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

Roon is not wikipedia… the goal is to show you music that you can (or normally would be able to) play.

If Qobuz is missing pre-1990 Sonic Youth, nothing we can do here.

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No it’s certainly not. You’re leaving out the “not yet mature” side because it supports your irrational viewpoint. If you look at anything from only one side you can create your own bias.

Qobuz is. I’m not:

But see that’s kind of the problem with Valence. I can use my null Qoboz account to get Valence enabled but I’m limited to connections to their catalogue. If I have the pre-1990 Sonic Youth albums, I should see them.

This is my issue with valence as a whole. The content is there but your AI isn’t accessing it. You’re using the third party’s data.

Also: in their prime years displayed shouldn’t really change even if the content isn’t there. That is a bit odd.

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Seems like the word prime fits better than most other things. 3 is really spot on for what Roon is trying to do here. I guess the ageist concerns can come from some of the other definitions but really I think those who object are being overly sensitive. Defn 3 can be any period regardless of age.

## Definition of *prime*

(Entry 1 of 3)

1a often capitalized **:** the second of the canonical hours

b**:** the first hour of the day usually considered either as 6 a.m. or the hour of sunrise

2a**:** the earliest stage

3**:** the most active, thriving, or satisfying stage or period in the prime of his life

4**:** the chief or best individual or part **:**prime of the flock, and choicest of the stall— Alexander Pope

I wasn’t talking about age. I am the one who initially brought up the ageism issue at the start. The fact that you assumed age shows why the words “in their prime” tends to have ageist connotations in the first place. By saying “over the hill” which is an antonym “for in their prime” I meant declining musical excitement and quality after the “prime” period. What would you call the opposite of “in their prime” for all those periods of albums Roon says are after the prime period?

I’d go one further: Valence not picking up on what’s in a local library because it’s missing from a streaming provider goes against one Roon’s selling points, which is seamlessly blending local and remote.

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You’re absolutely right. I’ve continually said that I have no issues with bringing in new streaming users but there should be feature parity across all content if it’s in Roon.

The only explanation is that the marketed Valence technology is not capable of gaining a wide variety of data and insights from your local library. The best it can do is match them against another source.

Roon should be leading in this space given we connect to their servers and share data. Not using an incomplete third party that may be inferior to our own libraries.

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Don’t twist my words. It is your [unconscious] bias that links this to age. “Over the hill” is ageist and derogatory, “in their prime” is not.

The former is absolutely not the antonym of the later. John McEnroe was in his prime around 1979 to ‘84 but he continued to play pro into the ‘90s. I bet he could run circles around many half his age now.

By your definition he was old and of no use in 1985. That’s nonsense.

Jo Pavey represented Great Britain in every Olympic Games between 2000 and 2016 and was European Champion at the age of 41.

I already mentioned Seasick Steve.

In your prime is not about age. It is recognition of being our best. In my book that is a positive thing to hold up.

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Some were failures from Geffen’s point of view, but I suppose sold still more than Evol or NYC Ghosts and Flowers. But that was not my point, if albums in this category are not the bestsellers then obviously it should also not be called that, either. My general suggestion is to give it a name that resembles whatever Valence uses to put them into this category

My problem is not at all with ageism or insulting, I said that many times above. It is purely that “in their prime” is not accurate if the algorithm might leave out the most important album of an artist. This is not a language thing at all. In this particular instance, Sonic Youth’s prime definitely includes 1988 more than any other year.

It’s also just an example, I don’t care personally about the SY case because I know anyway. I would just like to rely on this to really give me the prime of an artist when I am exploring artists I don’t know - the stated purpose of this feature. I can live with not being able to do that, but then the name is IMHO questionable and it would be better not to overstate the abilities.

Feature parity, I can totally see where Valence-driven play can be a problem if you don’t have access to Celine Dion’s or Bruce Springsteen’s full discographies, so that’s one I think is fair to let slip.

This, however, I find a bit more difficult to swallow, even though I can rationalise by jumping through a few hoops and figuring that you’d only need to know what the prime period of an artist is if you’re discovering them, and thus you’d rely on streaming services to access their albums.

On the upside, Tidal users don’t have to worry about upsetting Neil Young by stumbling onto his Valence-defined “prime”… :smiling_imp:

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And what about the people how like this feature?
If you don’t like it, you can simple ignore and not use it.

Of these synonyms I think the best is heyday. However I still think prime works the best here.

prime

noun

Synonyms & Antonyms of prime (Entry 2 of 3)

1a state or time of great activity, thriving, or achievement

  • in the prime of her life

Synonyms for prime

Words Related to prime

Very US centric thinking. Remember that where is a whole world outside with a lot of great music

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This is fabulous and apparently it is learning :+1: It is not the case for me, though, screenshot from right now follows below. As I suspected in a previous post, might this have something to to with Qobuz not having any album prior to 1990? The first one in Qobuz is Goo from 1990 and incidentally this is where “prime” starts for me. Edit: Just saw, it is Qobuz. OK

Read above… you have Qobuz only and they have no albums pre-1990.

In their prime describes the artist not their releases. Danny has already answered your other points and I have nothing more to other than the artists I checked are all in the right ballpark as far as I’m concerned.

I understand, but this clashes with the “magazine” approach. In a magazine teaching me about an artist, I would expect important albums to occur even if I don’t have them. Personally, that would be my preference for Roon too, in magazine-like sections. I.e. to show me such an album (metadata may be in Roon from Allmusic etc? The artist biography knows about the album) even if I can’t play it. And certainly if I have it in my library from rips.

Either way, not a deal breaker, just nice to have, and IMHO something to be learned about the pitfalls of magazine/museum approach in a very different setting.

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If there was ever a reason why everyone should have TIDAL or Qobuz you just nailed it. :joy:

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I was not suggesting that it should the the only source, was I. I don’t even know if it’s accessible in such a way. Just an example of something that in this particular instance (not everyone is chosen by the LoC) would have identified a seminal album