Process of choosing what you listen to?

Maybe this? I might be wrong
https://community.roonlabs.com/t/roon-extension-random-radio-v0-2-0-do-the-album-shuffle

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@Traian_Boldea thanks for this

I looked at this and didn’t get anywhere

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Hope this is it. I knew that I did see it long time ago

It’s an extension, so you need an RPi or something to run it (not sure if you are aware)

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Cheers for that. I’ll look into it further. :pray:

Great thread. Thanks @AMT for starting it and thanks to the rest of you for lots of great ideas.

I am time-poor when it comes to listening to music and I want to wring every last drop of enjoyment out my sessions that I can. So it’s always a dilemma - explore new music or play stuff I know I love. It’s very disappointing to spend the available time trying new things only to discover nothing I like. (First world problem, I know). One thing that works quite well for me is, when commuting, using Spotify Discover Weekly, which tracks what I listen to frequently or have “Liked”. Usually I get a playlist of OK music, but I’m wary of clicking Like on much unless I love it, because the Spotify algorithm is really not very sophisticated. I once “Liked” a County song and I got nothing but Country and Western for about three months, despite constantly skipping tracks. Also it is very common to like one track, only to explore the artist and find there’s really nothing else I enjoy. My tastes are eclectic re genres but particular. When I’m organized I update my Roon playlist of Liked Spotify tracks, then listen to them in a more conducive environment (at home, HiFi equipment, no distractions) and work out whether to explore further. I guess I should explore Roon ARC more, as this probably has a similar feature, hopefully superior to Spotify.

Anyway, thanks again for all the great suggestions.

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I’ll play an album or a song as a seed and let Roon pick from there. I can go back in the history to listen to albums from there. Found a lot of good stuff this way. Second is Stereophile’s record reviews. This month I found The Necks. Been around 35 years. Never heard of them. Liked it.

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Prelude (if you will allow me): Roon’s AI works very well for exposing me to new material in the areas of jazz (that is wonderful!), some rock and roll (surprise to me), and even some jazz/rock fusion (an even bigger surprise). All that is wonderful! For me, the AI is largely useless for “classical” (in the broad sense, not Classical era) although occasionally there is a big big hit. Perhaps that failure and those rare successes are not a surprise given the many thousands of classical composers, and artists.

So to the question posed: note that here I am describing accessing my own music, not searching for new music. I first pick a genre that I most yearn for at a given moment. These are at the top of my hierarchically organized set of folders. This could be just Classical, Fusion, Jazz, R&R, but my top list is roughly 4x that size. These help to narrow my search, as do the subfolders. Subfolders may break out artists (so, @Mike_O_Neill, Eric Clapton et al. is split out in R&R and 461 Ocean Blvd is easy to find, as is Cream, …) but also sub-genres and specific composers or artists or groups below them. In each genre there is always an “other” folder - one-offs, etc. I work to keep the content of those folders not too large. (FYI this would work for playlists of individual pieces drawn from throughout the library just as well but for myself I’m not a playlist kinda guy.) Note that a given artist, or group, or album, or playlist could appear at several places in the folder hierarchy.

The whole thing is a living document, and easy to modify as my insights change. The goal is to have a relatively short list of folders or typically a somewhat longer list of albums/performances I am evaluating (looking over), and always striving to avoid viewing the endless list that overwhelms. (I note that Roon disses UIs that give such an endless list but Roon searches also generate endless lists and the display eats up enormous amount of valuable screen space showing irrelevant album covers you don’t want to see, and so you see less of the list. Miserable for the initial phase of a search. More helpful for narrowing down towards the final choice. Being able to quickly switch in and out of display modes, e.g. showing album covers or not, would be helpful.)

My approach is far from perfect, of course. There are always some decisions about the classification scheme (but that can be easily changed), there has to be discipline not to overplay, and there has to be discipline to search, if occasionally, less frequented branches of the hierarchy. But I find it easy to use, reflecting my careful curation of what I want to see and organize, and vastly better than what Roon offers, even when I limit Roon to searching just my library. I find that typically I inhabit one genre for awhile then switch to another. Sometimes because of a Roon suggestion (yay!).

So, how do I accomplish this? Easy, if clunky. I use Apple’s Music (aka iTunes). Maintaining the folders is completely easy. Each folder and album gets the name I want to give it; each album is a playlist, and if I really don’t like the order of cuts or don’t like a particular piece I can rearrange to my preference. Or make any playlist desired (not my thing, but go for it!). And resolve confusion about multi-album classical works exactly once. Yes, it’s absolutely dumb to be forced to search in Music and then find the album in Roon, but it works, and quickly. And it gets around Roon’s confidence that they know better than I know how I want to access my own music. Finally, having this list in Music is (almost) as good a back up as is Apple’s chances of surviving. In contrast, deciding to pour myself into curating a list in Roon that will suddenly disappear during an update or whatever is a really fraught choice, in my opinion.

For new music (i.e. not in my library), as described above Roon’s suggestions can be hugely beneficial, in some genres. The search of History can help remind new finds that were not noted (written down or otherwise saved). Where the suggestions don’t work (in my case, classical), I use more traditional technologies. That includes the unique category of “friends”, preferably 3D people. And listening to live performances of the CSO, whenever I give myself the time. Utterly sublime.

Cheers to all!

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Every Friday I hit Qobuz and Tidal for new music - a 20 min treat in the morning (I work from home). I usually add 10-15 albums, two thirds of which get ditched after a slightly longer play. The rest take me most of the week to get through.

Tidal’s ‘You Listened To This So Might Like These’ is a good source of not-necessarily new music to try. The Home page on Roon (New Releases For You) is also pretty good for picking out a few albums I like.

Then there are the 1000 or so LPs I’ve yet to listen to…gotta love job lots on eBay!

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Excellent reading my fellow Roonies. Gives us all different ways and new ways of how we choose what’s next.

Keep it coming.