Hi, I’m new to Roon and I’d love to discover new albums and artists in a specific genre for example an Experimental Rock, but I can only see albums from that genre that already in my Library. I realy like the Focus sorting options, especialy that I can sort albums by ratings.
Is there a possibility to do the same by searching for albums or in genres sections?
Focus is only for use on your Library content - it will not focus on content in the Tidal catalogue.
You can use the Global Search function of Roon (the magnifying glass icon on the top right of the Roon screen) to search through both your Library and Tidal.
So, for example, searching for “Experimental Rock” will show that genre in the search results:
Clicking on that will produce some new releases and recommendations from the Tidal catalogue:
Thank you for your help!
So if I understand correctly, Roon doesn’t let me browse/search for bands or albums outside of my own library? And the only way to discover other artists/albums is through recommendations? Which by the way works really poorly so far, despite importing my full artist/albums library from Tidal?
Why doesn’t Roon allow to browse all artists with specific genres? After all, searching for new artists on a basis similar to using the Focus function would be something unique when it comes to music listening apps.
No, that’s not correct. You can use global search for artists, albums, compositions, composers and genres outside of your own library.
You asked for search on a specific genre. Since the Tidal catalogue contains millions of tracks, Roon will return the top results only. It’s not like Google where you get thousands of hits and then have to browse through to find what you want.
Micheal makes a good & valid point here, while you can narrow down new releases and editorial picks available from Qobuz using broad genres (browse->Qobuz) there is no equivalence of (local library) ‘Focus’.
Search works if you know what you are looking for, but isn’t much use of you just want to explore. The new releases and recommended albums under Roon’s genre tags are useful, but only surface a very small number of suggestions.
Maybe this is better raised as a feature request, but the ability to browse / filter Qobuz’s library by genre / sub-genres / dates / popularity / critical acclaim etc. would be a very useful feature in my opinion. Sure it might not be in Roon’s current feature set, but I see no technical reason it couldn’t be. It’s a valid suggestion as to how Roon could be improved.
Yes, but by “browse/search” I still had in mind to use Focus to narrow the results if I search or browse for a specific genre. If I want to browse albums or artist outside of my library with genre “experimental rock”, from a specific decade and with 4+ stars ratings, can I do that with global search? I’d love to but there is no such functionality.
In short, why can’t I use Focus for global search, and are there plans to add this feature in the near future? It will certainly influence my decision whether I want to continue using Roon.
Yes I agree with @j_a_m_i_e , the Focus functionality is already there waiting for technical implementation. For now I can do this on some websites like RYM, but the Focus feature is much powerful. It would be huge advantage for Roon in my opinion.
I have no idea, I’m not Roon Labs staff. I suggest that you post this suggestion in the Feature Suggestions category of the forum and start the voting for it.
Worth looking to see if you can find an existing / open request first.
If not some ideas…
1/ Browse->Filter
Simply implementing a new ‘Browse->Filter’ page/view that allowed you to filter the complete Tidal/Qobuz catalogue via ‘focus’, much like My Library->Albums currently view works would seem the simplest option. Although you’d probably want to make some visual distinction or else new users might get confused as to why there were two such similar looking / functioning pages.
2/ Browse->Genre->Electronic
Another good place for this kind of functionality might be on the Roon Browse->Genre pages themselves, as you normally have some idea of what top level genre you might want to start filtering by.
3/ Browse->Qobuz
Roon could also add an option to allow users to toggle between the (current) basic ‘genre’ filter and the fuller normal ‘focus’ feature on the current Qobuz ‘new releases/picks’ page.
Currently the Qobuz section in Roon only shows new releases, playlists and editorial picks from Qobuz, but no reason a new tab for the full catalogue there as well.
New top level tab / view for full catalogue?
Toggle between browser genre and focus?
Existing requests
This request sort of covers the functionality you describe, but it’s within the context of a particular artists discography, rather than a the complete Qobuz.Tidal category or a particular genre.
Tangentially, I suggested adding sub-genres to the Qobuz browse interface as a partial solution to this issue. Although that’s more a way of filtering down the new releases and editorial picks.
There’s also an open request to allow filtering of Tidal/Qobuz by label, which is now almost 5 years old, with over 110 votes.
In short, I wouldn’t hold your breath, but no harm in adding your vote/voice.
My guess is that we’ll start to see more natural language based interfaces for pulling back selections of albums/tracks ie. “Return me a list of albums similar to X that were produced in the 19XX and were well regarded by the alternative music press”. Not just in Roon, but in any product offering discovery features and the absence of such features will eventually be seen as a sign that a product is losing its competitive edge to the competition.
Although personally I am still a fan of browsing/filtering/faceting, if done well with useful facets like aggregate ratings (from quality sources), picks/highlights (again from quality sources) and well thought-out / nested sub-genres.
Sorry, I actually thought you were Roon Labs support. I very rarely use these types of places, so my mistake.
Thank you @j_a_m_i_e.
Yes, this could be a very interesting possibility too.
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