So just to be absolutely clear here, “In Their Prime” doesn’t look at the user’s local library ?
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Yes, and the artist’s prime includes 1988!
Regardless, it was clarified that this feature only takes stuff from the streaming service into account. I.e., it has to be used with care and is not reliable. Not a huge problem, but good to know. There was no other way to find out than discussing it here
And by the way, I spent my own time and reported this here in an attempt to be helpful to Roon, to identify an issue. Getting hostile replies for that from fellow users is an odd way to react to that
If Roon doesn’t want to get into the specifics of each artist as I mentioned earlier which would be preferable from a music education standpoint, then instead of “ In Their Prime” call the same section instead generically “A Highlight Era”.
This avoids the ageism issue, let’s new listeners know they may need to discover other eras with this artist, does not insult the artist and cannot be criticized as being too overly subjective since it does not pinpoint only one specific era. As well, the goal of bringing good recordings to the new listener is accomplished
Don’t be mean - Qobuz also carries Furtwangler’s Hitler birthday concert, a rendition of the Horst Wessel Lied conducted by Konoye, and an extensive offering of Korean boy bands, as well as a whole lot of bootlegs that they’ll assure you they acquired perfectly legally.
But the artist’s prime didn’t change so why are Roon users getting differing prime years based on their streaming service? As I pointed out earlier the only way this functionality could be designed currently is to compare to your streaming sources. So no, it’s not generating it from your local library. Probably why even some albums I have in my library are showing the Qoboz version I can’t access.
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Yes, agree
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Not sure about that, but @Xekomi has asked for clarification. It will display results for albums you have access to only, which is why you can’t see pre-1990 Sonic Youth.
What I do know is that In Their Prime shows local copies too.
Maybe just call the feature something like Artist Highlights, A Look back, Catalgue Highlights, Deep Dive…
Personally I have no issue with the current solution.
People will always complain.
I think almost all of us except the one guy who made this thread have decided it’s fine named how it is [Moderated].
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I don’t know what you mean. I’m rather partial to a Brucie Bonus.
I confirmed I have a null Qoboz account connected and it only shows the prime as beginning at 1990 even though I have Daydream Nation in my local library.
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Yeap, that’s part of why I’m so perplexed and further bugged Danny - if you look at the screenshot I posted, it’s behaving as (I feel) it should, and prioritising my library, then blending the stuff I don’t have (Diamond Sea) in from Qobuz. So if I hit play, it’ll play from local. What it hasn’t figured out is that there’s stuff in there that Qobuz doesn’t have, and that it should use.
This is possibly an edge case, but it’s an interesting one.
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If you have no streaming service enabled you don’t see In Their <insert nebulous, inoffensive, impossible to misinterpret PC term here>, so I’m guessing the answer to your question is no, your local content doesn’t count.
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Indeed this part is still ambiguous. Clearly in Xekomi’s case the pre-1990 local files are there but his SY prime is still 90-95. So I could not bear the tension and am ripping Daydream Nation now 
Edit: Having imported the rip. As expected, Roon knows the metadata, but so far the Prime result is same as for @Xekomi, prime has not changed (yet). But it has not had much time yet.
@danny What’s IMO interesting is that Daydream Nation has a an automatic “pick” by Roon metadata, but none of the albums that are in my (Qobuz) Prime have one. I believe, naively, that given the definition of “pick”, this should be taken into account by Prime even for local files - I don’t know what else Qobuz could tell it, all the expected album metadata is visible even without the album being in Q
Edit 2: Metadata bug: It uses a Gerhard Richter as the artist for the cover painting, but the GR it chooses is some kind of classical musician, not the painter
The way a future devotee would discover The New Kids of Birmingham should lend a bit of weight to this.
Here’s where Qobuz thinks you should start (note the very legitimate looking and sounding “War Pigs Live American Radio Broadcast”):
Here’s how the system currently known under a possibly offensive term but please tell me this is all a troll I've already lost enough faith in humanity handles it:
So please give serious thought to making In Their Prime visible early on, say right after the bio, because no matter how good Ten Year War was, having a bit of a structured path helps.
This is great example (qobuz + local content), we are looking into this now.
Thanks @Xekomi and others
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Love that this has been fruitful.
I want this feature to exist, and I want it to be good. When Amazon and other Ecommerce companies launched “recommended items” they were insanely overdetermined. If you bought a red pan, it assumed all you ever wanted in life was more red pans. Buy diapers, and you are done. It took a while and a lot of use and people publicizing bad stuff. But now it works spookily well. And I’m used to it enough to know when it’s misbehaving and imagine why.
This will be the same. Edge cases and corner cases notwithstanding, it’s an awesome idea and will take a while to learn. And if this was the MVP, kudos. Yes, I wish it was categorical regardless of whether you had certain albums in your library locally, streaming, or not at all — it would make a lot of sense to me if it had a “greyed out” cover of all the great albums I don’t currently have.
And I agree that in aggregate, it would be great to leverage the anonymized data of all the users of Roon to make the Borg stronger.
But in this moment, on this thread, I want this feature to exist. Heyday, prime or otherwise.
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I’d love for you guys to consider this for those who have local collections too. If I find a lot of 300 CDs for 100 bucks, I may have just added 20 albums from 2-3 artists, 5 from another, etc… and now I’m trying to discover them too. Where do I start? Right now I’m just plugging in a null Qoboz account, but if the content is there locally that would generate it with Qoboz, please consider showing this. Feature parity if the content is there just seems like how Roon should always work when possible.
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The very people who are insulted by the intentions of this feature are not the people for whom it is intended.
I don’t need anybody to tell me Neil Young’s best years - I have my own opinion. However, I’m new to exploring Bud Powell, for example, and love the help this feature gives me on where to start. All it is is a way in for newcomers.
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According to the algorithm Bud Powell’s „prime“ was from 51-53. I tell you it was not and you’d be missing a lot from his later recordings.
The OP offered good arguments, examples and a reasonable alternative name. I don’t understand why people (not you) keep on ridiculing this thoughtful critique of and suggestion about a Roon feature.
If AI could automatically sort albums by different eras of a musician or band cool Jazz, bop era, fusion era for example with miles Davis) I’d be impressed. But the way the feature works now is not impressive but rather misleading.
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