I agree. I used to enjoy the connections Roon radio made with my selected listening choices. Now, they seem to come out of left field and seem totally unrelated to what was played before. I’m relying less and less on it.
I thought it was just me. I’ve tried Focus on Holiday from within my library and with Tidal and Qobuz added. RRadio is completely out of the holiday genre inside of two tracks. The old version was much better.
I’ve also tried starting RRadio on a few random artists and it’s pretty far out in left field right away.
I love Roon and will give it more time, but it doesn’t seem to be an improvement so far.
I find Roon radio HUGELY improved
The strangest feature of Roon radio has remained constant anyway: it works just fine for jazz and it performs abysmally for classic rock (but for some reason it stopped playing the Stones every fourth track or so, which is the only notable improvement ).
Deafening silence from the Roon team on this subject, BTW. I don’t really like how with new releases they brag about how superior to the competition this or that feature has become or will turn out to be, just to discover that the result is meh…
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I think we are talking about two different issues (although I have had Radio “stall” out on me also).
I’m talking about the “quality” of the music picks.
Radio used to work great with jazz…now it goes from me playing bebop to selecting fusion! Or playing some alternative music the I’ve picked to playing something I have no interest in…that never used to be the case.
Can I ask what kind of music you listen to? I do wonder if its because my taste is too far out there or something and the “crowd” in crowd sourcing selections isn’t listening to the same stuff.
I listen to Soul, R&B, Pop, some Rock, some electronica, some jazz. While I have some mainstream stuff in my library (say, Stevie Wonder), I don’t listen to it often. But I wouldn’t say my tastes are really ‘out there’ either. I have around 800 artists in my library, but only about 40 that are marked as favorites.
I can’t say I noticed any difference in Roon Radio in the switch to 1.7. It actually didn’t occur to me that algorithm may have changed. But I can certainly see this might be something Roon would tweak/modify over time. Normally, specific feedback is useful for Roon, but in this case it’s just about impossible to show a before and after.
I gave up on Roon Radio after the latest update. To be honest I think it’s a ridiculous concept. Real time human musical taste is not reducible to an AI program and long may it be the case.
I like the Velvet Underground.
Does that mean I like Lou Reed? Yes. Does that mean I like his solo albums- yes and no. I like some of the early ones but though I like Transformer I have heard it enough times in my life thank you. What about Mo Tucker? No. John Cale- No, except a few select tracks. What about early American underground music- maybe, depends. What about 60’s avant-garde music - well yes but not necessarily 60’s. What about experimental music- well definitely not experimental jazz! And what about the fact that I’m wanting to listen to sad Velvets songs today and happy (!) ones next time? etc etc
Shoegaze, Indie, jazz, rock, folk, Madchester, velvet underground, Bob, Neil, Joni, Richard Thompson, try most indie stuff esp American, but it works on your input via likes dislikes, so I find it improves over time
I do agree that any algorithm predicting human musical preferences at a specific moment (so depending on mood, situation, etc.) is never perfect. Still there is a good use for Roon radio. It just needs to beat my go to online radio stations (for me: radio paradise and JB). I think its name suggests that is what it is intended to do.
I don’t want to be in control of the music I listen to all of the time. I’m only human and I have a limited amount of cognitive resources to spend on remembering and choosing music. Especially when I’m working, I like to hand control to Roon. 1) Because I don’t have to spend time at choosing 2) because all choices I make when working, are easy/boring and make me play albums I know well completely to death.
Roon should at least be better at tailoring music to my taste than an internet radio broadcast. And this is where things, for me, go wrong at the moment:
1 Roon chooses really, really often to play songs straight from my library, from only a few albums. That I can do myself and has nothing to do with ‘Radio’.
2 Roon goes wild sometimes. Not really a big issue, but somehow I feel incapable of steering the algorithm in a better direction.
The only control I feel I have over the algorithm is the song it bases it’s guesses on and telling it that a suggestion doesn’t suit my mood… but there is no feedback that shows me how Roon takes that into account.
Maybe if I could set my current mood/situation (e.g. ‘at work’, ‘relaxing’, ‘energized’) in conjunction with the seed to start from, I would feel that Roon would actually learn something useful about me and my preferences. I know that makes the collected data even more sensitive, but it is up to the user what information to provide… and I think the only way for this algorithm to fit better.
I find it depends on the seed you choose. When I use 80s pop that my wife likes it’s faultless and she loves it.
I picked an obscure comedic song with just that song in Tidal it did really well and went onto bonxzo dog etc.
The algorithm isn’t exactly personal it is influenced by your favourited artists etc but it’s pathways are influenced by bulk. If a number of people went from artist/song A to G then it will favour that path. It will be influenced by your choices but, as I understand it, they will be modifiers not drivers.
That’s my understanding of the algorithm too.
I think that just using a seed and population data makes suggestions only a little better than what live radio stations do by selecting music for a specific musical taste or theme. Learning is mostly about how the population averages out, not really about your listening habits… allthough the rejection option ‘I’m not in the mood’ suggests Roon wants to know how your mood varies from moment to moment.
The algorithm just does what a radio station programmanager would do: link suitable music to the theme of the radio station. In this case you set the theme with a seed. Switching the seed is roughly equivalent to switching between live radio stations with different themes.
Now if the algorithm would have some basic data on me(!), it would become really good ad predicting. It doesn’t take much to get to know how my routines relate to my moods and musical preferences. Only telling Roon that I skipped a track just because I was ‘not in the mood’, is a really slow/incomplete way of teaching Roon my routines.
I’m just curious about where Valence/Roon radio wants to go. Connecting music to music was always Roons aim, first by metadata now by big data. But if connecting a specific user to music is a new direction, it makes not much sense to do that with a big musical database with virtually zero biodata of the actual user. And yes, sharing your data is scary… but I for example would be happy to feed my activities (work/leisure/just woke up/end of day…) and moods into Roon for a while and see what it learns. Could be a 2 or 3 question thing that you can select (optionally) when using Roon radio.
Just thinking out loud! Sorry for the wall of text!
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No I like the switches idea. Though of course the roon team don’t want more switches 
That I can understand. Maybe they can bury them under the ‘I’m not in the mood’ button. Would be funny to see Roon asking ‘why…?’ after clicking that ;).
I get bugged sometimes that the same artists repeat, so when that starts happening I just choose a new seed tune and start over.
This. RoonRadio reminds me of that iTunes attempt at it… Genius? iGenius? A dive to the bottom. Is Roon using the phrase “artificial intelligence” to describe RoonRadio? I hope not, because I know some Raspberry Pi’s that will soon develop a sense of indignance if they are. 
Remember, for some folk, change is bad.
What I find ‘weird’ is that I should like/dislike a song that is next to play. Why not like/dislike the current one? Or am I doing something wrong
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Expecting X and getting Y isn’t change, it’s malfunction.
I agree, but I’d also like to see the upcoming play queue, not just the play history. Then I can just ditch it and start again if I can see that I’m not going to want to listen to it.
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