I must say that my biggest gripe is still the lack of roon remote in the lockscreen/task bar. When lying in my hammock and wanting to skip a track now I have to: unlock my phone, open the app, wait for roon core to be found and only then can I skip the track. This seems to me the most basic functionality feature to be addressed. Especially when trying out a new playlist it gets really frustrating to do this every couple of songs. I find myself switching to bluesound more often because of this…
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I would love this feature and it is sorely missing. Worse case scenario is when i get a call on my iphone while music is playing via Roon. iphone rings… swipe up to unlock, find roon app and launch… roon app occasionally crashes at this point … relaunch roon app… pause music… return to the ‘receiving call screen’ to try and answer only to realise the caller has quit… 
Polar opposite experience when streaming spotify via airplay: iphone rings, swipe from the top right to access play/pause controls, answer call in no time. Usability bliss
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I have solved this problem with a lirc receiver and infrared remote. Unfortunatly Roon does not have any global shortkeys so it only works when Roon is running on the foreground and only on Windows or MacOS. I have tried many times putting together a dedicated remote receiver with ropieee but somehow I just can’t get it to work. A solution just fo infrared remote with a raspi would be the perfect solution in my case. You are right, just skipping a track via remote app takes ages.
I bought a device with a remote control as @Yiannis_Kouropalatis says it’s handy when the phone rings.
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I just ordered the just boom ir remote which is supposed to work with Volumio on my Allo Digi One. Let’s see 
I do that too. You could program a button on the remote to bring roon to front - just have the remote button send windows+1 and you put roon the first app on the Windows taskbar and so on.
On Pi if you have hifiberry hats they have a radio remote that works perfectly with hifiberry OS with zero configuration. Only problem - its so powerful you can only have one zone. I tried with two zones and the remote in my bedroom on first floor would start music in the kitchen!
All good suggestions but the fact remains that such a basic feature should be addressed at some point. It’s a bit of a shame that we have to figure out our own workarounds to have some basic functionality… Oh well, patience is a virtue I guess, let’s see what the next update brings us…
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Missing and essential features in Roon:
- Musicians names and instruments for every song and album
- Liner notes from the original albums
- Credible editorial reviews
- Recording information
Still hoping for these features - which are missing in every other music application I know of.
No 1, we cant have the data if it’s not out there I’m afraid. I add my own to albums I rip. Do this as I listen, but it’s not ideal. Also, for a lot of music I don’t think it will be available ever.
It just seems to me that the whole point of making and selling (especially selling) a new application for music lovers, is that it should add something to the audience experience. Information is out there. It’s just that nobody (except for you and a few others - and me in the past) is providing this invaluable service. It’s not super-high fidelity that we need for music to live - it’s info. And that has been Roon’s promise (unfulfilled so far) and I believe, the key to their success… if they ever read these pages
That’s good. However most educated listeners and musicians would agree that not knowing the names of musicians or their instruments (a trick payed by unscrupulous music industry companies ever since Tin Pan Alley) makes it more difficult to learn about music. This became more serious after music went digital because of a lack of album and CD covers and their liner notes. Basically we don’t know what we don’t know until we’re offered an opportunity to learn. And I believe it would benefit everyone, including Roon, if they created an editorial department to take this work on. Music has a huge legacy of great music reviewers and publications which can be referenced here to grow everyone’s knowledge and appreciation. !
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World peace is sadly lacking and just as commercially unachievable.
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Then what’s wrong with Foobar?
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Jim - They don’t reach people like me - without it I’m a crazy busy PhD music student and I just wanted to re-assert what I already mentioned to Support a year or so ago when I had to decline the subscription. If there’s no better info that you’d get with an algorithm (the alternative to a human music editor) and no student discount, and all you got is HQ sound, I’d say you don’t really have much… Anyway this not a pissing match for me. I simply care about music. Best wishes.
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Agreed. Good post.
Album liner notes are there for a reason; record labels recognised their value.
Film credits and reviews; film companies recognise their value.
Concert and Theatre productions same; promoters recognise their value.
Ergo why is Digital Streaming deemed to be a different experience?
Despite what McLuhan said, the medium is not always the message. Qobuz delivers album liner notes (where the Labels provide them) along with the streamed content.
I had to research exactly who McLuhan is. Took me 30 secs. It would be nice if Roon delivered a similar reference service for music. I think that nicely illustrates a potential gap in the market.
Roon has links to external reference services (Wikipedia, Facebook, and/or artist sites) for many artists and performers. They are listed on the Artist pages.
Glad to see your support for this idea! Thank you. I’ve worked in music for many years, as a performer, a graphic designer and now a visual music artist and researcher. And as popular and important as it is for all kinds of reasons, music is in danger of becoming presented like food. It’s either too delicious to refuse (read facebook likes, etc) or it needs a little more careful listening and it disappears. This is why many of our greatest musicians avoid the music marketing business and publish their own music . Sonny Rollins is just one of many. Roon has an opportunity to educate and significantly influence what has for too long been merely a business. All I’m saying is that while algorithms (which I work with) have the potential to take on this role - they’re not ever going to replace people. So research and access to liner notes is just one more (maybe not-so-small) step - in the spirit of this thread post by @evand in January - to improve the product for many music lovers.
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All this talk about liner notes … so I grabbed some of my CDs and looked at the booklets – they are all copyrighted.
So I guess the music industry is the one that should get active here, providing a database with all the metadata (titles, artists, cover, notes, …) accessible for all interested parties (streaming providers, online music shop and music player software) to help selling their products. Sadly it seems that they don’t have to do this (at the moment) to get peoples money. So they don’t’ do it.
To expect that every streaming provider, online music shop or music player software will provide or actually generate such data on it’s own sounds hilarious. I guess that until the industry is coming up with a solution, third-party metadata services are the way to go. But these services are limited too by the data they get (or not) from the labels and the existence of non-copyrighted or copyrighted, easy to license and reasonably priced metadata sources. It looks like what you ask for is just not available on such (fair) conditions or at all.