Hello there
I received a trial for TIDAL and I just installed it. I am a bit confused and wanted to know how to use the Valence. Let’s say my favorite artist is Shpongle. I have it in my library. I have also Ott, Younger Brother and Hallucinogen in my library that I believe are similar styles than Shpongle.
So how can I use TIDAL and/or Valence to get recommendation based on Shpongle? I mean where do I click, precisely?
First, make sure you have Tidal set up in Roon under Settings>Services.
Then go to Shpongle’s artist page. You’ll see a tab that says “Play Now”, and a down arrow next to it. Click the down arrow and select “Start Radio”. That will play selections that Valence thinks are similar to Shpongle.
Another way would be to ensure Roon Radio is turned on in the Queue screen. Then just play one track from a Shpongle album and when Roon Radio continues it will use that last track as a seed for selections from the Valence engine.
Hi Scott
Thanks for the help it works perfectly. By using the track list radio button, I discovered a new track I like: Zero Defect from Flooting Grooves. I can see some artist I heard of before so it is pretty accurate.
However it seems the recommendation system is made on a specific source, like an artist or maybe a genre I suppose.
Do we know if Valence goes beyond? Specifically, this is how I used Roon the first time. First I imported all my FLAC. I listened to each single songs. Each song I liked I put a little blue heart on it. Then I created a bookmark and filtered on All favorites. I went from 9600 tracks to 1122. And now I always listen to my bookmark and even though 1122 songs is a lot, I feel a lot of repetition.
Therefore I wanted to know if Valence can do the same thing on my bookmark but keeping a very various (eclecticism) “philosophy”. In this bookmark I have artists like AC/DC, Abakus, Armin van Buuren, Astrix, Aladdin OST…and that’s just the letter A.
I guess I will try and I believe it depends on the mood but still I would like your opinion on how you use Valence to fit your needs.
Valence will consider what is in your library, what you play, and what your favorites are. That is basically how it gets a sense of what you like, overall.
When you seed Roon Radio with a song, or Genre, that is the major criterion for what Roon Radio will pick. And when doing this it considers other Roon user’s experience to come up with suggestions via Roon Radio. So how you compartmentalize your favorites likely does nothing. Roon Radio doesn’t use a whole playlist, as a composite, for selections AFAIK. Albums, single Tracks, Artists, Genres are the seeds.
Also be aware that Valence is more than Roon Radio. That same engine will make new music suggestions and will assemble New Releases for You, among other things. Those considerations are based more on your music characteristics more broadly.
No, it doesn’t, according to the architect. (Recommendations seem to work better. Not sure why. Have asked. Radio silence, so to speak, from roon.)
When I refer to Valence, I don’t specifically mean just Roon Radio.
See my edit.
Well, they seem to be somewhat protective about how ‘their baby’ works. And I suppose if they got into specifics I’d be lost anyway. Probably a lot of statistics.
Really? This seems to only be true for New Releases and nothing else. I swear I’ve seen statements from Roon that the Roon Radio function doesn’t consider any personal input at all – it’s merely an algorithm on the server side that considers the thumbs-up/down of all members in aggregate. Favorites are for your convenience only and are not used for any algorithmic purposes.
For comparison, other services like Pandora use thumbs-up/down to personalize the radio for you in real-time. Thumbs down Bob Dylan? You’ll get less Bob Dylan in the queue. Roon Radio does not do that… it serves up the same thing over and over again no matter what individual actions you take. Thumbs up/down, favorites, having related albums in your collection… all seem to be meaningless.
For instance, I have over 700 albums that are classified as Indie Rock in my personal hardcopy collection. Yet if I play Roon Radio from the Indie Rock genre, 95% of what it spits out doesn’t reflect the artists or albums that are in my collection at all. It’s amazing that Roon can classify things so perfectly in my library, yet at the same time the genre Radio algorithm seems to be completely ignorant about it. I have some data in a recent thread.
I think you are right, as is @SKBubba, regarding Roon Radio. This is my bible bookmark on the subject.
The OP asked a question about Valence/Tidal, and a question about how to start Roon Radio based on that. My intent was to frame what Valence did as a whole, and how Roon Radio works within it.
Valence does do other things beside NRFY, the link in my first post lists others.
Indeed. Every time I thumb down Miles Davis it plays even more Miles Davis. Can’t figure out if it’s saying “are you sure?” or just punishing me for not liking Miles Davis. My music playback software should not judge me, man.
Thanks everyone for your messages. I think I get it, I need to select an artist or a genre to really use Valence properly. Valence doesn’t seem to allow “randomness” or “eclecticism”, meaning you are bound to a type of music. Each type act their owns and you can’t use different types unfortunately.
Here is what I mean:
I selected 5 different types/styles/genres: Trance, EDM (I don’t know the sub-genre of Punjabi), hardstyle, Italian pop and the remaining I would call these “old rock’n’roll”.
Then for some reason, I get Roon Radio on Iggy Pop and I get only “old rock’n’roll” as you can see here:
So 2 questions here:
Hope that makes sense.
Yes, it’s normal. Roon Radio takes its seed track from the last track in your playlist.
Only if you get lucky. By this, if you happen to seed with an artist that has a mix of genres/styles, you can get music with different genres/styles. Maybe an album as the seed will do it.
But trying to do it in the direct way you are intending with this example likely won’t work. 
The other way is to let Roon radio play a bit longer. My radio selections start out much more closely related to the final library track and then gradually drift. After a few hours it can shift quite radically. And Miles Davis always plays at some point, even if I start with AC/DC!
I see. I’ll use it to discover songs and will add them by listening to different styles separately, I guess then.
I think it shows one big limitation of such AI powered system: recommendations are limited to genre or style, it’s yours to discover new styles.
I am not sure Valence considers Favourites, I never use Favorites as such and Valence seems to do a fair job of RFY and new releases
I think it reads the reasons you skip tracks in Roon Radio
It’s better with some Genre than others , I suspect because some Genre are better differentiate , eg Classical is Classical and track to track moves can be dramatic , solo piano to full orchestra can be a tad jarring
Ummm…, I’m pretty sure what you favorite (especially artists) plays a key role in New Releases for You. I’d bet a beer on it. And for you it would have to be a very good beer!
Does anyone know how to suppress a certain artist from Roon Radio/Valence suggestions? Apart from deleting that artist from one’s library.
