Expectation: when Tidal tracks are in my library I can favorite them from “Now Playing,” even if they weren’t in my library (yet) at the time I added them to the queue.
Expectation: when the Queue shows me an “empty” heart, I can click on it and something will happen (or somehow the reason nothing happens is made clear).
The first expectation is important to me: I’m most likely to favorite a thing the first time I listen to it, as a way of flagging new cool stuff. The second expectation is about the UI being confusing, at least to me.
Reproduce:
Search for an album, select one from Tidal, play it immediately. Make sure this album is not already in your library.
Jump to “Now Playing” in the queue.
Try to click on the heart. Nothing happens.
Navigate to the album again, add it to my library.
Jump to “Now Playing” in the queue.
Try to click on the heart. Nothing happens.
Note that as of step 5 above the “three vertical dots” menu no longer offers [+ Add To Library], so some part of Roon understands the track is in my library as of step 4. The heart icon fails to add the favorite regardless.
Alternatively:
Search for an album, select one from Tidal, play it immediately. Make sure this album is not already in your library.
Jump to “Now Playing” in the queue.
Try to click on the heart. Nothing happens.
Click the three vertical dots, select [+ Add To Library].
Try to click on the heart. Nothing happens.
What does work:
Search for an album, pick one from Tidal that is already in your library.
Number 3 above: this is expected behaviour. The heart does not have a solid outline, therefore it can’t be clicked. Compare the heart outline with a track already in your library.
Number 4-6, this is also expected. When you add the track to your library, the track currently in queue is still not in your library. You would have to add it again after adding to your library for it to work.
The issues in the thread you referenced were a different bug that the Roon guys have not been able to track down. No one has ever been able to list steps to reproduce it.
I find it quite difficult to distinguish between the two kinds of “hollow” hearts. I think it might be clearer to omit the heart entirely for non-library files, or use a different shape.
Regardless, now I know to look for this difference. Thanks again.
It isn’t clear what you mean by “expected” here. Is it in the “known bug” sense, or “intended behavior” sense.
I am reporting this as a bug. Of course, there is always a question of how serious the bug is (probably not very serious in this case).
If I add a Title/Qobuz track to my library after it has been put in the queue, Roon already, partially, behaves as if it is in my library. For example, [+ Add To Library] choice disappears from the track. If Roon can do that, why should the behavior of the empty heart not also change? That it didn’t confused me greatly for quite some time.
This feels more like an oversight than an intended, clear, behavior with a benefit for the user.
This is the expected behavior and is not a bug. To be clear, the version of that album that you’re playing is not the same to Roon as the version you added to your library. If you start playback from the version in your library, you’ll see that it works and you can favorite the track. If you navigate to the non-library version again and start playback, it won’t work even though you have a version in your library.
Thanks Dylan, I do understand these concepts at the technical level, but I still believe this behavior is unnecessarily confusing for the user, and has room for improvement. I encourage you (not necessarily personally, but Roon Audio as a company) to take a closer look at improving this use case. In particular:
User plays a track/album from a streaming service.
It is always very easy to favorite the track just heard.
I don’t want to be bothered with the distinction of “in my library vs. not” when favoriting tracks. If I like it, I like it! Ideas for how this might be improved:
If I attempt to favorite, from the queue, a track that isn’t yet in my library, Roon could automatically add it to my library at the time I favorite it (or prompt me to).
If I queue up tracks from streaming services and later add them to my library, Roon could modify the queue to refer to the tracks in my library (or somehow do a better job of hiding the distinction between the two with respect to the queue).
If it really is Roon Audio’s position that in-library vs. not-in-library is a useful distinction for tracks in the queue, improve the distinction in the UI. E.g. don’t display the heart at all for such tracks. The “greyed out empty heart” is only very subtly different from the normal empty heart, which leads to my confusion.
Just want to keep this thread alive by saying that I had the exact same expectations and frustrations as @dylan. I also find the explanation of why it is expected and intended behavior very shaky. As dylan pointed out, after you add a track to your library, Roon knows enough to change the contextual menu of the three dots: it no longer offers you the option “add to library”! If Roon really did distinguish in some deep sense between the track “just added to my library” vs. the one “currently playing in the queue”, then Roon should still be offering us the option to add the track to our library. After all, it’s not the same track!
@Matt_Armstrong, as a new Roon user (still in trial period), let me just say that the behaviors discussed here are the only truly BAD thing I have seen in Roon’s design. I really believe it may be frustrating numerous potential customers as well as subscribers, and would be worth fixing.
C
Having used Roon for six months now I have to agree with you that the general user experience of music discovery through Roon Radio has a few rough edges in this area. Primarily:
The issues discussed in this thread.
Making it easy to “prefer” one streaming service over the other. Not necessarily for Roon Radio, but when adding the albums I discover through Roon Radio such that, in my case, the Qobuz version is chosen when available.
Now that I understand the way Roon works I can get what I want by clicking the right things at the right times, but it feels like it lacks that last bit of polish.
Ideas for how this might be improved: