Remove “In Their Prime” -- it' ageist, insulting to the artist and ridiculously subjective [not on roadmap]

MAybe put a button in “IN THEIR PRIME”, and the rest of the discography unfolds or expands on the same page kepping the esthetics of “IN THEIR PRIME”.
Then it can show the whole discography highlightinf “IN THEIR PRIME”.

When i saw the 1.8 videos before release , IN THEIR PRIME looked so beautiful, and it still is, but something was missing in real action. IMHO it is a much better way of displaying discogrqaphy.

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I’ll ponder how many as I peruse a few more In Their Prime sections in the morning with my coffee. But if Roon wasted their time doing what’s in the “best interest” of 5 people offended by the term “prime” I’d have some good laughs. Not gonna lie.

This doesn’t pass any basic tests of discriminatory or offensive language though, so there is that, not that it stops anyone from complaining…

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The more familiar I become with 1.8 the more it seems to be trying to pull off the trick of one size fits all in too many contexts. If you are familiar with an artist or a genre this feature doesn’t add much, or even irritates as is the case here. If you are not familiar it provides a useful jumping off point and a very good experience. The target for this I assume. So for example, I know nothing about Metal music. Don’t like it at all. But I discovered, mostly on this forum, that much to my surprise I like sub-genres like alt-Metal.

In this context I get the feature. I just wonder if it grows stale very quickly? Maybe there is scope for a switch that is beginner/expert/ninja that gives you a different experience depending how you want to interact with roon? I’ll probably be accused of being elitist though. Oh dear. It’s actually quite a common approach in the Classical magazines, and for that matter Pop magazines like Mojo as well. I used to subscribe to Gramophone for example but I realised that when they abandoned the cover disk I wasn’t really reading it. BBC Music Magazine gets that balance much better and when doing a retrospective on a composer or performer will routinely segment listening recommendations along the lines of “getting started” and “going deeper”.

There are other consequences to this one size fits all approach that must be deep in the weeds of 1.8 by now, because once you are aware of it, it’s everywhere. I am noticing that content is being excluded in searches and filter views probably from trying to solve the problem of search and discovery at the scale of streaming partners. Brian has commented on another thread. That makes a sort of sense if you are an occasional listener or exploring new genres or artists and just want something to play. I get that, I really do. Very roon it seems to me.

There is the other side of that coin. Once you have invested some time and effort with new music that approach quickly becomes a frustrating experience when simple searches become hard work.

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On the upside, given that this is audiophilia, we can be pretty certain it probably ain’t young-splainin’. :stuck_out_tongue:

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How they became relevant.

That, or “Before they sucked” (though it’d risk encompassing early-career backwash).

Thank you for once again taking the time to be the voice of reason.

I’d add that with musicians, the first couple of albums often aren’t their prime, because they’re learning the trade - “finding their voice”, so to speak.

If the “in their prime” proposition was indeed ageist, wouldn’t we be looking at Now Is The Time rather than Jagged Little Pill, and New Kids On The Block rather than Hangin’ Tough ?

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Was a musician in their prime in a band or solo? Peter Gabriel for example I preferred as a solo artist.

When it comes to “In their prime” it becomes a bit problematic when for example swedish artist Fred Åkerström, who was born 1937 and passed away 1985, is presented as beeing in his prime 2001-2006…

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This is a good conversation to be had. Sometimes it takes a while to wage different viewpoints about a particular matter. And in my opinion this conversation reveals that the section in their prime is problematic as it is at least subjective, and it even can be downright discriminatory.
Talk about prime in sports, ok, but not in art and music.

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Someone suggested to rebrand it releases per year. But that is a matter of productivity. But productivity has nothing to do with prime, whatever that should mean. We are talking about an art.

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In my opinion, the whole “in their prime” thing is completely unnecessary. If I like or hate an album, the album doesn’t get any better or worse just because the artist made it during the most or least prolific period in their career…

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Arthur Rubinstein was in his prime when he was approaching his 80’s. Just saying…

So this is all very subjective and not sure what it adds.

I don’t buy into it being ageist, but reading the posts there simply are some questionable choices and I’d like to add one: Sonic Youth’s “In their prime” is 1990-1995. What’s wrong with this:

  • This focuses onto their early major label years. They may have sold most then, and there were some great albums, but their artistic prime extends to earlier years (and that 1994/95 was not their prime)
  • Nearly everyone agrees that their greatest album is Daydream Nation, released 1988.
  • What’s most worrying is that starting the “prime” in 1990 coincides with the fact that Qobuz has no earlier albums at all, not even as buy options… I have not yet ripped my Sonic Youth CDs, so I don’t know if it would change anything. Or if is different with Tidal (which did have some earlier ones when I used it). However, if Roon acts like a magazine (which I am not opposed to), then it cannot leave out seminal albums just because the streaming service does not have them. I am sure the metadata is in Roon, and it would be better if it included such an important album in editorial content even if I can’t listen to it; I can always purchase the files or CDs somewhere.
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That’s probably why it’s not available without signing into Qoboz. Roon isn’t generating the data and using what’s available from Qoboz.

The real shortcoming from Roon on the data side has always been pulling it in rather than being the source of the data. It’s a rather gigantic waste that we connect to their servers, provide all kinds of data, but a lot of it has never been leveraged to make connections and ratings based on our libraries and millions of hours of playback. I don’t think the company is good at this at a deep level, thus they base their discovery recommendations on the streaming services.

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Just checked for you. It won’t change anything.

Maybe someone from Roon could be kind enough to let us know where the metadata is sourced from…

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I am signed into Qobuz but Qobuz does not have any Sonic Youth albums prior to 1990.

And AFAIK the data comes from Allmusic? (But I agree that the extensive corrections and additions I have made should be leveraged for fellow users, and vice versa)

If you’re right, I’d contend it’s a far greater problem than “ageism”.

" Much of Roon’s most advanced data is licensed from our friends at AllMusic."

From https://help.roonlabs.com/portal/en/kb/articles/faq-what-do-the-check-marks-next-to-albums-and-songs-mean

Thank you for checking. This makes the “prime” choice even more baffling. Though it is good to know that they did not base an editorial choice on the availability

It says much, not all. Valence not being provided without logging into a streaming service tells you everything you need to know about the connections it’s making.

Still baffling to me that the marketing was all around Valence for 1.8 but none of it is available without logging into Tidal/Q

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I meant that metadata. AllMusic / Rovi is one source, but it’s not the only one.

Might be worth opening a thread for “in their prime issues” in the metadata subforum, so that these can be caught and corrected.

I’d asked about this back when Valence first came out. The answer was that even massive local libraries don’t have the breadth that allows Radio and the other Valence features to work as they should.

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Just kind of funny that I log into a null Qoboz account and other than the new releases not recognizing the ones in my library and some of the In The Prime album choices pulling the Q over mine (seems easily correctable), it works fine. Granted I have 220k tracks in Roon, but the functionality is all there.

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