Tidal Artist Not Showing In Roon

Hello @Edward12,

We do not use TIDAL images in Roon when browsing by Artist, the images are sourced from our metadata services and this is an area of ongoing development.

I have noted your findings with the team but the best way forward here would be to let Allmusic know regarding this request by using the “Submit Corrections” button on this page: (https://www.allmusic.com/artist/alex-cortiz-mn0000935516).

Thanks,
Noris

Interesting solution…contact Allmusic, FYI I didn’t pay Allmusic $500…I paid RoonLabs $500.

Why not get Artist information from Tidal…All images load on Plex when its connected to Tidal.

Usually when someone buys a product they don’t have to contact suppliers to inquire about features not working.
Example, you buy a car but one window does not work, you expect the manufacturer or dealer to fix it and/or contact the supplier. You don’t tell the customer “We don’t make window switches, you need to contact XYZ”.

I think its Roon who needs to contact XYZ and/or look into other ways to make a robust product that delivers all the goods its supposed too. The artist graphics are on Tidal, I expect to see them ‘all’ to pass through to Roon.

If you pay for a TV service you expect to be able to view all the channels you paid for, if one is fuzzy you expect them to fix it. If they told me to contact the station because it must be something wrong on their end, that is not acceptable.

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Hey Edward,

Our metadata comes from a number of different sources, and on balance should have richer and more complete data than you’d find in TIDAL directly. There are always going to be exceptions where none of our sources have the information we want, but the good news is that our sources are always improving, and the improved data shows up in Roon automatically.

We don’t simply pass TIDAL artist images through to Roon, for a number of reasons. While there may be some cases where we lack some pieces of data you see in TIDAL, we’re confident that after years of research and development this system delivers the richest data possible across millions of albums and artists, and we stand behind that data, even as we continue to improve the coverage every day.

Point being, you shouldn’t assume that because TIDAL has an image for a given artist, Roon always will too. There’s a lot more complexity in how we deliver metadata than that.

The suggestion Noris made was a way for you to help improve the metadata Roon uses in app. It’s fine if you don’t want to submit this to our providers, but that’s why there’s no image here right now.

Our metadata team has already noted your request, so in any event we appreciate the feedback here.

I totally understand Mike.

Can’t ask for everything, right now about 1/3 of my Tidal Artist have the Grey Hash Mark as an image. Looks like Roon uses metadata to match the artist with a ‘curated’ image and not the cover of the artist. Given the shear number of artists I have serious doubts it will change. The images Roon chooses are not random images but specially selected images to fit the Roon Brand-Image. Great for those who stick with mainstream artist, I’m sure their Roon Tidal page looks awesome.

Oh well, thanks anyway.

Don’t think I understand the metadata situation. If Roon is able to show genre for an artist or band and give them a write up etc does that mean Roon has metadata? If so does that mean there should or could be an artist photo?

If we have a biography, that’s a good indication that at least one of our sources has a match, but that’s a different question from whether any of our sources has a photo.

The most helpful thing you can provide are examples of artists you’d expect to see images for, but are not – that gives @joel and I something concrete to look into.

Again, thanks for the feedback here @Edward12!

Okay here are two examples…pretty sure you know of these since I can’t be the first and only person with this issue.

I picked two artists from the 20 or so with the same issue. Neither artist has an image in the Tidal artist page, when I select each one I get different options although both seemingly have metadata or at least enough info to show the genre and writeup.

This artist allows me to edit the pic and info.

After I edit the image shows here

But still no image on the artist page

Another artist does not allow any editing

My issues are:

  1. Not being able to edit any/all images and data for any/all artists
  2. The images not coming through to the Favorite Artists screen

Note, in Tidal each artists has an image* Although not the curated style image Roon shows.

BTW, Since Roon wants to always show artsy curated images for Artists the same problem persists for the artists in my library.

Suggestion; Allow Roon to query Bing image database for these artists in the background if no image is available. Your drop down can allow users to select the image of their choice from this query. Bing has tons of similarly artsy head shots like Roon to choose from. At least users will have images instead of the “Grey Hash” on their screen. Also if you want to get slick you can have Roon query the user selected images and send the data back to your database. This will save you guys the trouble of having to come up with head shots for the millions of artists around the world.

What you currently have does not work, as evidenced by the photos above and is really not acceptable to have a finished consumer product to be so incomplete. The “Grey Hash” looks awful…

The TIDAL artists screen is essentially a view on your TIDAL favourites (i.e. it pulls metadata directly from TIDAL), so that’s almost certainly why an artist image you have added in Roon isn’t showing up there. I’m not sure if anything is editable from that screen, and if it is, it will only be for artists on albums that you actually have in your library (TIDAL or other).

The implementation of the TIDAL menu screens was designed to be a pretty transparent view into your TIDAL account and the curated lists that TIDAL offers – please feel free to submit a Feature Request is you’d like something different here. Most people, I think, use the main Artists page accessed via the main menu; note though that this is limited to artists in a Primary Artist role on the album.

The TIDAL artist’s screen must be some different ‘View’ from TIDAL, as you can see the images show in TIDAL…See DJ CAM AND COUNT BASIC.

Interesting, so these two should be the same image.

