I may not have understood your problem correctly, but…
If you select all the songs in one of your Tidal playlists, and add to library, only those songs which are not already in your library are added (albums containing the songs are not added).
Thus focussing now on latest tracks added will only show your new additions, and these can then be added to your local version of the playlist.
This process needs to be repeated for each of your half dozen tidal playlists, but shouldn’t take hours.
Hi Nicholas,
I understand the situation you are facing and I just tried a few things to double check. As @BrianW points out, there is a way to add songs directly from a TIDAL playlist (once this is synced with Roon). As long as you first add tracks to your TIDAL playlist and then also add them to your collection (the heart symbol) then you should be able to see those tracks automatically added to your library in Roon (once you sync). Here is the complication though. Roon shows the TIDAL playlists (once synced) but the tracks listed in there are not part of your Roon library. What is part of your roon library is shown if you go Library / Tracks. The exact same tracks are shown there but it is only these instances that can be added to a Roon playlist and managed via Roon in the usual way.
If I access the TIDAL playlist (in Roon) and try to add a track from there to a Roon playlist, that is not resulting in the ‘imported’ tidal track being added. If instead I access the same track from Library / Tracks and then add that to my Roon playlist, that appears to add the imported instance.
See this below showing the same track added to my Roon playlist. The first instance does not include a ‘date added’ field and this is because it includes the Tidal instance. The listing below is showing the same track but this time it also includes a ‘date added’ stamp. This is the same track but it was added from Library / Tracks.
Tracks no 12 and 13 are the same but … they are not. Track 12 was added from my synced TIDAL playlist and it does not point to an imported track. Track 13 is the same track but it was added from Library / Tracks where it was automatically added.
I don’t think that you can add tracks en masse from within TIDAL synced playlists. You will unfortunately have to find the tracks (automatically imported) in the Library / Tracks section and from there add them to Roon playlists.
I will not deny I find this quite a confusing process but that is what we have.
Indeed so. One refers to the Tidal instance, and the other to your library version. The reason for the distinction is that you may edit your library version, and so it is no longer identical. I understand it can be confusing, but that’s the reason for it.
You can either add local versions en masse to your library, or tidal references en masse to a local playlist.
Please Roon, work on playlist functions! Allow TIDAL and Qobuz playlists to be edited from within Roon (like Sonos app can). Have a more obvious display of songs IN your library or NOT IN your library to address above thread.
Hello Brian, great to hear from you!
I apologise if my previous message was confusing. I’ll more concretely describe my situation.
I travel a lot. While I’m on the train, I use Tidal. If I like a song, I add the song to my library, then add it to Tidal playlists.
Sometimes a week or two will pass without me using Roon. In that time I may have added hundreds of new songs to my Tidal library and playlists.
So, I finally start Roon and it syncs all of my new songs. The new songs are now in my Roon library, no problems there. But these hundreds of songs are spread across a number of Tidal playlists. It’s now quite difficult to take all of those recently-added songs and to build an identical Roon playlist (to the Tidal equivalents) that have all of Roon’s wonderful features. I could make a local copy, but that still references the Tidal playlist, and doesn’t have the suite of features that Roon-created playlists offer.
But my issue doesn’t stop there. By this point, some of my Tidal playlists don’t have hundreds of songs, but thousands. Adding these songs to my Roon library is easy. That isn’t my problem. My problem is knowing how to convert that playlist to a full-featured Roon playlist. It’s too cumbersome to go through my Roon library looking for the songs, since the songs were added at different months and years (therefore I can’t use “recently added”, etc). Alternatively, going through each song in each Tidal playlist, clicking the album, clicking “add to library”, finding the playlist song, and adding it again to a new, more fully-featured Roon playlist will take a lot of time and work. Roon, as far as I can see, doesn’t offer any alternatives.
I hope that is clear.
Hello Yiannis Kouropalatis,
Thank you for your insightful description. I understand completely and it makes a lot of sense.
