I’ve got Roon running on my generic Windows PC and connected to my Qobuz account. I read the User Guide / FAQ. When I listen to some of my Qobuz playlists via Roon, there’s no way to Favorite a song that I like (which I would do primarily to feed my personal tastes into the Roon algorithm).
It seems I can favorite songs that I play from my personal iTunes library (also connected to Roon via the PC app). Just not from Qobuz.
What’s going on here? I would think that being able to favorite ANY song on Roon, no matter where it comes from, would be essential towards improving the Discovery side of Roon, especially if Roon ever implements features similar to Spotify’s “Daily Mix”, “Release Radar”, etc. For me, discovering and listening to new music is just as important as what already exists in my personal Library, so I’m baffled why one can be favorited and the other cannot.
You need to add an album to your library to Fav it in Roon. That’s it…
The album and you fav of it is then in your database.
Roon integration makes everything seamless but you still have to do this as your database cannot store all of your preferred streaming service content
That was what I initially thought, but while I’m listening to a song and think “I should favorite this”, even after I select “Add to Library”, no Favorite Heart appears in Now Playing nor in Queue – neither on the Windows nor iOS apps.
Even worse, in the Queue on the iPad app, there are hearts and tapping them will make them solid, but then a second later they go back to being empty, and they don’t appear when I look in my library favorites.
I guess what I want to know is, does Roon use Favorites at all for their algorithms or is it nothing more than an organizational tool that has no relevance outside of my own personal library? If it’s the latter, I won’t bother with this convoluted nonsense.
There are two stages the one you are listening to is not in your library, you click add to library - a virtual copy is made and added to your library in the background. You are still listening to the version that isn’t in your library.
It’s confusing.
You need to click on the album and you will then see the library version with the column of clickable hearts.
“click on the album” where? Do I have to exit out of Now Playing, and dig through my library just to add a Favorite? It sure seems so. This is needlessly convoluted and seems to defeat the entire purpose of favoriting music as you’re listening to it. I appreciate that Roon is so powerful, but it really seems like they’re straddling the wrong side of the line separating “powerful” and “intuitive”.
It should be like Spotify, where you can click the heart anywhere at any time. Roon’s own user guide says this, but it’s simply not true:
Really liking something you found in Roon? Add it to your Favorites by clicking the heart icon! wherever you see it – on an album screen, next to tracks, artist screens, works, composers, it’s everywhere!
Yeah, everywhere except for Now Playing and Queue.
Roon is a front end to the streaming service. It needs to copy the metadata to your “library” in order to manage everything as one experience.
I agree, that this is part is not very intuitive. They could add a function that asks if you want to add a song to your library if it is not there when you press the heart on a song that is not in the library. That would make it more intuitive.
Yeah, there really needs to be a heart everywhere that I can actually click on at any time regardless of where the song resides (Tidal, Qobuz, iTunes). Then Roon just does whatever it needs to do silently in the background to make that song part of my consolidated Roon Library.
I don’t understand why they are drawing these arbitrary lines in the sand where I can favorite a song that’s already in my library but I can’t favorite a new-to-me song that I’m hearing on Roon Radio fed via tracks from my Qobuz account. Totally user hostile.
It is not an arbitrary line. It is a technical line. You need to have the stuff in your metadata database in order to do that stuff.
It is like that you have your own book shelf at home with all your favourite books. Then you go to a library and see a nice book that is a new favourite you read it at the library, but leave it there. You then go home and feel annoyed that it has not appeared in your Library. Also, if you send the book to home (add to library), but continue to read the book in the Library you cannot make it a home favourite, before you go home and do it there.
So has Roon ever said whether the Favorites is just an organization tool that stays on my personal devices, or does it get uploaded to my profile at Roon and used for data personalization? If it’s just an organizational tool I’ll ignore it. If it’s used to influence my Roon profile and recommendations, there needs to be a way to click the heart such that it favorites the song and adds it to my library all at once, seamlessly, any time and from any source.
Yes, that is great idea. Can you elaborate technically how you would do that tranparently supporting several competing streaming services?
My idea would a pop-up asking if you want to add the album/song to your library and Favourite it there, but that would not be transparent and adds that popup.
Blockquote Roon app: silently adds track to the user’s Roon library (if it’s not already there) and marks it as a favorite
I would actually dislike that as I want to keep my library organised by albums - I do not want single songs there. There would need to be an option to add the whole album.
They could add this as one of the other 100 options in Settings
For me, I almost always want to Favorite a single track if I’m doing so from Now Playing or the Queue… simply because it’s probably something new to me and I have no idea if the entire album is great, or if it’s just the track that I like.
I’m certain that my suggestion to streamline “favorite and add to library” in one tap and your wish to add entire albums can both co-exist…
As mentioned, only content in your library can be favorited. Even when content is in your library, it is possible to see the non-library streaming service content, which is why it cannot be favorited.
You can read more about this here:
We appreciate the feedback, and I’d second opening a #roon:feature-requests. Our product team keeps an eye on the posts in this category and it is a great place to get feedback from the rest of the community.
@dylan, can you tell me if Favoriting a track or album will help feed whatever algorithms Roon is using to create personalized recommendations for me, or is it simply a management tool that doesn’t affect anything outside of my local library?
Generally speaking the innards of how the recommendation system operates is not discussed so I am doubtful you’ll get a direct yes/no response. I assume it plays some part, as does what you play.
However, Roon has indicated in other threads that a single person’s actions cannot really move the recommendation algorithm significantly.
Also, if you send the book to home (add to library), but continue to read the book in the Library you cannot make it a home favourite, before you go home and do it there.