+1. More choice for the user doesn’t seem like the path Roon is going down, at all. We’re going to all be expected to use Roon in the exact same vanilla manner. But we can dream…
Yowsa - that escalated quickly - Noticed the feature - a couple of comments
- “In their prime” did not particularly bother me - it caused no reaction in me
- That said, I do agree that something like “Seminal Albums” could be better. It is a more neutral term, suggests some consensus IMHO
- As a personal note, I ignore ANY suggestions from ANY AI or Algorithm. Rather find stuff thru discussion and dialogue with humans.
v
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Just had a look, and fwiw, the local v streaming issue extends to “Performing the music of”.
Here again, it’s a bit of an edge case, but I’ve got a (properly tagged) track of Florence and The Machine doing the Foo Fighter’s Times Like These from a bootleg, and that doesn’t show up in Performing The Music Of the Foo Fighters.
In the same vein, Nirvana’s Where Did You Sleep Last Night doesn’t show up under people performing Lead Belly, despite being on Qobuz.
In related interesting cases, Muse’s cover of Feeling Good doesn’t show up as part of “People playing the music of Nina Simone” (Qobuz has the single). This is of course technically accurate, but subjectively, it feels a bit off. It’s very much an authorship question, since neither wrote Feeling Good, and one that might, for example, be a real problem for our French friends who’re fans of Johnny Hallyday (for those who don’t know, France’s national Belgian answer to Elvis was an interpreter, not a writer).
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Is it possible to highlight the debut albums and integrate biography into prime?
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So, I think there’s some version of the following going on, and we could be most helpful if we helped rename it.
Period of:
- Highest density of albums with high review ratings
- Highest density of albums with superlative words (eg, ‘best’) in reviews
- Highest density of albums
- Highest density of collaborations with highly reviewed collaborators
- etc etc
It’s automated. It’s not going to be remarkably subtle, or human-edited. It’s a feature. There’s a cut-off for minimum sample size, so it won’t show up for every artist. And there’s not really a sensible way to “fail” unless you’re willing to show it for artists where you don’t have much available to play.
Given that Roon is aiming for a museum-like approach, I really do wish that they could show this with all albums even those that are not in library or available for streaming - the ‘greyed-out’ approach that lets me think about what I’m missing and how I might acquire it. If a certain album is not available at all, I’m going to hunt it down - and I think that this is a big element of what this feature is for - bringing the power of “all that Roon can see” against my library. If it could surface albums that are really important that are in my library/available that I’m not listening to, that would be a fabulous prompt - sort of a to-do list.
But in the meantime, the feature is what it is, and is nascent - like all good features. So instead of consigning it to the rubbish, I’d suggest we brainstorm more names that don’t bug people, as @danny asked. I like / don’t object to “in their prime”, but I hear the objection.
Miles Davis - Catalog Highlights
Miles Davis - Highlight Years
Miles Davis - Prolific Years
Miles Davis - Years with Staying Power
Miles Davis - Cornerstone years
Miles Davis - The Salad Years
Realize I’m reaching some here. But welcome all input - and if “prime” is the best one, I’m for leaving it prime - because I love the feature for discovery.
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Thanks, great summary. To the list of “period” bullet points, I’d again add “albums with picks”. According to the KB,
Pick albums are recommended by AllMusic’s experts, and they’re often either well reviewed, historically significant, or both. They’re denoted by a small check mark on the cover when viewing Albums browser, and next to the albums rating on the details page.
Therefore, I believe hat picks should be considered.
Like in my Sonic Youth case above with Qobuz, it chose 1990-1995 as “Prime” because Qobuz does not have any earlier albums. However, no album in this period had a pick, but the 1988 one does (and displayed it as soon as imported the ripped flacs, so Roon knew about it even though the album is not in Qobuz). And with Tidal, it did choose an earlier “Prime” including 1988. I believe it would have been more sensible to include this with Qobuz as well and show it grayed out, like you also proposed, I cannot say it better than this:
And of course if I have local files it should consider them too, like Danny already confirmed 
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I actually really like this feature but wish the “In their Prime” range could be editable. I’m going to ignore the issue of should this be a feature that can be hidden or not. I think that is a far reaching question for Roon as there would be wide disagreement on what sections of UX should be hide-able or not…
As far as is In Their Prime “ageist” – i’m sure most (if not all) would agree that there is a “Prime” for artists (as there are for athletes, etc). So as a concept, there is no issue. The disagreement is when their Prime actually is and my proposal below would diffuse this issue…IMHO…
For artists I am not familiar with “In Their Prime” points me in the right direction for an initial listen – beyond just album popularity. I like that.