Unfortunately, I’m out of easy options. Let me explain.
If I like a song in Tidal, I add it to my library, then I add it to one of several Tidal playlists. Sometimes I’ll add hundreds of songs this way before I get a chance to sync with Roon.
I eventually open Roon and it syncs all of my Tidal tracks to my Roon library. No issues there.
However, creating fully-featured Roon playlists based on these original Tidal playlists is a big headache. There are hundreds newly-added tracks to Roon and they belong to many different playlists. I could use “recently added” in Roon’s library, but one track should be in “Playlist A”, whereas the next should be in “Playlist B”, the third in “Playlist A” and Playlist C", etc. It’s a big hassle to sort through them, click “add to playlist”, find the correct playlist, etc. And as I said, there are often hundreds of songs.
The alternative is that I use my original Tidal playlists to “rebuild” Roon playlists, by clicking on an album inside the Tidal playlist, adding it to my library, finding the song in my library, then adding that to a fully-featured Roon playlist. That’s fine for playlists that have 50 songs, but my biggest has over 1,500! It’s just not reasonable.
While I’m on the topic, the Roon Radio feature is oddly unreasonable as well in a similar way. Let’s say I listen to a song I like on Roon Radio and want to add it to my Roon library. No issues. I just click the three dots and select “add song to library”. But now what if I want to add this song to a playlist? Well, I could click “add to playlist”, then add it to a playlist. Seems easy, right? But now the problem is that I’ve just added a song that ISN’T from my Roon library. When I go to look at the track in the playlist, it’s not a Roon library song that has been added, but an original Tidal one! Therefore no “favourite” option, no added date, etc. How weird is that!?
Instead, you have to add the song to your library, then find it in your library (by clicking the album), then add THAT one to the playlist. Only then will it appear correctly. Seems cumbersome and unintuitive to me.
Thanks again for your message!
Hi Nicholas, thank you for the detailed insight. After trying things out, I am in the same situation as you. I have been trialing TIDAL in combination with Roon for the past 2 weeks and like you I tend to use TIDAL on my iphone while I travel. I end up adding lots and lots of tracks and I categorise them into my Tidal playlists. Once I get home and have a chance to sit down with Roon, I would love to be able to transfer these Tidal tracks to the corresponding Roon playlists so that I can manage them (Tagging, ranking accorind to playcount, bookmarks etc.). Like you I am slowly discovering that the only way is to use the Library / Tracks view to find the ‘imported’ instances of the tracks. These are however uncategorised and so I have to manually redo this: Check which Tidal playlsit the track belongs to and then manually add the Roon instance of the track to the corresponding Roon playlist. This seems to be the only way as the synced TIDAL playlist will only contan the Tidal instances of the tracks and these are not imported.
An additional complication is that I have about 9000 tracks in my local library and Roon does not seem to recognise duplicates with Tidal imported instances.
So for example I have Track A previously purchased and categorised in Roon. As I use TIDAL separately (on my iphone) I am likely at some point to find and add the same track in one of my TIDAL playlists. I will also be likely to add Track A in my colleciton (heart symbol).
I notice that when I sync with Roon this Track A will be automatically imported (Library / Tracks) as expected. Say I go through the process to manually re-categorise imported tracks in Roon playlists (as discussed abvoe), I will then end up adding tracks that are duplicate (i have previously purchased the same). Roon does not recognise this unfortunately. I can add the exact same imported TIdal track to one of my Roon playlsits where the same track already exists (previously purchased). Roon does not recognise this as duplicate unfortunately.
As @BrianW mentions above, you can add TIDAL references (instances of tracks) en masse to a local playlist in roon. The problem there is that the local playlist will contain the Tidal instances (references) and not the Roon imported instances that you can find under Library / Tracks. As such, the local playlist with Tidal instances cannot be used to manage these tracks via Tags, bookmarks, playcount ranking etc.
Where does this all leave us?
