Following on from the Local Library files thread, where this comes up rather a lot. One of Roons big SP is that it integrates albums/tracks/artists from streaming services with your library and makes them agnostic as to where they are from. Does it really work anymore as it should for you. For me its becoming more and more a management nightmare especially with Qobuz and the way they update albums but leave the old unavailable one still live so you have redundant entries in our database that Roon cant play anymore.
Roon doesn’t have a way to manage this. It doesn’t let the user know when any albums become unavailable, you cant focus on albums that have become unavailable to see whats gone. You cant easily just replace them. When gone you loose play history and edits you might have made. If you have grouped these redundant albums it makes it really painful to remove them as well.
There are the obvious other shortfalls of missing albums all together that are in the services, you cant sync playlists back, the adding to library/favourite system is just too confusing and counterintuitive to new users.
I feel its way past a remodel, I am not using it any more for new stuff its too much hassle and I am even contemplating not bothering with any streaming favourites in my library at all. This then makes me think why do I use Roon then as to me the integrated side was one of its biggest selling points, but after 5 years it beginning to creak and feel more constraining than being of an advantage and is very broken in other ways.
While it’s a part of what you described, I would explicitly add the issue of metadata edits being lost if albums disappear from streaming, having to redo them for the new version (which will stay for how long?)
Even if just a new remastered or whatever version is added, if you like that one better and want to make it primary, your edits are forever tied to another version.
Some credits (but not all) are (should be) logically tied to the whole album, not individual versions, but edits can only be applied to versions.
While a better data model would be great, much of this seems it could be improved by just allowing copying metadata edits from one album/version to another.
There are of course lots of feature suggestions about this and related things.
If Qobuz or Tidal can replace an album version with another without disturbing your Qobuz/Tidal platform playlists, why can’t they pass the proper info to Roon?
I totally understand and agree but also I’m coming with another point of view.
Buying music as the artists gets more $$ I try to do. But never use those cds or local files. All streaming. Yes it is annoying when there are tracks removed from the streaming service and Roon should handle somehow better those issues. Due to my job with young people I often ask them for music. These kids did not even save albums, just playlist with various artists/albums/years, etc.
I save albums but I do not browse using them. Only using the artists and the artist discography. Sometimes I did not even look if it saved or not to library. Sometimes I like an album and want to save and find that it is already in my library.
Roon should cover all kinds of users
Agree with all these points.
I have a related annoyance:
I’m a stats nerd and also like to compare the sound of different Masterings.
I have multiple local copies of many albums.
If I browse albums by Most Played, each version of an album is treated as a separate entity.
(Same goes for the streaming versions)
And when I stopped using Tidal (for example) all my play counts for a given album were lost despite another version of that album being in my library.
I understand that different versions of an album are indeed that: Different versions. But they are the same album musically (or whatever)
Yes but my metadata per version issue also applies to that. I have the original CDs and the remaster CDs for lots of stuff. So if edited missing metadata in Roon for the originals, it’s still missing from the reissues. It’s a deeper problem than just streaming
)