How do you use Roon to discover new music?

what have you found to be the most productive Roon method of finding new music that you like?

I have been frustrated with my attempts to find new music that I like with Roon. I searched on this topic, and most of the threads I found were old. Meanwhile, Roon has changed. I’ve tried Daily Mixes (awful, can’t understand where they come from), New Releases, Genras for You, I’ve also tried Roon Radio a little bit, which may be the best of the lot. . What methods are you using to find music you like? What do you find works best for you?
TIA & have a great day!

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I think this depends upon your listening habits and the type and styles of music you listen to. Myself I am an ‘album listener’—I enjoy listening to entire albums, not tracks, playlists or mixes. Then, my thing is classical music and to a lesser degree Jazz and some folk music. Within these parameters of my listening habits, I spend a lot of time looking into artists’ discographies. If I like a particular album or an artist’s interpretation of a classical work, I will go on to explore this artist’s discography.

Another way to discover music I like is to explore Roon’s ‘Recommended Albums’ section when playing back a given album. This has me given quite satisfactory results. I think Valence knows me well enough by now. The New Releases for You section seems broken, I never explore genres. Sometimes, when I don’t want to be bothered with looking into albums and just lean back and listen, I might play a Daily Mix… some of these are quite good. This I only enjoy for Jazz and folk, not for classical music where I prefer listening to an entire work, not parts, excerpts or single movements.

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If you come from Spotify, for example, and know the good recommendations from EchoNest, Niland & Co. you have to rethink strongly here. Here, it’s not about finding a song that sounds similar and might fit quite well with your previous listening habits.

Roon doesn’t want to be song-based, but to put albums in the foreground. This tradition-rich form of discovery is supported with links that reveal connections in your own collection and to music services like no other software can. It also took me months to like it. Now I appreciated it a lot and use both forms of discovery.

Roon playlists, the radio and Valence still need to grow and learn their flavor. It takes a long time with trial and error. If you already use a music service and there are all your favorites, transfer it to Qobuz or Tidal. This way, important albums and songs are immediately visible and new connections can be found quickly in the way Roon works. If you heart everything you like on Tidal, those recommendations will make their way into the Roon interface.

Good luck with your whole new and different journey of music discovery. You’ll have to climb to the top first to see how beautiful it is up there

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I’m primarily a Western classical music listener. I subscribe to the UK magazine Gramophone, then I use Roon to look up music I read about there. I also use Roon to look at Qobuz’s new releases every Friday.

If I really like a performance, I’ll see what else is available from the same performer(s).

The Daily Mixes don’t work for classical. Instead of recommending works, they recommend tracks, so classical music pieces get broken up. Nobody wants to listen to just the second movement of a work.

Edit: @Andreas_Philipp1 reminded me that I too use “Recommended Albums”. Thanks.

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I can give back so little, but maybe this?

It is at the same time an example of how, with a keyword, something comes back from the collection that is appreciated. It was sunk in one’s own collection. Now I have a keyword “folk music”.

You can’t use it to establish connections with other music services. This only works very well from your own inventory and the Roon logic.

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I am using the seach fuktion :smiley:

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This has opened my eyes to how to get my content from Spotify in to Qobuz band then let Roon work on my many years of Spotify data. Thank you.

I have even more data in Last.fm. I’ve been Scrobbling to that since 2006 I think. Lots of data from lots of different services. Roon can scribble to Last.fm, but can it use that data in Valence etc.?

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Arbeite hiermit. 1000 Teile gehen in einem Schwung kostenlos. Man kann auch Synchronisation buchen, aber das kostet.

and it also works purely text related with a list

Artist 1 - Song 1
Artist 1 - Song 2
Artist 2 - song 1

Artist900 - Song3

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I also use Qobuz and Roon radio works really well for me. In my experience, Roon radio gets better over time as you build your listening history. Of course, maybe it works better for some types of music than others. I also use the Qobuz playlists for specific genres and when I find something I really like, I will start Roon radio based on that track. Best of luck to you.

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Thank you!
I’m a long time Tidal user and only got Roon a couple months ago. I’ll take your suggestion about hearting things I really like on Tidal. BTW I never listen to entire albums, I’m a playlist person. Thanks again.

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This is similar to the way I discover new music, primarily in the classical and jazz genres, and I agree that Daily Mixes are not really appropriate for most classical music.

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I’m looking in albums that I like, who was the producer or sound engineer. Then I check what else he/she has produced or recorded. Often it is similar type of music I like, but did not know before.

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Roon Radio, Qobuz new releases section, Roon forum, the Roon Rabbit hole of clicking links to other artists and members and albums it recommends on artist pages.

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Funnily enough I don’t use NRFY as it’s never up to date and I have already manually found stuff added or discarded by the time it does show up on NRFY.

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I almost always have one or two albums from the last week in NRFY but don’t use Roon Radio very often (gets in the way of my album listening) but I tend to listen to one or two daily mixes a week, but that rarely tends to be new music, just new to me.

I would suggest I get at least 50% of my new music from this forum and the rest from browsing Tidal and other services.

Added 5 new albums this morning, 2 came from the what are we listening to thread, 2 from Tidal New releases for you and one from NRFY that I missed last week.

Thanks! The responses to my question have been great, and I appreciate all of them. I stream my music from Tidal, and listen to playlists I make that take some time to fill — one each year, during which I’ll accumulate about seventy or ninety songs, that’s all. I know, this doesn’t sound like a lot. When I listen to music, I don’t do anything else. Nothing. No background music, ever, no multi tasking. Drives me nuts, as music tends to hijack my brain. Also after 25 -45 minutes of concentrated listening, I get fatigued. Anyhow thank you!

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For Electronic music I discover new music through:

The magazine comes with vinyl, which is cool.

The threads on this forum are really useful and outside of that, I usually use the suggested albums under room and go through the genre based suggestions too.

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That’s not true of everyone. Single movements is definitely my preferred method of listening to a Classical “playlist”. Just the same as if I was listening to traditional Classical radio or a Classical compilation CD, or even a live Classical recital.

Of course I also want to listen to works in their entirety but we are not talking about 3 minute pop songs here so there needs to be some common sense. A 2 hour playlist of “entire” operas for example is just going to end up being a single opera not a variety of arias. It is the same issue with “shuffle” and classical music. It is not a recital, radio or compilation CD experience if entire works are shuffled so it is just extra clicks and menus to navigate when you might as well just select the entire work and click play if entire works is what you want to listen to.

It’s actually the single most irritating thing I find about roon. This dogmatic insistence on playing works in their entirety, regardless of the listening context or user preference.

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The world is moving towards cloud and subscription. The largest number of music magazines are also joining in.

I don’t have the time to read everything, but technology, hi-fi or music are already numerous…with History






not the end, but now history

all numbers there

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Same here, Roon is wonderful at that - just search for something and try all the great results Roon presents. Search for Beethoven and get Abba - anything is possible. :clown_face:

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