Maybe a question for Roon… @brian will it ever be possible technically / is it desirable to be able to denote (ie “tag”) things that are not in your library? I can imagine that currently a tag is a ‘field’ that can be filled in for anything in your library. Maybe I’m imagining a different structure than tags where you can add albums to a group that might or might not be in your library. Perhaps instead of an arbitrary number of these (because I can imagine the data structure would get potentially very messy), you could have a small number - with a couple pre-named, and a bunch of user renamable ones. Could just be too confusing to have both tags and these. But seems like there’s a user desire in a world of streaming to have a “this exists in the world, I want to denote it somehow, but I don’t want to add it to my library yet”. Not adding yet to feature requests, but rather just noting as an “so far unmet consumer need”.
Yes, we’re aware of this need and have a plan for it. The divide in capabilities between “in your library” and “not in your library” is mostly artificial, and results from the history of this project more than conscious design choices.
There is a substantial re-engineering effort involved in addressing this, because a huge body of code sits on top of this structure, so it will take a while, but we are planning to do it at some point.
That’s what I figured. Thank you @brian for the super-speedy response.
My idea for the feature was a ‘hack’ of an additional data structure to see if it worked vs. rearchitecting, but I should NEVER pretend to know your code base or tech debt or philosophy! 
Thank you @brian!!! Being able to tag items not in the library would be nice and beneficial for discovery!
I just add the album to library and try it out at some point. I don’t use Tags at all, it just confuses me.
Thanks for such good news! This could be a great breakthrough in explorations. Since for me there is a damnation of Tidal 10000 favourites limit in the current workflow of adding an album to library for being able to add it to the tag.
Awesome. As a former leader of technical folks, I’d encourage everyone to read and reread the part of Brian’s statement where he says “at some point” and “substantial amount of re-engineering” - it’s on the backlog, but in the “someday” timing - which means we don’t really get to tap our feet if it’s not happening any time soon vs other fish to fry. At least that’s the way I read it
What I do to tackle the topic is the following:
- Add one Tidal album (typically the latest one) per Artist of interest to my library.
- Use a dedicated bookmark to filter all albums from Tidal present in my library… and to explore the artists in detail.
- For anything good enough from 2), get a local copy and delete the Tidal copy. For anything else, just delete the Tidal copy.
The above works when you use streaming services such as Tidal just for exploration. And it counts with you adding the potentially interesting things to your library. So it wont work for everyone.
yes, it is at the moment.
This is exactly what I do too. Also, just like you when reviewing my playlist I sometimes think “why on earth did I save this?” and I also shake things up by shuffling it.
The other things I do are…
If I’m reviewing a playlist either by playing it in order or on shuffle and I hear a track where, rather than thinking “why did I ever save this?”, I have the opposite reaction - “wow, this is really, really good. I want to hear the full album right now”. In that case I can very easily go from the now-playing info for the track that just grabbed me to the album it is from and I then queue-next (as opposed to adding to end of the queue) all tracks in the album so that I can immediately hear the whole thing and when it’s finished Roon will go back to working its way through my discovered tracks.
I don’t have a single playlist where I save stuff, I have separate playlists for genres which I also find helps me manage things.
Finally I am quite fussy about what gets included in my library so I have another “Shortlist” playlist which again is just single tracks but that is where something will graduate to if it doesn’t either get deleted from my genre-specific playlists or stays in a “not sure, maybe I need to give this a few more listens” status before I decide whether to delete it or promote it to my shortlist. Streaming services plus Roon Radio exposes me to such a huge range of new music that I take the attitude that with so many options a new album isn’t going to make it into my library unless I really, really like it otherwise I simply won’t have enough time to get to know all the new albums that I add and, despite me being so strict in what gets added, I do still add a lot of new stuff.
This was an adjustment for me too. Pre-Roon, I came from vetting things through massive manually created playlists on streaming services, creating a sub “Buy” playlist, buy all of it, bring it into my local library, repeat.
Adding to my library had a clear sense of graduation. It passed the tests, crossed the threshold. And at first I had similar challenges making it work all within Roon.
Now, as mentioned above, I just add everything that I want to check out, more or less. It keeps the little ‘new’ tag on it until I play it, which helps. And as I go along figuring out what I like and don’t like, I remove it if I don’t, and if I really like it I’ll buy it, and the streaming version is automatically hidden as soon as I import it. Super smooth. Then I just filter by Tidal to get back to vetting.
Granted, as my Tidal library grows and I collect more things that are good enough for streaming but not enough to buy, I could run into the same issue. At that point I would probably tag or playlist. But yes, it has made me rethink what “adding to my library” really means, and I certainly prefer it over my old method.
Something built in that addresses this would be great, I’ve been meaning to ask the same question as the OP for a while. There are so many ways to discover things you might like in Roon, but no easy way to note them for future listening. I often find myself multiple clicks away from what I’m listening via the metadata reading something that appeals, but I don’t want to stop what I’m listening to right now. It almost sounds like something a note taking or scrapbook feature might be best at dealing with, with the ability to add a short note to remember why you were interested.
Thanks. I like this approach and tried it yesterday and it works well for me.
Thx! This is very good news (although the ‘at some point’ does not sound too reassuring). For a newbee like me, the learning curve to understand what is in your library and not, what the implications are, how and where you can see the difference, how you can change it, what you can and can not tag where and how etc… well, it’s overwhelmingly complex. I am enjoying it though and I am beginning to see the myriad of possibilities. I do think, it needs to be made a lot easier and more consistent. Consistent and easy way to add a tag to a track (preferably while playing) Especially the fact that the exact same track that is in your library, can exist in its non-library version in a playlist… or in your queue or listening history and all the implications this has… It took me a week to understand, and the help of @SimplicityCompass, @Alexander_Bashlaev & @anon90297517 (Thanks guys! I am not sure whether I completely understand it yet, but I am getting there.)
I tried to bring together in one “feature request” some of the problems that follow from the library/non-library issue. Solve the library/non-library conundrum and all the complexities it creates for tagging, focus, playlists etc