Since my little son likes to listen to Paw Patrol and other bunch of child-stories, I’ve created a Playlist with the Name of my son. So far so good. Works like a charm.
Now, I’ve thought that within the Playlist, I could sort out everything by “Characters”.
By creating a “tag”…
I’ve created a tag called “Paw Patrol”, went into my playlist, marked all Paw Patrol single tracks and tried to mark it with the “Paw Patrol” tag. Not working.
In the description it’s clearly stated that you can almost “tag” everything.
Tags are just extra metadata that can help you group and focus on specific media what you use them as is entirely up to you. I use them purely to mark my files as to where they were aquired from and if from cd where in the many racks I have they live, Bandcamp, Qobuz etc. You create a tag then add this tag by adding it to the media you want using the add tag button. You can do it in bulk or one at a time.
When using focus in tracks or albums you can focus on these tags to show only those items. This can then be saved as a bookmark and used to bring up this search quickly in the future. Any new items you add the tag to will automatically show up when using the bookmark.
As far as I know you can’t sort via tags in a playlist but as I don’t really use playlists much I may be wrong.
I think in your use case adding all kids stuff to a kids tag would be a good start and add then additional tags to break them down further into shows etc. Create a focus for each one save it out as a bookmark. You can then add these to a playlist or just select them all and add to queue.
I suspect it’s because you haven’t actually added these tracks/albums to your library - the Playlist contents refer to the tracks/albums on the streaming service.
You need to have them added to your Roon Library first…
Here’s an example, a Roon Playlist. I happen to have Black Host in my library, so I can add a tag to it…
Actually, after some further investigation, I suspect it’s not quite so simple as I thought. The example of Black Host that I gave in my last post turns out to be a local file, and Roon seems to have picked that up so I can add a tag to it in the Playlist.
For tracks/albums that are held on streaming services (in your case, Tidal), you can’t add tags to them in the Playlist browser, even if they have been added to your Roon library…
You actually have to go into the Album or Track browsers and add your tags there. Then select the tags you want to make up your Playlist and create the Playlist from the tag results.
So, for example, I have a tag for the BBC Proms. In the Album browser I can use that tag to select the albums, then use the “Add to Playlist”
i thought in the beginning that i could for example create a tag with “listen later” and mark everything id like to listen later on…same with the albums for my little son…
what if i don’t wanna add them to my library? why i have to see all covers on my library which are not part of my collection?
funny to hear, think outside of the box, if something really doesn’t make sense to me…if it makes sense to you, it doesn’t mean it has to make sense to me, right? funny also to here something like that from a volunteer moderator. anyway…
if i for example have actually no time to hear an album from someone new, i would like to add a tag instead of saving it to my library and then, tag etc etc…would be much faster and easier.
a “tag” should work like a “pro memoria”…my opinion…
From a technical perspective there is simply no way around it. You cannot tag a Qobuz or Tidal album because it is not yours to tag until it is in your library. Only then does it become your version of the album where you can add tags, change track names, album cover art, etc.
Just add it to your library, it really only takes 1 click and 2-3 seconds. If you do not want to see it in your collection, use a tag to separate the collection & non-collection albums in your library.
EDIT: also check below excellent recommendation by Suedkiez!
Possibly one part of solving your Paw Patrols problem could be in using a separate Roon profile for your son where only these kinds of albums go. Then you don’t have to solve everything with tags.
However, the Roon library is common for all profiles, so you would still see them.
I understand your frustration that the features in roon are working differently than you had expected.
roon is (by far) the most powerful music management and listening system available. I would recommend continuing to learn the system as it’s very likely that you can accomplish what you are trying if you learn the roon “way.”
As an example, my wife listens to a lot of albums that I have no interest in seeing. I tag those with her name, and if I open roon and it’s in her state, I invoke a bookmark (2 clicks) that just excludes her tag, thereby only showing albums I’m interested in. I suspect that there are probably many, many other ways to accomplish this, but this approach works for us.
I would guess you’ll find one for you as you learn the system.
