Tags, bookmarks, playlists

I am trying to figure out the best way of marking artists, tracks, albums, that I want to explore later. I have found bookmarks, tags, playlists, and have used them all inconsistently. Basically, I’d love to be able to add a track, artist, or album to a list that I can explore later. Any advice appreciated

  1. Create a tag named Explore Later for example.
  2. Consistently (and manually) tag any album/artist/whatever you want to explore later with this new tag.
  3. Go in albums view, focus by Explore Later tag and save this as a bookmark (you can name it Explore Later too). That’s because the tag view it’s very minimalistic implemented and you don’t have order or focus and/or may other things here (ask Roon why).
  4. Enjoy.

Note: everything needs to be added to your library in order for tags/bookmarks to work.
Note 2: the Played/Added section in the home screen may also help a little bit, but it’s also poorly enough implemented (an album shows in the played section even if you play 1 minute or whatever from one track only for example)

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Thank you tons for a perfect explanation. I have set it all up just as you mentioned! Also, I noted that I was unable to add tags to some of the items because I had not yet added them to my Library. When I think of MY library, I prefer to only add things to that that I LIKE, rather than everything that I might choose to listen to in the future - but that is a nit. Once I add something to my library, the tags work great. I much appreciate your helpful assistance!

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I get what you mean, but it doesn’t work that way with Roon. You can use the Favorites (heart symbol) for items you like the most (again, from what you already added) and remove from the library those you don’t want to keep (after exploring them). If it feels like a lot of manual maintenance, never forget the point no. 4! :slight_smile:

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haha. so true! thanks again. I was just confused as to whether to use bookmarks, tags, favorites, playlists, etc. you cleared it up for me!

The other bit missing is …

Tags are fixed - you add stuff to a Tag so great for say big classical box sets that are fixed. Once set up that’s it until YOU change it

Bookmarks are Dynamic , think of it as defining a rule eg use Focus to set Composer = Beethoven Album filtered for Concerto

Next time you open it any additions that match your “rule” will be included

interesting. it sounds like bookmarks is more like a saved filtering scheme?

Perhaps another question? I just found an artist and wanted to tag him. It was greyed out. I wanted to add the artist to my library, and of course I can’t add an artist without selecting an album or track. Any thoughts on how to best ‘tag’ an artist to follow up on later?

My best guess is to go the same way (if it’s working for you) but instead on bookmarking the Albums view you do the same for the Artist view. So something like this: add album > go to artist > tag artist > bookmark the Artist view. I can’t think of any smarter way, maybe others figured this out better, give it some time and you may get smarter solutions.

Keep in mind that Roon is more on the Album based side than on the Artist, why i do not know and I gave up trying to even understand their narrow point of view. You can’t even sort the Artists view by the latest (album) added for example, a thing that will be very helpful.

Anyway, if you’ll succed in mapping your needs to the roon way, you’ll end up very happy with the product (and i sincerely wish you that) but if you try even the simplest and logical things your way and outside roon’s vision, it can be very frustrating and complicated to work them around (as you may already see that first hand).

As an extra to the already excellent advise: when I add new albums to my library, I always give them the tag ‘delete?’ when I am not sure I want to keep them. That makes it easier to identify these albums in the future. Most of these albums are indeed deleted after a few days or weeks.