How to remove a playing track that’s just been added from library?

Sometimes, I add a track to my library because I like the start, then the rest of the song plays and I’m not a fan anymore. At that point, when I click the … button, it just has “Add to library” greyed out, instead of having the option change to remove from library. Even on the now playing screen and opening the vertical three dots, it’s still the “Add to library” greyed out. However, it seems like for songs that I have added some time ago, the same location has a “Remove from library” button. What’s with the cause of delay? It seems like I have to jump through a bunch of hoops or wait some unknown period of time before I can remove something. What’s the purpose of having a greyed out Add button instead of just putting the Remove button there?

From what type of screen are you trying to remove these tracks? Perhaps from the queue?
When you add a track to your queue while this is not part of your library, you can add it to the library from there. While doing this, the track that is still in your queue can still be seen as outside of your library (in Roon database lingo). Because of that, you cannot remove it from the queue.
If you goto your tracks, you can remove it from there.

From here:


And here:

A song that was added to my library from a while back:

No idea what causes the state to transition so that it shows the Remove instead of the greyed out Add.

But if you goto your home screen, and from there open one of your recently added tracks or albums… can you remove it from there?

That does seem to show the Remove button. If I go back to the now playing, it still shows the greyed out Add button. So it seems like some parts of the application have the correct behavior and shows the Remove. Logically, if the Add button is greyed out, I would guess that it knows that it was already added so it disables the button. Given that, I would just expect the Remove button to appear instead.

In any case, I’m glad that I can use that as an easy way to find the track to remove. Previously, I was jumping through different ways to access the track until I was able to remove it. I think this is still a bug that should be resolved, though.

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It is strange indeed, although I suspect that it is intentional.
I always consider adding an album to your library from a streaming service as making a local duplicate. The original file ‘knows’ that it was copied, but you cannot remove the copy from there. You will have to do it from within the ‘local’ duplicate.
Of course you don’t really make a copy of the file, but this analogy makes it easier to comprehend.

Also, I assume that after you remove an album from your library, the songs in your queue that were added before you added them to your library, are still in the queue, while song that were added from within the library duplicate, are removed from the queue after deleting the album.

From my perspective, I think that would make sense if there was a clear distinction between which screens represent the streaming service and which ones represent your local collection. However, there are clearly cases where other songs that I had added from streaming services previously have a Remove option on the same screens.

As for the other scenario you described, I’m not really sure as I don’t typically add songs to my library before listening to them. I like to operate on a per track basis, rather than on an album level.

Hi Daniel,

I don’t think you quite get it, let me see if I can help…

When listing to a streaming track that has not been added to library, there is a option to add the track to library and this works, the track is now added and if you go to a different page (say albums, or tracks) is will show that track as added … and give the option to remove it.

Now here’s the rub … going back to …

When listing to a streaming track that has not been added to library, there is a option to add the track to library and this works, the track is now added … however, the track that is currently playing is still viewed by Roon as not added.

I understand it, but do consider it a bug, or at least an undesirable feature.
I think after adding, Roon should update all its internal transient references to align.

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I think the confusion here is that the button to Remove is not on some of the other pages as well, as you can see in my second screenshot in a previous post. It seems that I have to navigate to it in some specific ways in order to get the button to appear.