How do you handle sorting and organizing your music?

Roon ARC brought me back to Roon but I’m running into an issue in it’s sorting and organizing functions, particularly for listening to new music and sorting into appropriate playlists.

I’ll say off the top, I’m currently dealing with 100% local music files, so this isn’t about streaming integration.

The challenge I’m having is that in my current system, which started with iTunes decades ago, involves throwing all new music I’m interested in into a single “New Music” playlist. Then over time, adding star ratings to help identify what music needed to be added to appropriate playlists, and what needed to be removed. This is in part because I mostly listen to music moving around, so a quick star rating is easy to add and then I can come back later to the computer and re-listen and sort.

This is also nice because if I get sick of a song, I can give it “1 star” and then easily identify and remove it from all playlists.

I know that Roon doesn’t have stars, only has love/banned. And as I’ve been searching the forum and googling, it seems to have fairly limited playlist functionality? So here’s my question:

**1) When listening to new music, how do you identify what you liked or loved? When you get sick of a song, how do you easily remove it from say 6 playlists (without searching through all the playlists the song might be in?) **

2) How do you handle your music organisation? Is it playlists? Or are most users listening to albums and taking the Alice in Wonderland approach with their listening?

Obviously, I’m very open to a new method of music identifying and sorting and I like much of Roon’s functionality (even if I’m a dinosaur who likes all his music on local files, in large part because I travel remotely very often). But it seems weirdly that Roon doesn’t do a good job of allowing you to create your own tags like many other music players? I’m guessing I’m just missing something. Thanks!

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Roon DOES have tags!

Your other questions:

To hate a cut, click the Heart twice. It will turn into a crossed out circle.

Roon has stars too, but only at the Album level.

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I also have a history with Apple Music and used Smart Playlists there.
To get a similar solution in Roon i am using Tags in combination with Focus (filtering) and Bookmarks to store the result. In this way i am able to to have kind of dynamic “playlists” where one song is added/removed to one or several playlist by updating the tags for the actual track. I also use Last Played when filtering to get rotation in the songs being played.
To check out new music that i have added to my library i use a combination of Tags and Genres using Focus and saved as Bookmark. This gives me me kind of a radio feeling based on known and unknown tracks.
Using the radio function in Roon has not met my expectations to find new music since it is repetitive and sometimes picks Tidal/Qobuz over my own local tracks.
To feed my library with new songs i use the Daily Mixes in Tidal which is quite good and easy to add tracks to both Tidal and Roon in one mouse click.

Note: ARC does as of now not support Bookmarks nor Focus. The adding of tags is not as easy to use as on the main app/PC. To adress this i create playlist from my bookmarks and use these in ARC when on the go.

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Appreciate this thread and hope it continues. I just started creating my collection in Roon by importing any apple music, ripping all my cds and just got a subscription to tidal.

In the past, I did exactly the same rating system in ITunes and was able to tag songs as I listen to them (with stars) and the organize later with 1 star meaning drop from library. I am now going to look into tags…Thanks!

Here is where I’m a little stuck…I’ve kind of lost touch with what I own and what I don’t. Should I keep these separate? When I imported my apple list, I must have set an option to replace with higher quality so it appears everything is now tidal…except for my rips. Is that Ok or an ok practice?

Finally, here is a scenario I find myself in. Im listening to music…a song comes on that is either new to me and I want to add to my library or a song I haven’t heard in years and want to add it…I need to quickly know if I already have it, have it and own it and if not quickly add it. Just curious to hear what others do if in similar situations. I’m thinking the tags are the key after reading.

Just going through growing pains when developing my own system. Thanks for all the great ideas and keep them coming!

I don’t understand how no one has responded to this.

This seems a glaring hole in the Roon ecosystem. Something found in every media player (including crap like Windows Media Player!)

Maybe is not “highbrow” to single out individual tracks within albums, however Roon itself provides ‘Pick Tracks’ that do just this.

Browsing new music in my own library - find great track - want to differentiate that track from a heap of new albums.
OPTIONS:

  • Add a star ‘favorite track’
  • Add a tag (feels like putting in a playlist)
    … Neither seem right

I just want to lift it above the rest of my large library and perhaps be able to filter for songs of that significance later. Is this possible?

Now take Arc

  • I use it via CarPlay
    Roon Radio (one of Roon’s standout features) suggest a song, a banger. What do you do?
  • You can add to library (not via CarPlay but I’m nitpicking) but in many ways that is as good as lost again.
  • Are we supposed to remember the track / the artist. Surely that’s the point of music library apps.

How is every Roon user out there not troubled by this?
What are you doing to highlight music to find it easily later?

What’s wrong with tags? Any property that you apply to an item is essentially a tag.

Yes I’m very much an album guy. For new music I’m generally checking out a new album from some type of recommendation. So I guess my process is hear about new album, acquire and tag it, upload to Roon, browse my recently added, just remember what I liked and didn’t from there.

I also keep up with new music released through an app called Music Harbor for iOS. It is great if you’re really into keeping with new music. It can connect with your last.fm and show you every new releases in a day for the artists and labels you’ve heard. You can also filter it if you don’t want to see an artist/label or certain types of releases. I’ll often try something from this on Friday or Saturday but generally these will be the things I stream and not download unless I enjoy them.