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!