There are lots of players. There are lots of library managers. I happily use Roon above all of those to discover new music. But to be honest, and more precise, Roon’s strength is to help me re-discover my music, and find new recommendations based on my music usage. I think Focus and Roon Radio are both awesome. But like many others I struggle with search, and feel that to find really new music could be easier. A few thoughts:
As others has asked for, please add a simple way to add albums/artists to a “listen later” or “check it out” list, without importing into my library (yet). E.g. I surf “what we are listening to 2021” forum thread often, but do not want to interrupt my current playlist to “sample” every lead I find interesting, and do not want to add to library without kicking the tires first either. This may be on different devices from current Roon session. If you want make the world a better place, host this list in the cloud, integrated with the forum, with the option to make my list (semi-) public, and to have others send me recommendations. Also see next.
Speaking of the WWALT’21 thread, it would be FANTASTIC if Roon’s export function already pre-formated the hyperlink so that clicking on the image pasted in the forum (or sent to a friend) would call the Roon app with the album etc. details already populated, rather than having to type manually into search bar (which often fails, even if the album is clearly in Roon’s DB). I’ll buy beer for the programmer that makes this happen. Could bring you new users too.
Lastly, a “filter by zone” option for Focus and Radio would be nice. E.g. I have an alarm clock playing piano music every morning in my bedroom. I typically listen to piano jazz while working in home office, vocal jazz/rock in living room, pop/rock in backyard. Since the bedroom alarms happens every day (for ~2hrs)and others intermittently, and since the stats look at all of this as one behavior, my stats show heavy bias to piano. However whenever I sit down with the intention to focus on listening music, I would probably prefer vocal jazz/rock. IMHO If Roon’s AI used the zone to influence choice of recommendations, it would be more accurate/ appropriate.
Hope this helps.
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SukieInTheGraveyard
(This one time, at Bandcamp... I spent too much money!)
2
You can add into your library and then remove if it’s not a keeper. This works for me without issue.
This isn’t possible as it depends on what streaming service and/or local files you have. Using the search bar is the quickest and most efficient way to search for what might available for any specific user.
Tags are great for this. For albums I’ll keep forever I have a ‘Keep’ tag. Anything else is something I haven’t listened to yet. If I don’t ‘Keep’ it, I remove it.
I use bookmarks for this. The rest of your comments are spot on though. Roon isn’t “social” when we’re almost at a point in history that social should be a commodity feature. Time to start dipping toes in water here and building out the strategy. You give good examples Roon could investigate.
I think you can accomplish this with profiles. The stats you’re trying to bucket are already bucketed against profiles. Little bit different use case for profiles but I think it will solve your ask. What I’m thinking here is only use those zones with specific profiles and your primary profile will no longer be “polluted”.
I tried this but found it clumsy. E.g. I might want to add several albums to a list from one browsing session. Bookmarks only works for one album at a time, right?
Tags could be better, but I still feel it falls short. E.g. once I listen to it, I want it scrubbed from list automatically.
Also if it shows up as a button on the WWALT thread, instead of switching from safari to Roon and then trying to remember spelling…
In fact I think What Others Are Listening too should be a feature of the App, not the forum….
I’ll amend then: clicking on image in WWALT should simply open Roon and perform a search with a prepopulated string. That way if I find it online, I can start listening / add right away. With clicks only.
I HATE having to switch from safari to Roon and then have to remember what to type without being able to copy and paste text from the image. With one finger on a touchscreen since the other hand is holding the iPad.
This combined with Roon’s sometimes idiosyncratic search behavior (see other current threads) makes it harder to just play what others are recommending than it should be.
I meant 1 bookmark can only point to 1 item, I.e. it is not capable of being a list. So I’ll have tons of bookmarks. Apple’s implementation of reading list feature is quite nice.