If the entire music library, all favorites, all playlists and all tags are all affected from one profile to another, what is the purpose of the profile in the first place?
In other words, how can two listeners with totally different music preferences use Roon effectively? Even the queue is affected…
What Roon’s profiles do and don’t do:
Related and already existing Feature Suggestions Search results for 'profile #feedback:feature-suggestions' - Roon Labs Community
Pick the ones that cover your use case and add a vote to them.
Yeah but since the playlist feature update in March they have also started sharing playlists across profiles, which wasn’t the case before. I don’t really get that either, and it does decrease the already-weak profile separation:
AFAIK it was possible to share playlists already before that change. But hey, I don’t use them so can’t really comment on that matter. If there is a changed situation here, someone should probably create a new feature suggestion for profiles and playlists specifically if none already exists?
Yes it was, but it was an optional setting. After this update they are always shared, as the quote from the release notes stated.
Probably, if someone is interested. IIRC the topic was brought up during Early Access and didn’t seem to garner any interest from the developers
@BlackJack This was posted already after the release:
As I feel, most feature suggestions do. Maybe Roon Labs could/should then at least correct the documentation?
Each person in your household can have their own profile, and we’ll store their playlists, tags, play history, and all of their favorites there, …
In Early Access there usually is some interest in feedback for new features, but IIRC not for this behavior change. On the other hand, it also didn’t cause a huge user uproar. Though I still don’t see why it can’t be an option, even if the behavior is changed to shared by default.
In short: Depending on what the OP wants/needs to have, his best option with Roon is probably to have separate Roon servers and additional licensees (here one might have to think about different Roon accounts or not *) for this other profile. Also with different streaming service login and license if needed. In essence, have and pay it all double.
* The Roon DB is account bound. It is not possible to share backups between servers from different accounts. Given that “two listeners with totally different music preferences use Roon”, using separate Roon accounts might be the natural way to do it?
Not sure what that is about to mean (the ellipsis implies that stuff left unsaid here), but Roon’s queues are per zone and not per (user) profile. You should be able to see which profile added what content to the queue though.
In case of using two Roon Servers, networked zones can be shared between, but not used/accessed/controlled from, different Servers at the same time.
Profiles used to be really useful, before all the recent playlist enhancements. I had separate profiles for different family members, and when you switched profiles there was meaning to it: you’d get only that person’s playlists, always presented predictably in the same alphabetical order (I used numbers at the beginning of playlist names to set the order just how everyone wanted, with favorite playlists at the top). This was great for switching between kid and parent use. Just changing the profile would put everything that person wanted instantly at their finger tips. Now with all the recent changes to playlists that have made all of them available everywhere in all sorts of folders and in different orders, profiles has completely lost its wonderful former usefulness for me. Kid & parent alike are now always frustrated navigating through many extra steps trying to find what they want.
Profiles in Roon are designed to tailor the listening experience for different users by customizing music recommendations, favorites, and playlists separately. This ensures that each listener gets a personalized experience without affecting others’ preferences and queues.
I hear you. I find profiles useless. For example, it would be nice if my spouse could use her profile to access her Tidal playlists. There’s no way to have a separate set of Tidal credentials tied to that other profile so it’s useless to me.
That would be great but it’s non functional
Just discovered, this thread confirms, that Roon profiles are indeed useless.
My impression is that Roon is used in many different ways, which means that what is useless for one user could be useful for another with other preferences.
I use Roon profiles every day to seperate my Progress Rock from the music i am listening to with my wife and also to play music for grand-children. What is banned in one profile could be loved in another. Profiles also has seperate listening history.
By active use of profiles Roon radio has improved for me lately and i now use this more and Tidal / Apple Music less for music discovery. I now use Qobuz purely as a source for music , iow i do not use the Qobuz app. I also use profiles on Arc when out and about …
Separation of Roon profiles could absolutely be improved and more separated, though i also find it useful to be able to share both some tags and playlists across profiles.
I took the ellipsis to mean that the Roon profiles functionality is so laughably ill-conceived in its design that different profiles don’t even get their own queues. What I’d like to see is some form of household model with a master account and sub-accounts, all running from a single instance of Roon Server with an option for strong separation between users. The current functionality is useless for my household.
i just started testing roon , so far i was really impressed. But now i have to realize that profiles are almost completely useless, i would have expected a more independent experience. By not even having a separate login for qobuz /tidal it seriously makes me question if i can use all this.
I don’t want to have my partner the same qobuz login , as the partner partly likes some music i don’t want to listen to and i don’t wanna see in my account.
Edit:
looking into it… the likes, recent plays are seperate. If only the “recent added” were too
interesting each profile can individually ban an album - for example when it appears under recently added. . Thats nice… that way i get not disturbed by certain music 
If this is not currently true, isn’t it a bug?
I was about to setup Roon Remote on my SO’s Mac Mini with her own profile, but I wisely decided to make sure that separate profiles would maintain separate personalized musical experiences, just as @jhoney12 described above. Like other’s have stated, I don’t want her different musical tastes to infiltrate into my profile.
From what I’m reading, profiles are apparently useless. So I’m holding off letting my SO run wild with Roon Remote on her Mac.
Is this going to be addressed?