Qobuz has a great habit of releasing albums into the Roon database with release dates in the future. Roon has never done anything special with this situation and it should. It causes little bugs of unplayable content and “new releases” to get screwed up… but I just found a new area where this causes problems.
Album - De La Soul - 3 Feet High and Rising
Release date to streaming is: March 3rd 2023
I have this album as MP3. I added the 24/96 Qobuz version. Roon happily added it. Now when I click on this album Roon kindly selects the high resolution version except… that version isn’t actually playable since its not released yet.
Please work with Qobuz to make sure the “real” release date is accurate on their versions and then use that info to not release albums into the library that are not reached that date. Think of it like a record store. No one puts the stuff on the self before the real release date. In fact, if they did that, the might lose their distribution rights.
Unfortunately it’s a bit more complicated than the record store analogy. “Teaser” tracks released before the album are pretty standard in the industry now, with the track showing up on YouTube, for example. That’s what Qobuz is doing with forthcoming albums, placing them in their catalog with all tracks listed but only the teaser tracks available, I’m sure with the agreement of the labels that gave them the teaser tracks. But I totally agree with you that this messes up Roon integration, in fact I raised the issue with Roon several years ago.
“Teaser tracks”? Didn’t we call these singles? “The first single from the album…” I’ma going to continue to call them singles.
Qobuz has two lines of business with a shared catalog: Streaming and Purchased Downloads.
The album gets loaded into the catalog because you can pre-purchase it on the Download site. This makes it show-up on the streaming side even when the album itself is not available for streaming and has not been released for streaming. You’ll find places like Tidal and Spotify do not contain this album yet. Apple Music has it but clearly calls out the future release to “pre-add” and clearly shows only the single to stream.
However, the singlehas been released to both purchase and streaming. The only thing that should land in “the streaming catalog” is the single. I should be able to add the single but not the album. Or, better, pre-add the album but Roon treats it as not in my library until its actual release date.
I guess, but even if you pre-purchase, you don’t get the whole album before the official release date. Same on Bandcamp, BTW.
Yes, “singles,” why did I forget that concept More seriously, I don’t think your description is quite accurate either, because a traditional single had a separate catalog number and UPC, while these pre-released tracks don’t seem to, they are only cataloged as part of their (future) album.
Now I’m going to have to preface everything I say with “back in my day” and postface with “you kids are just wrong!”
I assumed “singles” were still a cataloged thing. If they are not that breaks the physical → digital transition for me who used to, you know, walk out of a store with a bag full of physical things.
I date back to the heyday of singles, too, but the reason I used “teaser track” rather than “single” is that AFAIK these tracks are not released as official singles. Official singles still appear now and then, but in most cases the track(s) are just pre-released to streaming/YouTube without a separate catalog entry.
I’m confused how this happened for you. I have the album locally as well, actually not even the real album but just a fake flac file with file tags that is only there so that I could have the album in Roon and tag it with my “Vinyl” tag. (I want to have my whole collection in Roon even if not playable)
When Qobuz added it, the unavailable streaming version was added to the album versions, but the local one remained my primary version and that’s what plays when I click Play on the album. (actually what happens is that I have a computer-generated voice in the fake flac that says “get the vinyl”)
Which is like it should be because Roon prefers local versions, so I don’t get why it changed away from your mp3 version.
Well… now its showing up as 2 separate albums even with show hidden off. So, depending on which “album” I select it will bring me to the track listing of that album. Maybe it treats them as two separate albums because of the extra track on the mp3 version?
That’s well possible. Actually now I recall that showed me two versions as well (my local one is just the one flac file) and I grouped them manually, but anyway the local one stayed the primary version
This I found out on tidal with some albums. Last Say & Kopatchinskaja. Posted 1 month before release with 1 track. 1 week before release there were 3 tracks. And it is not the only example, Say with Goldberg and so on.
And there are some albums with wrong date, a Beethoven to be released on 2029, all the tracks are there. But it is annoying as it always get no 1 when viewed by release date.
More seriously, I don’t think your description is quite accurate either, because a traditional single had a separate catalog number and UPC, while these pre-released tracks don’t seem to, they are only cataloged as part of their (future) album.
