· Confused about Play Counts in playlists. From my testing play count is always 0 in a Qobuz playlist (even if items are in my library). AND play count is always 0 for Roon playlists if items are not in the library. If they are in the library they need to be there before you play for the play count to increment. This feels very unintuitive and not very helpful. Have I got it right?
Not sure I follow you. I added a Qobuz playlist and the play count doesn’t increment. But some of the same tracks in the list have a play count if I look at them in my library. I didn’t add anything to the Qobuz playlist from my library there were already in there.
Going by the documentation, there is no play count for tracks that are not in your library, this includes tracks from Qobuz. Tracks from Qobuz and tracks in your library are not the same entity, so I wouldn’t expect to see play counts to show for a playlist from Qobuz. See also:
ah ok that makes sense. However if I add a Qobuz playlist to a new Roon one the play count doesn’t show there either. But if I go to the track in Roons album view it shows, even if it’s not in my library! It’s hella confusing! Take a look at the Didn’t Know Why track in these screenshots.
Thanks for writing in and sharing your report! Qobuz Playlists Play count is always 0, regardless of whether the tracks are in your library. This is because Roon treats Qobuz playlists as external/streaming content, play counts are a library metadata feature, and Roon doesn’t write playback stats back to tracks that aren’t anchored in your local library context.
Roon Playlists:
Track not in library → play count stays 0, even after playing
Track in library before you play it → play count increments correctly
Track added to library after playing → the plays that happened before it was added to the library are not retroactively counted
Why it works this way Roon's play count is tied to the library record of a track, not the playback event itself. If there's no library entry to write the count to, the event is essentially untracked. It's a database-record-first design rather than a play-event-first design.
Is your understanding correct? Yes, essentially. The key insight is: play counts only increment when a track has an existing library record at the time of playback. Streaming sources (Qobuz playlists) and non-library tracks in Roon playlists both fall outside that scope.
If play count tracking matters to you, make sure tracks are added to your library before playing them. For Qobuz content, that means explicitly adding albums/tracks to your Roon library (via the “Add to Library” option) rather than just playing from Qobuz playlists directly.
I hope this makes a bit more sense, and certainly let me know if you have any additional questions!
I have a supplementary question about my screenshots. They show a play count of two for a track not in my library. Are you saying I must have had it in my library before, played it twice and then removed it? I can’t understand why or when I would have done that so I’m not sure it’s correct. Is there another explanation?
In addition that same track in a Roon playlist shows a play count of 0 - why is that?
There was never an announcement, but I haven’t found this to be true at least for some time. Perhaps I’m missing something and correct me if I’m wrong, but:
This was a Playlist by Roon that I saved locally as a Roon playlist, all Qobuz tracks:
Yeah I can’t remember when it happened but we added this at some point
At one time @BlackJack was right, but we do now track play counts outside the library, as shown in @Suedkiez’s screenshots. They should also persist if you subsequently add the album to your library.
Seems like we missed the play count column on the playlist page – which means this is a bug:
Thanks for flagging @Ian_Blackburn – we will take a look.
The team has a ticket in the pipeline for this issue. We’ll share a note here as soon as this is expected to be included in a public release. Thank you again for the reports.