As @RobOK points out, it would be great if we had more tools and functionality to allow us to manage our library. Of course the above use case does not apply to everyone but i bet there are a few of us.
To be honest, I don’t like all the manual work detailed above in order to integrate Tidal tracks with my local library. Not sure about my next step yet, I have to think things through.
Cheers
Y
@Yiannis_Kouropalatis, @Nicholas_Dunkley ,
Thank you for describing your problems so clearly.
You both need a means of producing a local playlist of local tracks from a Tidal playlist.
Perhaps via a third option on Tidal playlists: to be able to add selections to your library and to a local playlist at the same time. This seems to be a good feature request and I suggest one of you, with follow up support from the other, posts in the #roon:feature-requests category, describing your use cases.
On the duplicate tracks issue, Roon doesn’t see these as duplicates; at best, if composer information is there, it considers them as alternative versions, (typically compositions or performances), even when identical.
If the exact same track is added to a playlist which already contains it, then using the only show duplicates flag will show it.
Thank you for the follow up Brian. I get the sense that Roon have their hands full (and more) trying to resolve Android remote issues and other more important bugs so I don’t think it likely that resources are available for such a feature to be taken forward.
After a bit of thinking and re-evaluation, I am verging towards removing TIDAL altogether and reverting back to using Roon with my local library alone. While this may limit the scope of what music is available to me, it will at least give me better control of what I have (Spotify for streaming and music discovery is fine without creating extra library management work).
Best
Y
Well yes, bug fixing is important, but so are new features.
And Roon must always be aware of small niggles hindering people’s enjoyment of their hobby - which includes curating as well as listening. They should always be striving to improve!
Brian
If Soundiiz can transfer and sync playlists why can’t Roon import Tidal and Qobuz playlists so they become a Roon playlist and provide a seamless experience.
Being on a yearly plan I’m not building anything on Roon as I don’t want to loose my built up library if I move on after the year is up.
The 4 months Tidal for £4 was too good to pass 
Hence, giving Tidal another go.
I have so far learned that managing Tidal libraries in Roon is a bit … confusing ( e.g. Tidal instances of tracks, Local copy of Tidal track, local playlist with Tidal instance vs local playlist with local copy of Tidal track,. etc.). I decided therefore to only manage Tidal through Roon. This means adding copies of Tidal tracks to my library as I use Roon radio. This helped with the confusion a bit but it uncovered a few others… for example, If I decide to add a Tidal track to my library as radio is playing:
I will click on ‘Add to library’ and that will save a local copy of the TIDAL track. My confusion started as soon as I then tried to add the same track to one of my playlists. I selected ‘Add to a Playlist’ and saw the ‘confirmation’ that the track was added to my Electro 1 playlist. Only it didnt.
It appears that despite having first added the track to my library, the track shown on screen is still a Tidal instance of it… (i.e. not the one I added). So despite having the option to ‘add to playlist’ this does not happen. To do this I have to exit this screen, go back to Overview, find the recently added track, and from there add to my playlist.
The super confusing thing is that the available option ‘add to track’ and the confirmation ‘Added to playlist’ as shown above… are in fact not valid.
Not sure if I am missing something…
I agree that simplifying this workflow is a useful feature to have. Room differentiates itself from other products with it’s (almost) seamless integration of Tidal and local libraries. However these use cases are important to truly realize that integrated vision. I too use Tidal when I’m the go (at the office and daily commute) and was struggling with this dichotomy until I found this thread.
If I could use a lightweight/Mobile version of Roon (with Tidal/Quobus streaming only) when away from home, things get much simple as all interactions go through Roon, and Roon and Roon would only need to automate the workflow of the “Add to playlist” Button to always add to the library and then add the library version to the playlist.
Without a mobile version of Roon. You have to the Tidal app when away, so now the integration also needs to involve syncing of playlists along with the local track automation, or somehow integrate with Soundiiz for playlist synchronization.
