Whilst I understand your frustrations Roon hearting/favouriting is actually a 3 step rating mechanism. I love it, I hate it and it’s okay - hearted, banned and unticked.
I wouldn’t want anything I hearted in Tidal or Qobuz to be added to these items in my Roon Library. They are totally different processes.
Something along the lines of the soundcliz integration sounds the way to go but then what happens if it goes belly-up - or is bought by Amazon.
.sjb
Hi @Sloop_John_B. Thx for your comment. I understand your point. We wouldn’t want a solution for the library/non-library issue to reduce functionality for other users/practices. And yes, the idea that within your Roon(/Tidal) collection, you can now have a subgroup (hearted in Roon), makes sense.
I think it is the Roon team that has to come up with workable solutions, and I would love to see some comment from them. I believe there are already a lot of interesting suggestions in this thread.
For me everything would be fine if:
(1) I can in one single click add a (Tidal/Qobuz) track to a playlist and/or tag, and can be sure that it is the library-version that ends up in the playlist.
(2) For existing (Tidal/Qobuz) playlists I have local copies of, that I can replace in batch the non-library versions of tracks by library versions (in one or two clicks).
The only thing I really want is to be able to add (or tag) 1000 Tidal / Qobuz albums to my Roon library without also adding them to my Tidal / Qobuz collection. Roon has an interface that can manage tons of speculative albums. Qobuz / Tidal do not. When I’m in my car, I use mobile apps - which in practice means Apple Music because you can actually organize music there.
That and stop adding duplicates to Roon playlists. I don’t know why you would want the same track twice on a playlist.
Hi @PatMaddox. Thx for your contribution. I know that for some users it is important to enjoy the full possibilities of Roon without having to put their Tidal/Qobuz tracks in the Roon Library (e.g. when they hit the Tidal 10.000 limit). I hope the Roon team can take this into account as well.
As far as the duplicates in Roon playlists are concerned. There is a separate feature request for that: Prevent adding duplicates to a playlist You might want to support that specific request. I will.
I would imagine that Roon has to respect Tidal’s 10k limit.
@Rugby Sure. But that would not be a problem if we could also have full Roon functionality for (Tidal) tracks that are not in the Roon Library (and therefore neither in the Tidal collection). This, I guess, will only be possible if the library/non-library thing is not only “solved”, but abandoned altogether. I have understood that @brian is thinking in that direction, but that it is complicated and that there is no timing yet.
In the meanwhile it would be good to have some solutions for those who have not reached the 10.000 limit. Suggestions about the kind of solutions that seem feasible can be found above.
I appreciate all of the discussion here. Like I said before, we are working actively on this, and as @Francois_De_Heel pointed out, it is complex.
The decisions about how a lot of this stuff works were made 10+ years ago when the world was a very different place, and integrating streaming services into Roon didn’t happen until halfway into that period. Since then, this has become a major portion of Roon’s value proposition, but the way the system works has suffered from evolving incrementally to our users’ needs instead of being designed with a clear vision in mind.
There’s nothing nice about re-thinking basic facts about a product and then going to the thousand places that need to be adjusted and harmonizing them around the new way of operating. Doing this to a functioning product with a large user base that includes a lot of people resistant to change presents additional challenges–but we are working on it.
Thanks @brian for your response. I think that basically, we are all big fans… who - admittedly - sometimes become impatient. I guess it would not be possible to give us some idea of what would be feasible in the short run (1.9? 2.0?) in terms of making it at least workable to enjoy the myriad of possibilities Roon (not yet) offers for playlist/Tidal/Qobuz users? And when maybe some more fundamentally re-thought database/library/non-library structure can be expected (3.0?)
@Brian, I would strongly recommend you do some kind of focus groups with Roon users, involving screen sharing, so you can see use cases that seem to be very closely held by various users but may not be apparent to you and your colleagues, or may not come through via these discussion forums.
Sorry, I can’t get more specific about roadmap/timing.
This is a good idea, @mike
I would gladly participate if it would help get it fixed
@brian I am sure there are reasons why you can’t be more specific about roadmap/timing… However… Five years ago (!), Roon admitted that functionality for playlist users is weak and asked the community about its ideas: We want your ideas for Playlists!
I don’t have the impression that this issue has really been addressed since then… Or maybe it has, but Roon is still not delivering on promises like “easy to find exactly what you’re looking for”, “combine music files and streaming content in your playlists, or use tags for even more flexibility”.
Some of the Roon & Qobuz (playlist) users have given up. Others have reduced the use of Roon to their personal collection only, and stopped recommending your otherwise great product to others. Probably a lot of potential subscribers gave up during their trial or first year because they are not satisfied. And then there are the believers (or call them maniacs) like me, who keep jumping through all the insane hoops to e.g. get library versions of tracks in their playlists.
I don’t want to underestimate the difficulties involved, but I do believe that at least some workable solutions should be implemented… not ‘at some point’, but short term.
@Francois_De_Heel and some of us users that have reduced the experience to just “my library” are pulling out our hair not finding some albums under artists. Roon sure doesn’t make it easy to simply find our own music and play it these days.
Agree. Is this also why many/most Playlist tracks will not display a release date although in Album View a release date is shown above the album title in EVERY instance?
Does anyone have a link to where this was stated, not doubting it, just wanted to see the context.
Thanks for replying and for the clear communication. So does Roon have a clear vision now?
Yes, we’ve had a decade to think of how we would do things differently if we were omniscient back then 
Great! So, by 2030 everything though be good to go 
Happy Friday!
@RobOK: You can find Brians earlier statement (Feb 17) that Roon is working on it here: How do people typically mark artists/albums for future exploration? - #22 by brian
“Yes, we’re aware of this need and have a plan for it. The divide in capabilities between “in your library” and “not in your library” is mostly artificial, and results from the history of this project more than conscious design choices.
There is a substantial re-engineering effort involved in addressing this, because a huge body of code sits on top of this structure, so it will take a while, but we are planning to do it at some point.”
For my personal use case, liked/not liked in Roon vs. Qobuz isn’t that much of a problem. Actually, I like it the way it is.
What is actually really a problem for me (who is currently testing Roon and building up the library) is not being able to tag tracks from the queue, even if they are in the library already. (Playing from a playlist that was copied from a Qobuz playlist.)
And, even stranger: If I open the album from the queue, I can’t even tag from there. In fact, Roon doesn’t tell me that the album (or some tracks from the album) is part of my library. In order to be able to tag, I actually have to search for the track that is currently playing in my library. Sorry, but that’s ridiculous.
If there’s a quicker way to get to where I can tag, please tell me.