My library is my metadata, not my renting service. We can play with words but let’s put that in the gaming section of this forum.
1 Like
In Roon’s lingo it is your library.
Are you shure the missing albums are not replaced bij the MQA version??
I hope Roon would come up with a feature to keep all albums in the library one day. But Tidal is the one to blame for removing music regularly. Because too little people click on it? Tidal becomes too mainstream? Or do the owners of the rights take it away from Tidal (like with the old Spyro Gyra albums, because they probably want the musiclovers that are on Tidal to order the new best-off cd or file).
I personally think it is stupid to remove music. Many of us will then order a second hand cd on Discogs and will never stream that album anymore and even pass the files to friends that will never stream it anymore.
Fully agree. I am 75 and don’t dream of taking 4500 albums (or 1000) with me into some other life. Things come and go, everithing goes, the disappearance of a few albums from Tidal or Qobuz is a wellcome training, actually!
1 Like
It is indeed training of the brain (“where has it gone, what was it’s name”) and one learns to cope with disappointment.
But when you don’t need that, I just found the perfect solution: I made a picture of every page in my library with my cellphone, so now I can always find the albums that Tidal deleted from my library (sorry: from the Tidal/Roon library that I built up). And order the cd or download the file from somewhere.
Always purchase the music that grabs you. If you love it, buy it (digitally or otherwise) and archive it to enjoy forever. Streaming services are in a state of constant flux due to complex licensing and are built on a model that screws most artists over so stuff is likely to disappear.
On a related note, I really wish labels and distributors would make it easier to buy digital downloads. Some brand-new albums require black candles and incantations to actually source a legal download which is always a detriment to the artist. Often, I’m presented with a page of pirate links before finding a legal destination for a download.
1 Like
I think there will always be places to stream from. I currently have Tidal, Qobuz, Apple Music, and Sirius XM. I long ago got rid of all my LP’s, cassettes, CD’s, and DVD’s. I have no plans to ever purchase music again and I don’t download illegal music. Streaming works for me. I also don’t purchase movies on DVD or downloads. Freedom of choice is a great thing. To each their own.
1 Like
Of course. But, the question is what to do when…
While there may be a streaming service or services may be around, whether or not they have the music you love is a different story. The classic late 70s/early 80s Spyro gyra albums are a good example. Should fans of them be okay going without “Morning Dance” or “Catching the Sun”, until whatever issues(?) are resolved to make them available on a streaming service.
1 Like
Listen to something else. If you can’t find something else, then buy it, but I won’t. With 2446 linked albums, I have more than I can ever listen to already. Do what works for you and respect others decision to do it their way. As with most things, there is no right or wrong answer here.
1 Like
Exactly! Memento mori.
Agree, but not totally. “Wrong” is when a product does not fulfill the needs. Roon fulfills a lot of my needs, but I expected a library that does not change because Tidal is doing things to its music. I understand the problems because of the infrastructure of the whole system, but that leaves just a wish for me left, to be able to have my own library with all the pictures and names in the place where I put them with just the notice “ currently unavailable on Tidal”. Even better would it be to also notice on which streaming service it ís available. That makes it easier to switch.
All services do this as and when they loose the rights to that version. Licensing deals are changed or made all the time. This is the nature of streaming it’s not unique to Tidal. Sometimes they are replaced with different versions sometimes the service looses them completely only yo get them back a year or so later. That is the business model of music licensing.
However the way Roon deals with this is another matter and something they need to work on. Library maintenance is very poor considering the other areas it excels in. All you get is a number of files indicating what’s been deleted it’s useless as it gives you no reference to whats gone. It needs to give you a record of what’s been removed from any of its services and perform a search to see if it’s been re-catalogued so you can replace it. I am sure this is possible but no they leave it up to us to work out what’s gone , normally by going to play it and then finding it’s unavailable.
2 Likes
Versions seems to work pretty seamlessly. Whenever I have a local copy and a Tidal version in my library, Roon always presents both and you can say which one you want as the Primary version. So I don’t see how this would be a difficult solution for Roon to implement at all. They already identify duplicate local and Tidal albums.
I think that that is the easy part, with albums that already have another version available. But when it doesn’t, then it will be completely gone, “non-existent”. So it will not be the end solution. It could be a sort of memory issue.
I also found out that a review could also be deleted (Soft Machine “Land of Cockayne”). I like that album and was not offended by the very negative review at all, because I also find negative reviews informative. Now I only see the little amount of stars, not the text… or am I doing something wrong?
I view this a little differently, but with similar goals. I’d ideally like to be able to add an album to my “library” that I have no current way of listening to. Let’s say I find that there’s a rare recording of Fats Waller or Amy Winehouse or Rage Against the Machine that I can’t find streaming and I can only find for sale very expensively on eBay. I’d like to be able to add it to my “library”, even if I don’t have a copy yet. Sure I could by default not have “unlistenable” albums show, but then I could look at them as a sort of “to-do” list. I often look at “top 100 albums of decade X” and think, I’d like to keep track of a handful of these to make sure I get them in my collection one way or another. And if one of the streaming services adds one of these albums at some point, I want it to just transparently drop into my library without an “add” action. But I understand this would require a fair bit of rearchitecture - which I understand is in progress - the idea that an “album” is in your library as the primitive, not an “instance of an album”. Once it’s the “album” not the “recording or method of playback” that is the primitive, then you can have various methods of playback move around behind the scenes. And if there are albums you want to ensure you always have access to, then you need to focus on albums which you care about / play a lot / etc for which you do not have a local copy - and do that work.