Image from Roon - TIDAL Favorite Artist.
incognitoroon

Image from TIDAL Favorite Artist
incognitotidal

Not exactly the same, same people but clearly not a ‘transparent’ view’ of my TIDAL account.

Perhaps, perhaps not. I would now hazard a guess that we are showing non-TIDAL artwork for Incognito in your TIDAL artists list, but there may be a bug which stopped your Count Basic image addition showing up there.

I’m going to hand this back to @support.

Just for kicks I compared Roon to Plex…both ‘Linked’ to TIDAL

Plex with TIDAL

Roon with TIDAL

Which would you say is a “Transparent View” of TIDAL?

For Ref…TIDAL see related artist in above pic’s

Notice each image that appears in TIDAL is either missing in Roon or “Different”.

Yes there must be a bug. In fact most every image in Roon is different in some way to the images that are in TIDAL. Another example would be the Erykah Badu image in Plex [exactly the same as TIDAL] vs the same artist in Roon [note - different]. Dr. Lonnie Smith, DJ Shadow, Eric Lau, Flying Lotus as well…and the list goes on…

Apparently these images are not coming from the TIDAL Artist page like you thought. Any idea where they come from, if not from Roon? I obviously can’t edit them…

Again, the images in Roon seem to support Roon’s “Brand-Image” of visual appeal with the curated “Head Shots” whereas the images in TIDAL are a mix of “Head Shots” and “Covers”. Are you sure the artist images aren’t coming from Roon? At the beginning I was made to think they came from “Allmusic”.

Summary:

Images for the TIDAL Artists within Roon do not come from Allmuisc
Images for the TIDAL Artists within Roon do not come from TIDAL
Images for the TIDAL Artists within Roon comes from an ‘unknown’ source at this time…to be resolved.

Artist Write Up comes from Allmusic see images below…note the ‘Artist image’ on the right.

Artist Write Up as it appears in Roon…notice a different artist image, in fact the Roon image is not on the Allmusic web site at all.

Hi Noris…looks like you are part of support. Joel was handing this back to you and your team, can you please chime in on this topic. ?

Hey Edward,

I appreciate the feedback here.

Again, you shouldn’t assume that artist images is Roon will match what’s shown in TIDAL, or in other applications that pass through TIDAL metadata. Our system is designed to retrieve the highest possible image quality and deliver it in as many situations as possible, and the system is built to work for people with or without TIDAL. A system that simply passes through data from TIDAL is going to work completely differently than Roon, which is why some of these distinctions may need further investigation from Joel, Noris, and myself.

You are correct that there may be a bug here. The images you’re seeing in the TIDAL favorites section absolutely seem wrong, but I have a suspicion about what, and I’m wondering if this will resolve itself in an upcoming release – we’ve recently resolved some issues in that area of the product.

For now, I’d ask that you wait for our next release, and let us know if these distinctions persist. If they do, let @support know, and the team can open a ticket with our QA team to investigate further.

We really do appreciate this kind of feedback, so thanks for taking the time to investigate this and give us such clear examples. If there is a bug here, and we are able to reproduce what you’re seeing, I’m absolutely confident we can resolve it.

Thanks and Happy New Year!

Hi Mike

I didn’t assume or expect the artists in Roon to match Tidal, in fact I have shown that they don’t…I’m okay with that and its not the issue.

Yes I have seen how your system works. In fact it uses the same artist pics for the users library as it does in Tidal…that is not the issue either.

The system that did pass on images ie Plex was just to show that images can be made to be seen in third party software outside of TIDAL. However, I think its best to pass through an image instead of showing no image…at least ‘this’ user would prefer any image vs no image. This too, is not the issue because I don’t expect Roon to mirror other software. What I do expect is for Roon to be as successful as other software in delivering results. Again those results don’t have to be apples to apples ie passthrough, but they should be better in terms of product delivered, in this case the product is an image.

Mike, its very hard if not impossible to make a system that is 100% robust all on its own. For this reason many dev’s create other methods to close the gap, when system/method A fails…in this case perhaps a Tidal pass-through could do this ‘if’ no image was found by Roon. Sure the Roon curated image is best, but A or nothing produces a greater failure rate than if not A then B.

For example:
Current method
If A [Roon image] then post A
If no A, then nothing

Perhaps improved method
If A [Roon image] then post A
If no A, then pass though TIDAL image

Sure TIDAL’s image may not support Roon’s Brand-Image completely but its better than a square Grey Hash.

Thanks again for following up on this Mike, have a fantastic new year.

Ed

Also I think Joel has a different understanding of the Roon product, as his explanation of the TIDAL artist hint on the images being passed through from TIDAL vs. being curated images from Roon. Having everyone on the same page on the Roon side reduces frustration and misunderstandings/expectations on the customer side.

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Any progress on this?

What so ever?

I know there is a new thread about this, but this is a good thread with lots of great info from Edward, that should be looked into again as it’s not fixed yet! So, this is a bump from me.

Hi Henrik

Thanks for the bump. Unfortunately Danny sees me as a Troll and of course everything I post as me trolling. Although everything here is valid, it will surely not get addressed if coming from me. This is to say, bumping this thread is not likely to cause any action by Roon. It would be better taken if someone else posted the same thing in another thread.

Regards
Edward