I started with Roon and Tidal in May of last year. Only had around 80 albums in my local library, not quite zero but pretty close. Up to 562 now and plan to keep adding more but listening to what I have and how I use Radio gets in the way. I usually start by picking an album to play and letting Radio take over after the album finishes. A lot of this happens at my desk controlling Roon from my Windows 10 laptop and minimizing Roon after it starts playing. I don’t think I had ever seen the “Now Playing” screen until after 1.6 came out and I started reading all the posts about how it had changed.
Every time I see you or Danny post I’m amazed. I really appreciate that you answer user’s questions and discuss ideas and suggestions. Keep up the good work.
Yeah I’ve gone through a couple iterations of this. I managed to hit TIDAL’s 10k album limit in a single night by adding very album / appearance by any artist that seemed interesting to me.
The result was that I had a ton of duplicates, albums in formats I didn’t want, etc. Not to mention I would never get through all of those albums anyway It was more about giving Roon lots of raw material to work with for Focus, etc.
Agreed. I love the new Roon Radio in general. It’s presenting me with lots of interesting stuff I don’t think I would have encountered otherwise.
I’m starting to think about music more as sitting on a spectrum of awareness / familiarity.
unaware: I just don’t know these artists / albums exist. The primary mode here is exploration / discovery – recommendations from TIDAL, magazines, friends… or Roon Radio.
unfamiliar: I know these artists / albums exist, I just don’t know much about them (I haven’t listened to them much or at all). The primary mode here is investigation – listening, and making high-level decisions about whether I like the music and want to keep it or not.
familiar: pretty self-explanatory. I think the primary mode here might be curation? Things like deciding what versions / formats of albums I want, and where the music fits into my “musical world” (playlists, custom tags, etc)
Anyway I’m nerding out and procrastinating from my real work right now, so I’ll just leave this here. But I do have some new ideas for how to balance gathering lots of speculative stuff while maintaining a grip on the music I really care about.
Which is really a good subject for a bookmark. I often thought that some pre-defined bookmarks might be an interesting thing. Save steps for new users as well as provide a concrete example of what a bookmark can do.
Yeah Roon is taking me there. I already lost most of my tagging OCD, start caring less about the ‘quality’ of my library. Now I want to loose the need of buying the music I really like, I will get there…Only need Roon on the road to let it work as you described (‘todo list’), because that is where most of my listening takes place…
I am fully aware that the algorithm is just starting to “learn” but this afternoon I seeded radio with a Rumer track. First track that followed was a track from Annie Lennox’ Nostalgia, which was a fine choice and then the algorithm went off into electropop stuff like Lorde, James Morrisson and other such tunes with electrobeats and autotuned voices.
Not really getting the relevancy or the relations between picks here.
Picks that also take into account sonic similarity would definitely be a big bonus.
I agree, taking the favourite capability particularly out into the Qobuz arena would be a massive improvement, you could then add Qobuz favourites as the happened to Roon favourites without getting the library involved at all. I couldn’t figure why for a moment when I was using a ‘Focus’ or the ‘Discovery’ page I was only getting stuff in my library and not all of Qobuz, but I guess that’s how Roon was designed long before streaming services came along - but just imagine what the discovery page could really look like if it pulled data from streaming as well.
James_I
(The truth is out there but not necessarily here)
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I’m not sure the number of Tidal albums in your library would affect your server much…
Yes, this is my understanding too. So, when the Roon folks talk about hardware requirements for different size libraries, Tidal albums count toward that library size. I think it’s because of the metadata that is added to all albums, including those from Tidal. I could be wrong, but that’s what I understand.
First, let me state that I love the concept of expanding Radio beyond my current library. Great for artist discovery.
That said, I’m having a hard time understanding what the Radio algorithm is doing.
Example: Yesterday I played Tommy James & the Shondells Radio. Roon lists 20 artists as “Similar to”. After about 50 tracks- NOT ONE of the “Similar to” artists were played. Further, many artists were repeated several times during the session, even if I clicked “thumbs down” for a previous track by that artist. I embrace artist discovery, but if Radio doesn’t play artists listed as similar to the artist selected, what are the selections of Radio based upon?
Bill_Janssen
(Wigwam wool socks now on asymmetrical isolation feet!)
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I’m actually finding this whole thread kind of funny. AI researchers have known for years that people are uncomfortable with AI-generated results that they don’t expect, and consequently finding ways to explain AI choices have been a regular part of AI research for decades. Now we’re seeing the same kind of responses to this “AI” system, which is engineered to produce serendipitous (aka “unexpected”) results.
Definition of serendipitous is not simply unexpected- but unexpected in a happy or beneficial way. Certainly not what I am experiencing.
My question still stands about 50 tracks and NONE from artists listed as related by ROON.
It’s a bit like searching for all the Home Depot locations and getting addresses for all the Walmart stores.
I’ve enjoyed Roon Radio up until the latest update. For example, I play a classic album and when the radio takes over, it plays christmas music by bing Crosby. I indicate the song is unrelated, but the radio keeps throwing Christmas music at me no matter how many times I indicate it is not related. It selected related songs before the upgrade just fine, what happened? What is the fix?
I have noticed the same. Totally unrelated. Maybe the AI driving the choices are driven by your previous ques and the 1.6 upgrade blew away its learning memory of you music selections. It is so stupic it jumps genres as you mention, but opera generating a folk song?
I realize this isn’t the answer to the question you’re asking, but if you want to hear tracks from all those “similar to” artists, just select ‘em all and shuffle.
Personally I find the way that Roon Radio is functioning is ideal as its selecting so much new music which I was never likely to to come across on my own.
I find also that the selections are in line with the original seed track.
Lucky me I guess but because of this, and in general the whole 1.6 update, I’ve upgraded to a life subscription; which may be unduly optimistic as I’m 65.
Loving Roon Radio. I only have one thoughts to share. While it’s awesome that now it can play songs that are not in my library and, therefore, it helps me discover new music, it feels to me like it’s gone to the opposite extreme and all tracks played are unknown to me. I’m thinking it would be awesome for the user to be able to configure whether he wants Radio to look only outside the library, only inside, 50-50…
It was more about giving Roon lots of raw material to work with for Focus, etc.