I’m gonna give this some more thought and maybe post it as a #roon:feature-requests
You are correct that it is confusing. You are missing a nuanced thing. Think of Roon as a set of pointers (entries in the Library). When you clicked Add to Library it did that, but what is on your screen is still the non-Library version. You would have to navigate to that track in your library and then add it to the playlist. What you have added is a pointer to the Tidal instance not your in Library instance. It is confusing.
On s separate topic from your post – when you add to library, roon does not download the track. It just adds the entry as “part of your collection”.
Hope this helps!
Many thanks Rob, very helpful indeed
I ran into this exact problem today while trying to tag against Tidal sourced playlists. The workaround of adding to Library works except for the Date Added part. Below is a suggested fix for this that respects steps outlined by @Yiannis_Kouropalatis in post #6. Fix the Date Added feature to always reflect the last time the track/album/object is added to the Library. Currently, there’s no reliable way to display the tracks in the order actually added. Date Added does not work reliably because that field is based on when the track was added to the playlist. For example, selecting tracks to add to Library from a playlist created/edited over different time periods leads to different Date Added values. Thus resulting in the tracks not easily being able to be grouped together for a batch operation.
Roon Dev please add an additional sort option to the Library: Entry Order. This sort order reflects the actual date and time that the track (or object) is added to the Library.
I appreciate the feedback and ideas, many thanks to everyone. The 4 months Tidal offer was too good to pass and I am glad I took it.
Just my personal experience so far: It takes quite bit to figure out the usability quirks and to understand the limitations in library management. @RobOK’s recommendation (consider everything a Tidal instance / link and only find local library tracks from Overview) helped a lot. Some options such as ‘add to playlist’ appear active in situations where they don’t actually apply (see my post above) and that certainly confused me. As I understand it now, it is best to ignore these options (even when they appear valid) and always access added tracks / library first before doing anything to manage them in Roon. @BrianW also helped a lot with clearing some of my confusion.
@Seabreeze and @mtjoseph, I agree with your points and recommendations, many thanks for the feebdack.
Despite the workarounds, having a local library alongside Tidal means that duplicates will creep in sooner or later. As I understand it, there is no way for TIDAL / Roon to automatically recognise existing tracks in one’s local library and thus warn the user that something already exists. As I use Tidal / Roon radio to discover music, I keep adding stuff that I already own in my library. I understand that one can manually group and deal with that. One drastic solution I considered is to disconnect my local library altogether and use TIDAL alone. That will solve the duplicates problem but it of course means losing access to 9000 tracks. Choices…
Anyhoo, I will keep exploring … I am not sure I will keep TIDAL after the end for the trial but I will wait and see whether my experience feels better over time.
Cheers
… just to add, I am definitely in favour of streaming and currently use Spotify and Apple Music alongside Roon /Tidal. Sound quality aside of course, I find Apple Music to offer excellent library management tools (smart playlists accessible through a folder-like nesting, adding / removing from library etc.). Spotify in contrast is super annoying and does not let me manage my library but it has the social features and music discovery that I love.
Hi,
I would like to know if you have found a solution.
Basically I am using TIDAL. I would like to replicate my TIDAL playlist in Roon Library.
I am able to copy the playlist but I am not able to add the tracks to the library.
I have not found an easy way to re-build my TIDAL playlist in Roon.
I have nittiest as well that it is not possible to play the playlist starting from the last song.
Example if I play the TIDAL playlist in TIDAL I can see a column with the number of the track so I can easily revert. In Roon it is not possibile because in the sinck Tidal playlist you cannot invert the order.
Many thanks for your advise.
Alessandro
Hi Alessandro
Unfortunately I was not able to find a solution to the problems I described above. After using Tidal and Roon for a while, I found that Roon did not integrate my local library with Tidal (unidentified tracks, duplicates, etc.). In addition, the issues you also mention (integrating Tidal playlists etc.) made the experience very unpleasant for me.
Because of the above problems I stoped using Tidal with Roon and kept only my local library.
Sorry I could not offer more help on this
