James_I
(The truth is out there but not necessarily here)
1
When I stumble upon a new artist or album and read the reviews and bios, it’s often a great experience. However, if one surfs Roon enough, it feels a bit like the same old info after a while.
I’d love to see Roon source additional content and make that available. Maybe not a top priority versus “real” functions, but given how much Roon touts the music discovery and informational aspects of the service, and the fact that they claim much of their fairly expensive subscription fees goes towards paying for this content, I would like to see it refreshed and augmented.
Sure, Led Zeppelin broke up decades ago. There may not be much more to say. But there is certainly other content out there about them that could be brought in. News feeds, Wikipedia, reviews from other sources, actual content from liner notes, etc. All of these are fair game and would spice up the experience.
I know it sounds like asking an awful lot of a small company. But then again, Roon asks a lot with their pricing. Those who try to compare Roon to the cost of audiophile hardware don’t convince me…relative to most subscription services or software, where there are no manufacturing costs per se, Roon isn’t cheap. Much of the resource goes to development and I get that. I just hope Roon gets big enough to have the budget to acquire and provide a lot more content than presently available.
James_I
(The truth is out there but not necessarily here)
3
I have found myself “reading” Roon a lot less in the last 6 months because the content doesn’t refresh. Same old bios, same old album reviews. Not that there are no moments of discovery, but I do think Roon content needs to refresh and expand. I would especially like to see liner notes and the like.
As far as I can tell the metadata in Roon is primarily licensed from Rovi. I use Allmusic.com quite a bit and they also license (apparently the same) metadata from Rovi.
So two questions:
1) Where would Roon get additional content?
My best guess would be that they would have to license additional metadata directly from the music labels.
2) What metadata does Roon have access to via Rovi that they aren’t utilizing currently?
In my experience, a glaring omission from Roon (presumably a design decision rather than an oversight) is the ability to view the back catalog of an artist in its entirety rather than being limited to the albums available in my local library and via Tidal.
King Crimson is a perfect example. I own one of their albums and Roon shows three additional recently releases live albums as being available on Tidal. However Roon otherwise ignores King Crimson’s remaining rather extensive back catalog because those albums are not available on Tidal (or any other streaming service).
If I want to do a deep dive on King Crimson and identify albums that I would like to purchase on CD (and rip for my Roon library), then I’m forced to open a web browser and find other sources (e.g. allmusic.com) to research those other albums.
Bill_Janssen
(Wigwam wool socks now on asymmetrical isolation feet!)
5
Liner notes would be great, especially if they included the lyrics to songs with text, as many liner notes do.
James_I
(The truth is out there but not necessarily here)
6
I will point out that lyrics are already available through clicking the microphone icon in Roon, for many songs. Not a lot of independent labels, but the vast majority have lyrics.
That doesn’t take away from the main point that there is a lot of potential content that isn’t in Roon, which would keep the interest level up even for our favorite artists where we see it so often the stuff in Roon now feels stale.
“a glaring omission from Roon (presumably a design decision rather than an oversight) is the ability to view the back catalog of an artist in its entirety”
Great point. There must be a good source for this information.
Bill_Janssen
(Wigwam wool socks now on asymmetrical isolation feet!)
7
Not for my library. Not for what I want to listen to.
James_I
(The truth is out there but not necessarily here)
8
Fair enough. I do think lyrics is a different topic, only in the sense that there already is a function for lyrics.
But either way, I do think it would be fair for users to ask Roon that they source lyrics to fill in the gaps in the application.
And I would love to see the rest of the liner notes!