iTunes playlists imported, but links not visible on album page

Roon Core Machine

2015 Mac Mini, 2.6GHz Dual-Core i5, 8GB RAM, running Windows 10

Networking Gear & Setup Details

Fios Quantum Gateway G1100 router, on ethernet

Connected Audio Devices

DAC connected via USB

Number of Tracks in Library

136,000

Description of Issue

I’ve had issues with playlists before, including when I first migrated to Roon (2017) and was unable to have any iTunes playlists visible in Roon. I got halfway through a service ticket with Roon, but the problem mostly corrected itself following a version upgrade. Since then, all my iTunes playlists have been visible in the Roon playlist section, but with only sporadic visibility of “playlist links” in the album page view. The majority of album pages have appropriately displayed the playlists links for various songs, but some album pages simply do not. I could never identify a pattern. I’ve let the problem go since then, and just lived with it, until…

For the first time since then, I created new playlists and deleted old ones. These changes all show up in the Roon playlist section, and the music can be navigated from there. But, now there are ZERO playlist links on any album page. Roon is clearly able to see the playlists, but for some reason cannot populate the links to the songs on the album pages.

Please help - thank you!

Hi @jsa307 ,

Apologies for the delay in getting back to you here, can you please share a few screenshots of the behavior you’re seeing? Do you notice this only on iTunes playlists or TIDAL/Qobuz playlists as well?

This particular problem “resolved”, but as I mentioned earlier, playlists continue to be flakey in Roon. I am only using iTunes generated playlists. Whenever there are changes to Roon or a new playlist is generated, the playlists disappear from the Roon album view. To resolve the problem I described in my post, I added a song to each playlist in iTunes- and then somehow the “change” forced the playlist to now generate in the Roon album view. Afterwards I went back to remove the track.

Now after downloading Roon 1.8, they’re all gone again. I just added a track back to each one, and I assume they’re reappear over the next 24 hrs (as has happened before) … but we’ll see …

@noris I added (and subsequently removed) a track to each playlist, to “refresh” the playlist and force it to re-appear in the album view …. magically all the playlists reappeared.

Today Roon updated to a new version again…. again, all playlists are gone. I know how to “fix” this now, but it’s tedious. Something is fundamentally wrong with the way playlists are being handled in Roon…

Hi @jsa307 ,

Have you ensured that you export the iTunes XML each time you make a change to the playlists there? You will need to re-export the XML to see updated playlists, please see the following threads for reference:

Hi @noris ,

Putting aside for a moment the issue of creating a new playlist, what is the reason that all existing playlists disappear from the album view when Roon updates to a new build? This happens every time Roon updates, even if the playlist has not changed. The playlist will remain visible in the playlist section, however. Is this the intended Roon behavior, or a glitch?

Hi @jsa307 ,

In a previous build, we have moved this option to Roon Settings → General → Show Playlist Links. Can you please confirm that you have this setting toggled?

@noris the “show playlists links” button is toggled correctly.

Hi @jsa307 ,

Can you please share a few screenshots of where you are failing to see the playlist links? How are you navigating to the album, by searching for it or through your playlists → click on the album? Does it show up when you go through playlists → click on the album?

hi @noris

Here is a screenshot of an album with missing playlist links. The links disappear whenever Roon updates (or less commonly, the links disappear without apparent cause). It does not matter how I navigate to the album:

Here is a screenshot showing that Roon still recognizes the playlist, even though the links are missing from the album view:

And here is a screenshot after I restored the playlist links by adding a track to the playlist, essentially “refreshing” the playlist so it will be recognized by Roon. That works every time, but is obviously quite tedious:

Please advise. Thank you

Hi @jsa307 ,

Thank you for those additional details, we are checking with the QA team regarding your case. Once we have any updates to share or additional questions from the team, we will reach out once more, thanks!

Hello @jsa307 ,

Thank you for your patience, I have spoken to the QA team and they have a few follow-up questions so that they can better understand this issue.

Can you please confirm how you are adding content to the iTunes playlist? Do you add it inside of iTunes, then re-generate the Library.XML file and re-import into Roon?

Does this issue only impact iTunes playlists? If you have TIDAL or Qobuz playlists, can you please verify if the behavior is the same for those types of playlists?

If you save your iTunes playlist as a “local copy”, does the issue reproduce with that method?

Let us know, thank you.

Hi @noris

  1. Tracks are added to an iTunes playlist within iTunes. I never regenerate the xml file - Roon is monitoring the iTunes directory and updates when changes are made

  2. I do not have other types of playlists

  3. I have not tried this - but it would defeat the purpose of having Roon monitor the iTunes directory; any changes made to iTunes would no longer be updated in Roon if I were using a local copy instead

Hi @jsa307 ,

I think this might be the issue here, when you make iTunes playlist changes, you are supposed to regenerate the XML file so that Roon is aware of the changes. If you regenerate the XML, do the links then appear properly?

This topic was automatically closed after 19 hours. New replies are no longer allowed.