How Do You Manage A Sprawling Queue?

Since Roon is geared towards music-obsessives, I can’t be the only one with this problem. The links and references all over the platform are great and augment how I already enjoy music. How do you manage a sprawling list of music to listen to?

I have a list of 750+ albums to listen to since starting to use Roon last year. Since you can’t reorder multiple songs at once in the queue, I only use it for a few albums at once. So far, I’ve been using a playlist of the first song on each album as a list. It works pretty well. The only thing it’s missing is the Focus feature. It would be great to narrow down the list to find something to listen to by genre, decade, or even if it’s MQA if I’m at work using my MQA dongle DAC.

I’m wondering if I should switch to using a tag called Queue. It would mean needing to add all of the albums to my library, but I think it could be managed okay by adding or subtracting the tag when searching, depending if I want something actually in my library or something new. Do you think that would be a good solution?

The main snag I can think of is that albums are sometimes removed and a new version is added on Tidal. I don’t notice until I search for an album that I’ve added previously and it has the + button next to Play Now. In a playlist, it holds the space, even though it’s no longer available (notice the Floating Points track in the screenshot).

How do you manage your ever-growing list of music to listen to?

I have over 3000 linked albums from Tidal and Qobuz in my Roon library. I listen to the one I want. What’s the issue? Other times, I listen to my Daily Mix and let Roon Radio take it from there. Don’t make this more complicated than it is.

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I’m not 100% sure what you’re trying to do here.
Are you trying to listen to each of your albums once?
If that’s the case I would go to your Albums page and sort by most played. Click that option again to have the least played albums at the top.
Play the top album (or any album).
After that album is played once it will no longer appear at the top of the albums page (if sorted by most played :arrow_up:)

In this case I’d also clear the queue first.

This makes sense in my mind.
Hopefully my explanation also makes sense :sweat_smile:

I’m like Jim, I just listen to what i fancy.
But for new stuff I add it to my library then assign to to a tag “Listen To”, if i like it the tag is removed and it stays in the library, if not i delete it from the library.
I tend to keep my queue fairy empty, because if Roon Radio has been used and you like the selection it makes it simple to create a playlist.

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For that, I just sort by date added.

That’s what I was thinking. Glad it’s working for you. I’ll give it a shot.

Not relevant to the thread, but why do you have a Qobuz and a Tidal version of everything?

Why not? I actually have all the same albums in Apple Music also.

One way you don’t manage it is creating a sprawling play queue. I’ve just abandoned a 38 day play queue due to all sorts of weird behaviour, worth a try…

If it’s not added to your library already it becomes complicated. You have to make playlists and add each album that you want to try out, but this is messy and not overly friendly to manage. Best option i have found is to just add it to your library, then tag it with something that makes sense to you, I also often I add a tag of who or where I got the recommendation from especially if it’s from the forum here. Now I can use a bookmark or a focus to show what is new that I want to listen to, when done if I like it a lot I remove the tag and add a to buy tag, if it’s ok then I will just remove the tag and add another that might classify it leave it without. If I hate it or just don’t care for it I delete it. I can then go and check this out at anytime i want and it’s pretty easy to manage.

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I get what op wants, you get lots of albums that are recommended by others or you get via Roons breadcrumbs but at that time you don’t want to listen. You want to log this to return to at a later time to try them out. I do this all the time.

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Very good idea to use tags to remind you where the referral came from! I often forget the context by the time I get to listen to an album. I’ve been thinking it would be great to have a little notes section on an album page, but a few general tags would be a good start.

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This is going to blow a lot of minds, but I have a document in iOS (in notes) where I put albums I want to listen to. After a couple listens I either get it or abandon it and rinse and repeat.

Sheldon

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You’re smarter than me. :sweat_smile:
I have a physical notebook and a pencil. It didn’t occur to me to just use the Notes app etc.
Sometimes old solutions are still good solutions.

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I can relate, adding an umanageable number of Qobuz albums at time that seem so listenable. I use a mixture of things, through tags and bookmarked searches

  • I have a tag for ‘Qobuz Permanent’ - stuff I’ve listed to and like and want to return to
  • a bookmarked page for ‘Qobuz - unlistened’ ordered by reverse date of entry, so recent stuff first. Often the first place I turn to for anything new to listen
  • stuff I listen to but havent liked I remove from my library. I have a bookmarked ‘Qobuz - listened to’ set to find these.
  • I’ve some thematic tags set for when moods strike - say for nightime or piano or cello or opera say.
  • I dont sweat it too much. Im resigned to probably adding more than I can listen to, given I want a lot of my listening time to be known recordings I like, not perpetually just new stuff.
    Dont think you’re alone in how to juggle this, esp for FOMO or collectors.
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@CrystalGipsy @Ian_Patterson @Phil_Ryan
Do you use ARC? I took a few hours yesterday to move all of the albums in my Queue playlist to my library with a Queue tag. I came into work today to realize that ARC doesn’t have Focus and doesn’t reliably add albums to library or add tags.

If you go to your library, then Albums or Artists, you can then select a Tag which will give you a list

Right. So I can see the tag itself, but can’t use all of the Focus features (genre, format, release date, label, etc.), which was the main thing I was hoping to use

There are many things that could be better. It’s version 1.0 and currently some bigger fish to fry than new features as desirable as they may be

I guess is easy enough to form something to listen to while on the go, i tend to just use a playlist that’s also on Tidal for when Arc will not work.