The discussion is about when using Roon Radio rather than browsing and adding tracks. Anything added is still visible in the play queue.
Roon has always collected information on what music is being played, without identifying the individual user. See the privacy policy (unchanged since 2016).
Thank you for the reply, I see it now. The demo was too fast, blink and it’s missed. V1.6 adds significant sibilance, trying to fix that.
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Thanks Mike.
Thanks for clarifying.
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It’s great. Got one criticism so far: I like a way to see now playing and queue at the same time. Also there should be a now playing button.
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Thanks. Looking forward to it.
I like the Radio functionality (with Tidal) a lot. Please let me listen to Roon Radio outside my own network though.
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Great job with the new update, congrats!
One small thing I just noticed: If I want to start Roon Radio from a playlist, nothing happens…
Yeah, I don’t think one could miss the mark more than Roon have here with the now playing layout. A real shame. It’s especially annoying as many if not most of the artist pics that aren’t missing are nothing special if not down right bad. Not good to this music photographer’s eyes!
I was thinking maybe there was a way one could roll back to 1.5, but then wouldn’t have Qobuz integration if and when they end beta. If this is the level of design we can come to expect, it’s making me rethink the value of the lifetime sub I went for. Get it together Roon: you are supposed to be a way of cataloging and showing my ALBUM collection, with the covers that photographers. painters, illustrates, graphic designers, and the artists themselves lavishly built in order to accompany and reflect the music contained within.
How didn’t beta testers catch this obvious fail?
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That’s not really how product design work plays out.
We were redesigning the queue screen to split it into “what’s happening now” and “detailed control/information about what’s coming up”. That was the first goal. This was necessary because we had things we wanted to fit onto the now playing screen (mainly, lyrics, to bring Roon into parity with Displays) that couldn’t fit on a combined screen.
So, we drew the line between “now” and “upcoming” and made one screen for each. Both screens were able to grow into the increased real-estate and become better.
The old fullscreen now playing view was an extremely rarely used feature, and more of an experiment than anything else. We didn’t give very much consideration to how it was done because practically no-one ever used it. It was only included because Sooloos used to have this screen…not for good, thought-out product reasons.
We did consider briefly duplicating “up next” on the new now playing screen, but felt that the use case of seeing what’s next was something better opted-in-to on the queue screen.
I realize that hearing about the anxiety/serendipity axis in product design may be new to you, but it’s not new to us. It’s an important consideration–would it be more pleasing to have full information, or to be pleasantly surprised–is an important consideration when designing product. It’s one of the reasons why we put such a clear line between “now playing” and “queue” in this design, but not the only one.
We are going to re-consider adding an album art screen.
This will get better as image updates roll out to your systems over the next 7-10 days. Part of that data rollout is sending down side-channel data on how to better crop the images for display. There was no way to release both the new software + the data updates at the same time, so we de-emphasized the data portion in the release notes, but you won’t really be having the intended experience until both are done. This is not an area that can ever be 100% perfect, but it will be much better than what you’re seeing now once the rollout is done.
I explained this a bit above. We don’t agree with this–the old queue screen was cramped and trying to serve too many purposes. We drew a line in a clear place that makes sense. This wasn’t done carelessly.
It’s telling you which profile put that item into the queue. In a multi-user home, you can then see who added what. Those plays are recorded to the individual “histories” for the profile, and give each person a different radio/discover/overview experience, separate ownership of playlists, etc.
No you’re not. The queue screen isn’t gone–click the “Queue” button on the footer.
That button shouldn’t be there (cc @vova). Playlists are not good radio seeds.
Yup, well aware of that (it’s also repeated in the CA piece, not that, no offense at all to anyone, “privacy enthusiasts” might be the likely primary target market for something that so heavily relies on metadata pulled in real-time from a server somewhere, but I digress). Just suggesting that “I don’t want the shiny” might be something to provide was all.
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Is there some particular platform / monitor resolution / configuration that results in artist pictures being displayed properly? Is that why it not only remains unchanged in the display feature but has also expanded to now playing? I just don’t get it. Roon is opinionated, fine, many features I initially disliked have won me over but…why?
I love the versions tab.
I would like to add to my Qobuz favorites its version of everything that is in my library and/or favorite in TIDAL (when the match exists obviously).
How can I do this?
Thx.
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I really think this is essential. I have quite a number of albums that will never be identified and so 2/3 of the now playing screen is blank. There are also many albums that even if identified have no review, no lyrics, no artist artwork, so its the same situation with them.
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Really? That’s surprising to me.
Plus, the album art is sometime explicitly designed to go with the music, while random pictures of strangers are not.
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A playlist could contain one track or 200 totally tracks things (like an “added in the last 30 days playlist”) or your whole library. That’s an awful wide gamut to expect an algorithm to generalize over.
There are other generative things we might do with playlists in the future, with an approach that makes more sense to what playlists actually are…but they aren’t terribly well suited to our radio approach.
I’m not sure where you got the idea that no one used the old now playing screen. After I set up a queue that’s probably the view I used 90% of the time. And judging by all the blowback you’re getting about removing it from others on this thread, I’m not the only one that did that. As to why being able to see what song was coming up next made people “anxious”, I have no idea.
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I want to congratulate and thank Roon for this fantastic update. My biggest (Roon) wish, being Qobuz integration, has been fulfilled and I am extremely happy with it. Works like a charm 