For artists I am familiar with, its usually pretty good but I might disagree with it around the edges. I mostly ok with it for these, but sometimes not.
For artists that I am a big fan of and am familiar with their whole discography and they have been around for a long time, this is where there will be lots of opinion and disagreement. I often disagree with it.
I’m a wine collector and I respect the “Drink Range” determined by experts (the years where you should be consuming the wine as it’s ready). The software package I was using to manage my wine collection launched Drink Range and at first it wasn’t editable – and unsurprisingly, many people complained. Then they made it editable and there were no more issues. Like music, I like having an expert created Drink Range for wines I’m not familiar with but if I own a wine and am very familiar with it I want my own opinion on Drink Range to take precedence. Same thing applies IMHO to “In Your Prime.”
For these reasons, I would like to see the “In Their Prime” range in Roon editable by users. This would solve this issue. I don’t have any opinion on what it should be called (some don’t like the name). I’m not hung up on semantics on this.
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I guess it is just a matter of trust. If you disagree with what the system is selecting for Artists you know well, why would you trust the system’s selection for Artists you do not know.
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Like I said. For ones I don’t know it’s a good starting place. Never said it’s a good end all be all. But if you know a handful of albums are in the sweet spot of their prime, whether or not the prime is 100% in line with your view if you were an expert on them, it’s still better than being presented with 50 albums in a discography and you don’t know wheee to begin.
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I wish you would be a little more ageist in your selection of artist’s pics. Jus sayin’.
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Example?
(10 char!)
Don’t want to call anybody out. Some of those 70s rockers are looking a little rough in their more recent photos.
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Aren’t we all…?
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Truth… I stopped taking pictures thirty years ago.
Career highlights
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Sonic Youth are the band that keep on giving with this feature 
So today mine looks as follows.
1985 start date, correct in my opinion.
1995 is 3 years too late IMO, but wait what’s this, a single from 2015 is also in the list!
Also Kate Bush and Radiohead have lost their in their prime sections, which is a bit harsh.
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Interesting. I am still using Qobuz which still has no SY albums prior to 1990. And as posted previously, I imported local files for 1988’s Daydream Nation, which Qobuz automatically filled with metadata (including a “pick”) although the album is not on Qobuz.
As of now, the Prime range has improved from the previous 1990-1995 to 1985-1995, like for @Kevin_Hughes and others (with Tidal) when this was first discussed. Thanks to either Danny or Valance, whoever it was who intervened 
The albums that are displayed only include the Qobuz ones starting at 1990, but I think this is an improvement over looking as if nothing of importance had happened prior to 1990. I would still prefer it, like others also posted, if it showed unavailable albums in the prime range as grayed out. IMO this would fit better with the purpose of this feature.
As for @Kevin_Hughes comments about the range, I would not be too picky about it. Taste and opinion comes into play at this point and one can argue whether 1985/1986 is already the prime. Less so maybe about 1994/95 but still a matter of opinion. My main gripe was with leaving out the one album/year that stands head and shoulders above everything else (as great as the other stuff is), as Roon knew by itself according to the automatic pick when I imported the local files.
The inclusion of the 2015 Diamond Sea for Kevin seems like a simple bug to me. It is not appearing for me in the Prime albums although I do have it in the library from Qobuz
My range used to be from 87, my local music and tidal has not changed in the last few weeks.
Agreed, the date ranges should be the same for everyone, for the reasons you say.
I think would be great as well, I’d quite like this as an option in the normal discography as well.
My comments about the date range end point was meant to be lighthearted, as obviously this an area for disagreement best sorted out down the pub. But I think this points to my main issue with this feature, this sort of thing in a regular series in a magazine would have an article justifying the choice, which would hopefully be interesting reading, even if you didn’t agree with it, and no algorithm can do this. I like the idea of the concept, a ‘Start Here’ for people new to the artist, but this seems the wrong approach, it drags in lesser albums that fall within the date range, and excludes ones from outside the chosen range that might be great, lots of artists fall into this sort of category. I personally think fan favourites would be a better idea, not based on sales, but user ratings from AMG, plus Roon user rating, it would add something over and above the existing star ratings, and would probably work with more artists than the current one.
Bugs plus bad metadata. It’s flagged as an album when it’s a single, and something flagged it as being within the date range (correctly as it happens) but some other metadata field was used for the display making it look wrong.
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Thanks for the additional infos, it is interesting to see how this is evolving. My reply regarding the years was meant in lighthearted spirit was well and I agree with everything you wrote regarding the difference to an actual magazine, etc.