I know this is a hard request to implement but I am putting it out there anyway.
I am starting to feel “locked” into Tidal the more i use Roon. I have a relatively small collection of old high bitrate MP3 (don’t haze me) and then mostly Tidal in the form of albums and playlists.
There are two things preventing me from moving to Qobuz, and they also hinder me getting from MP3 to Tidal or other FLAC versions.
Playlist entries – If I moved to Qobuz, all of the songs in playlist point to the Tidal version of tracks. There is no simple way to have a Roon Playlist convert from Tidal songs to Qobuz songs. This is big for me where I have old playlists made up of MP3.
Play Counts and Last Played Date – While not a critical function for me, occasionally i like to use Playcounts for playlists or bookmarks or just interest. There is not way to keep playcounts for songs when swapping out versions from Tidal to Qobuz
The only other thing I can think of that is song/album specific is personal album ratings. There may be other things that are lost when changing the source of the song/album?
I know Soundiiz is a potential third party service to do some of this (not play counts or ratings) but I would like this to be in Roon itself. Maybe it would be a guided process where you get a left and a right list and you scroll through and confirm.
I consider this to be “personal meta data” and I think it is one of the values Roon brings. But because it adds value, it is a barrier for streaming source conversion.
I think any utilities to help users move between different Roon supported streaming services would be great.
However, a couple comments
I personally view all streaming based meta-data as ephemeral and can go at anytime; because they can*. Imho, you shouldn’t worry about trying to preserve them if you want to leap to Qobuz.
*if you want to know more about why this is, take a quick read of this thread. Tidal albums get lost? However, if you search further you will find extended discussions with Mike weighing in on the hows and whys this occurs and what can possibly be done about it.
I think your point ADDS to this request. Perhaps I have both Qobuz and Tidal, so then I would like to be able to substitute when albums go missing from one service.
I get that the streaming services are out of our control, I am suggesting Roon play more of a role of keeping that data DESPITE the streaming services.
I think these functions would have to be in a Maintenance area of Roon, not to interfere with core function usability.
I agree, but I think that a Playlist should be permanent even if the source is unavailable. At least I have the option to search for an alternative release. At the moment, when it’s gone it’s gone.
Not that this matters to anyone but me, however, I don’t use playlist at all. I just put entire albums in my library. I put the highest resolution from both Tidal and Qobuz. Then, I always listen to full albums at a time and never shuffle them. Sometimes I prefer Tidal and sometimes I prefer Qobuz. Works for me. I guess we all do it differently. It’s all good.
You can use https://soundiiz.com/ to transfer your favorites and playlists from one service to another. I used it successfully to transfer from rdio (RIP) to Spotify, and then from Spotify over to Tidal once I purchased Roon. They have an API. Perhaps an integration with Roon makes more sense than having them build out something that already exists.
I’m not dismissing the fact that it would be great to have Roon do more to remember albums and tracks I’ve added to my library regardless of source. It’s definitely problematic for collectors when something you add disappears without some indication that it’s been removed.
Yes, as mentioned in the OP, I have used it as well to test out Qobuz. Keeping Playlist entries and play counts (which Soundiiz doesn’t do) is the key part of this feature request.
+1 here, would be great if we could replace Tidal tracks with Qobuz tracks and vice versa, preserving “favorite” and other track metadata (play counts, last played).
We’ve worked with our friends at Soundiiz to introduce a new Soundiiz export option, along with a number of other export improvements like being able to export tracks that are not in your library! Please see the latest release notes here:
Great progress @dylan, i think the Soundiiz integration helps in a lot of scenarios.
One to please keep on the list is within Roon, being able to substitue from Tidal to Quboz versions without having to manually go through each song and search for it. Two or three scenarios:
Your primary service removes it (licensing). Roon should “remember” that you have the album or Playlist entry and give options to replace
Maybe you want to wholesale swith from Tidal to Qobuz or vice versa. Have a migration utility to facilitate this
A report at least that can identify albums and playlist entries that have “gone missing”
This is an increasing challenge with streaming services.
Thanks for posting this @RobOK
I was considering posting another feature request, but I’ll elaborate on this one, hope you don’t mind?
Now that we can export “playlists” to Soundiiz and Excel, all we need is an import function that does not demand file paths, but rather identify tracks, artists and albums based on their ROVI or UPC identifiers.
An example:
Prince - 1999 Any one of us could likely find this album if you have a streaming service and I’m sure many have it available locally. If it is added already it has got these identifiers:
rovi:MW0000191482
UPC: 603 497 999 637
It must be possible to find and add albums/tracks/artists from whatever available media source any user has access to? And it really doesn’t matter if it’s not possible to cover 100%, I’m sure a “rest list” could be made available also, for manual finding or a “shopping list”.
Yes, I know that would eliminate the need for Soundiiz, but please make this sharing feature a complete one. Roon needs it!
There are many other scenarios where this would be useful, such as corrupted databases etc. where restore of the complete database isn’t wanted.
Yes completely. This would also allow a feature for cross platform sharing hear on the forum!!!
Roon, please consider that matching does not have to be perfrect as long as you communicaate that. So let’s say the identifiers only match 85% to Tidal or Qobuz, that is fine. Soundiiz never gets perfect matching. It’s accepted and expected. But that 85% import from someone else’s playlist or for a transfer is often quite acceptable.
The Soundiiz export/import feature only helps to some extent. For me it’s still pretty much useless, which I will explain based on the following simple case:
Playlist created in Roon based on the content in my library (playlist contains only songs from Tidal to make it easy)
Export to csv and import in Soundiiz
Transfer the songs to a Qobuz playlist using Soundiiz
In Roon, I now have a Qobuz playlist with all the songs that could be matched by Soundiiz. However, they are no longer linked to the albums that were already in my library. Instead they refer to some kind of ghost version of each album. What I don’t understand is that the play-counter goes up for the tracks of the library version of that album as well. So, there must be some kind of link between the ghost version and the one in my library. Why do the songs in the created playlist not directly refer to the library version then?
This issue is not specific to playlists but it occurs in several other places as well. I just find it particuarly annoying for playlists because I still have to exchange each track one by one to refer to the library versions of each album. So for me, the Soundiiz export/import is of marginally help.
I was contemplating trying Qobuz again, and this is an annoying aspect. You can transfer albums and playlists, but not exactly playlist entries (if that is the right term). More importantly you can’t transfer Roon based playlists. I can export them to CSV/export files, then import them into Qobuz, but i no longer have Roon editable Playlists.
Does anyone know if Tags convey? Let’s say I have a number of albums tagged “Piano” in Roon (I do in fact). If I transfer the albums via Soundiz from Tidal to Qobuz, would those corresponding albums keep the tag (Roon would have to know they are the same album, which they seem to in the Versions context). I don’t have a ton of Tags but have been trying Tags and Bookmarks vs. Playlists in some cases.