After seeing what Roon is capable off in the form of metadata in our own libraries wouldn’t it be nice to see more of it in the Tidal integration as well.? Just tinkering, don’t know if it is even possible at all but there are a couple of things that would be great for exploring music in Tidal.
When I play an album from Tidal on the album page there are genre tags shown underneath the album just like it does for albums in my own library so obviously this information is available without having to add the album to my library first. However clicking on them to show more of these genres only shows artists that are in my library, not in Tidals wich is a pitty because Tidal own genre search is pretty basic. For instance, I’m listening to album Slow Sundown form Holy Motors at the moment and so far like it and want to explore more of the same in Tidal. Now this album has the following tags Alternative pop rock / pop rock / indie rock / shoegaze. Now I want to see what’s more in Tidal with the tag shoegaze but that’s not possible. In Tidal I can only choose a couple of main genres and when I select them there is no possibility of narrowing things down anymore. Now I do realize there is a change that it could just lead to a result of thousands of artists/album wich obviously is of no use but there must be a lot more possible then there is now. Or does anybody know a workaround to this without having to add the entire Tidal content to my library? I would like to know.
When exploring music in Tidal it would be nice to have the possibility to tag an album before adding it to my library, see it as a temporary tag for album that might be interesting to add to my library but need another listen to decide. This way I can keep my library clean and It’s easy to find the albums in Tidal again without having to make a seperate bookmark for each album.
Along with the tagging possibility it would also be nice to be able to mark an album in Tidal as “Do not like” or thumbs down or something like that. This way I can prevent myself of listening to it again after some time. This is very helpfull in finding good music in a pile of 3 million albums Simply can’t remeber everything myself with these amounts. I’m exploring Tidal a lot but because there is not much information given on this page it is very likely that I do not remember everything I have listended to or remember what kind of music it was. Offcoarse I can open the album and go back and forth countless times between the album pages and the Tidal page but that is not a very convenient nor efficient way. Again, some more info at the album view would be helpfull. Now even better would be the possibility to mark these albums as “listened to but did not like”
Genre info on the The Tidal page in Roon is as sparce in information as the Tidal app itself. In the entire page or recommended page there are albums shown with only a artist name and a album title and sometimes a release year, most of the times not. No other clue in what kind of music I’m looking at. Now again I can open all the albums one by one but that is not a very convienent way knowing that 80 - 90% of the what’s new isn’t of interest to me. I like to be able to have some quicker identification possibilities that give me some clue if an album might be worth listening to or not. I know I don’t have to listen to anything tagged ‘death metal’ for instance, others are complaining about the amount of HipHop in Tidal. Wouldn’t it be nice to see in one glance if an album is a hiphop album so you know you can skip it without going into the album page first. Genre tags are very helpfull here.
All in all I think metadata is even more important with regards to Tidal then it is for my own library, in other words for music I do not allready know but want to get to know. Some better way of exploring new music in Tidal other then just a copy of the Tidal app integrated in Roon would be nice. I know I can explore Tidal from within artist pages, via links, via search and that is all great and I like that a lot but this is about exploring from scratch, wandering without any direction, curiousity of the unknown, exploring genres, following Tidals recommendation, following the ‘what’s new’ tab and within that the possibilty of visually filtering content in a enormous amount of content.
I know it’s high on the priority list for many people but how are you going to explore all of this MQA content once the unfold feature is there?
The ‘master’ tab on the Tidal page is a good example.
Once the MQA feature is there I think a lot of people want to just wander around here to see what’s more available in MQA without any starting point or any direction. Just to see what’s on offer here, that’s what this tab is fore isn’t it? I rarely visit the masters section so I don’t know how big the offer is at the moment but lets say there are 5000 albums of all genres and ages. Now how are you going to filter these out to explore for things you might like. Probably 80% is of no interest to you. 10% worth a listen, 1% nice to have, 0,1% phenomonal. How to get to this 10%, preferably even to this 1% without having to open and close 4500 albums first. Judge the record by it’s cover? By artist name? By album title? That’s all the information you are going to get here. What kind of clues (metadata) would you like to see to make a rough selection on first sight? What kind of tools would you like to see to narrow down an enormous offer?
I think there are two things at play. Firstly Tidal has to define itself and it is no surprise that the principle owner has chosen his own music genre to do that. Secondly it is working in that his last release and that of his Wife created significant surges in membership while they were offered as exclusives on Tidal. The OTR II tour tickets are presently on offer to Tidal members first. This is of benefit to Tidal as it keeps Tidal going. Ultimately while Tidal certainly pushes it’s Rap content, its overall catalogue is still pretty well balanced. Overall, we benefit even if it means seeing unwanted product pop up a lot.
Apple Music and Deezer are pushing Pop/Rap content as well, even if I’ve trained them. It’s not only Tidal. I understand that they push popular music, because it’s popular and will fit to most people’s music taste. I think Roon should give me more power to control what it pulls from Tidal for me. I would like to let it hide some artists or genres completely to create my own musical filter bubble.
I always skip over the “What’s New” entry page of TIDAL in Roon, and go straight to the Genres page, and choose Classical, because that’s where my chief interest lies. It would be nice if I could Bookmark this page, but Bookmarks don’t work in the TIDAL section.
Despite this, it’s also clear that TIDAL don’t devote much attention to publicising new releases in the Classical genre, even though they usually have the albums. I often find I’m alerted to new classical releases of interest by Qobuz email newsletters that I am subscribed to…
Although I do like hiphip I know excactly what you mean. Now if I could only filter for instance on ‘leftfield hiphop’ on Tidal like I can in my own library that would be great so I don’t have to scroll through Drake, Jay.Z and thousands of soundalikes I do not like and can find the things I do like more easily.
I read a lot of complaints about Tidal in this forum and there are strong wishes for implementation of other streaming services. Most streaming services have about the same content even though there is a strong feeling amongst some users that Tidal almost exclusivly consist of hiphop. How come? I think it’s not because of the actual content but more because of the way it is presented to us. Looking at the average streaming service interface I can fully understand why playlists are so popular on them. It’s hardly impossible to get behind the pushed content if you do not exactly know what you are looking for. Just browsing along to discover things is not there best feature, that’s where Roon could be filling the gap a little. Most streaming services don’t have a very nice navigation. Thanks to Roon I can navigate it other ways as well wich is the most valueable feature of Roon to me.
Useful information for those who don’t already know it: A continually updated Google spreadsheet (exportable as spreadsheet, or PDF) with all the Tidal MQA albums listed: “Tidal Masters MQA Album List by LUMIN Music – MQA Roon Ready Network Music Players”. Quite handy!
