and Contemporary Singer/Songwriter genre and i’m interested only in new releases, in my 2k albums library over 1k albums are released after 2020. And I’m well over 50 … :slight_smile:

And I just explained before why: “How do I see Roon should work? After I add an artist to Roon’s favorites, Roon will add the entire discography of that artist and automatically add and notify me when something new is released by that artist and appears in Tidal/my library
That’s how I’ll be up to date with all the new music releases and I can follow my favorite artists optimally. The artists I follow release singles, remixes quite often and this way I wouldn’t miss anything new.

That’s the music I listen most of the time, is my secondary setup and is on 12 hours a day. For critical listening I use the main system (less and less because I can’t have meetings with friends because of pandemic restrictions) and it has nothing in common with Roon, there I use physical disks, sacd’s and cd’s, main system is exclusively for jazz and classical.

Main setup:

Secondary setup:

Just stumbled over the thread as I had the same problem - not finding a “heart” next to artist without adding an album first. What an insane way of organising things - of course you should be able to “favourite” an artist directly!!

Indeed, I have the same idea. I have just started using Roon yesterday and I was looking for a ‘heart’ next to the artist. And I was even looking for importing all my ‘Vinyl’ collection & CD collection that way. :slight_smile: I know it is silly but I have all my records in Collectorz with all info. Would be cool to be able to link that directly to Qobuz and/or Roon. Call me old school ! :slight_smile: