I couldn’t disagree with you more, if there was a poll of people who would and would not leave Roon if Tidal failed I am certain that the leavers would be in (very small) minority.
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I hope you’re right. I love Roon and will stay with it. But adding a second streaming source will address the subscribers who you believe would be a small minority in the event that Tidal fails. And it would add to the functionality and usefulness of Roon in the case of Apple Music.
My own guess? If no streaming service existed in Roon, it would not be a very small minority. Not after everyone absorbs the change. Maybe a minority, but a very sizable minority. Losing that number of customers would impact Roon.
IMHO, the “Focus on Similar” (FoS) function is not broken. You just want it to function differently. As far as I’ve been able to tell in investigating that function, it returns other albums that have the same album genre tag(s) as the album which was focused on. The better (i.e. more focused) your genre tags are the better the returned selection(s) will be.
For example, as a quick test, I have the new YES Steve Wilson Remix download, it was unidentified and only had a genre tag of Rock. I edited it, removed that genre and added a custom genre of YESPROG. When focused, it returned no other albums. I then added YESPROG genre to The Carpenter’s Greatest Hits. I again FoS on the Yes Remix album now got both it and the Carpenter’s greatest Hits. Which makes sense since it is the only other album with the custom genre tag.
I think your problem really is what genres Roon applies to individual albums. In many cases they are too broad, “Pop/Rock” is, imho, a perfect example. Focusing on Van Halen II, will return hundreds of other albums including those by the GoGos and 50s jazz singer Helen Carr because both of them also have the “Pop/Rock” genre. My solution was to remove “Pop/Rock” from the Van Halen albums as I don’t consider them that genre. Although, there may be other who do.
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I’ll let others debate this point with you. I’d only note that having to fine tune that button to that extent – just to have it return recommendations in our own library – is more trouble than it is worth. The button should work, by focusing on a similar album, or not. The level of fine tuning that you outline only confirms how broken it is. In addition to the fact that it does not recommend music from Tidal or outside of our own library, which is the way such a function should work. It is pretty dumb to only recommend DISsimilar music from our own libraries, which is probably why they have never fixed it.
Hello, Apple Music for a music service that really works well in that regard.
Ok, here is my experience.
So I clicked as it’s is begging me to do…
What’s not to love.
And there is more…
Then I selected one track and I am offered 114 Versions…
Not sure where else I’d get this.
Chris, it works because Freddie King is quite specifically The Blues. Problems arise big time when you select something like, say Enya - Memory of Trees, which has many supplied genre matches from Alternative Pop thru New Age to Celtic, Instrumental and so on, so every man and his dog gets a look in. I’m guessing of course that the algorithms Roon uses for Focus on Similar are relating to genres of course, but if so it’s a fault of the automatic attribution of genres as much as anything.
I should do some tests with genre mapping and see if it helps.
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Don’t want to drag things too off far off topic, but since it’s been raised, focus on similar is definitely broken!
Roon supplies the metadata in a way users shouldn’t have to get into manual grooming - that’s a core selling point. If using this metadata causes ‘focus on similar’ to find dissimilar albums, then something needs to change Roons end.
Roons Genres are too broad to be useful in terms of finding similar things in the way it’s used now - especially since a lot of music has loads of genres thrown at it.
Obviously the term ‘similar’ is a bit subjective but I know what I expect it to mean in this context, and the button doesn’t do it. Not even close. Not in my library anyway.
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It is clearly a genre issue and I’m not sure what can be done about that other than paying attention and editing genres as you go. What other tool would Roon have to achieve this?
As has previously been said, Pop Rock is an all encompassing and therefore useless genre if your looking to focus. Blues works well but there are a lot of blues styles.
Perhaps ‘Moods’ would be a useful focus tool. This used to be seen in the Sooloos days or is my memory playing tricks?
You could have a mood in many genres so that may be interesting…
I think matching by manually curated genres (which is what Roon buys) is never going to be successful. Or manually curated metadata.
Experience shows that the systems that do well on this are all cloud services which can harvest the usage data and do mining on it. I remember reading, many many years ago, they Netflix had 64,000 genres, probably more now — obviously this was all automatic, nobody can manually assign those.
But experience also shows that accurate data mining requires vast amounts of data. Why it is easier to find information on the internet than on your own computer.
Roon has hinted that they are looking into this.
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Hm… don’t like that idea. I hope that in that case, they’ll offer opt-out.
Why don’t you like the idea? Is it because you’d rather spend hours curating your own metadata? I know some people would, and that’s their choice…
Seems to me that machine learning is a fruitful avenue for tackling this messy problem.
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I understand the dilemma, Geoff. I don’t like any company mining my data, especially my music which is so close to me and personal — even though it contains the least personal data of my data.
I also understand that Roon cannot not do this and be as good in it as the ones (the Spotify’s and the likes) that do. And no, I don’t like spending hours curating my own metadata. Have done it and still do it in Roon, and would love to see this improve. Yup, dilemma… 
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Note that if the data mining is for the purpose of associating music with genre and other metadata, Roon wouldn’t need to identify your personal habits, they can get benefits without personally identifiable data.
But cloud services, like Netflix and Tidal and Spotify, of course do mining with personal identification.
On the one hand, Microsoft Research did large-scale data mining to quickly create a bidirectional translator between English and Haitian creole after a natural disaster, no personal data involved. On the other hand, I was sitting in a hotel room in Germany reading the British Guardian and there on the front page was an ad for a Canon (which I used) zoom lens (which I had been looking for) from a camera store in Seattle (where I live).
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To return to the topic of the thread – is Roon fabulous, with or without Tidal? When I posted, I argued that it is indeed fabulous.
I am always more than willing to change my point of view if posts from others persuade me that I am wrong. That occurred half way through this thread.
Namely, Roon has the potential to be fabulous, but it still suffers from a major shortcoming that others pointed out. Namely, Roon completely fails to recommend music basic based on a user’s own listening habits that is not already part of a personal library. The recent posts on ways to jump through hoops to get “focus on similar” to work miss the point. None of us need recommendations from our own personal libraries. What we need is the ability to discover similar music that is NOT in our personal libraries. Tidal does not do this well, and Roon completely flunks since their lame button is not even connected to Tidal.
My point may have gotten lost in my long posts, but PatMaddox made an important observation, namely that Roon takes their metadata from somewhere. That strongly suggests that it is not impossible for Roon to incorporate another streaming service. The arguments to the contrary just don’t hold up, in light of the level of integration with Tidal, which largely consists of just another set of menus, and showing Tidal albums under own library. That could be repeated. (See prior posts from others as well as myself.)
If it is repeated with Apple Music, then the major shortcoming of Roon would be fixed, and Roon would, indeed, be fabulous. Because a strong source for discovering new music would be incorporated.
If Tidal collapses, based on just the small number of posts in this thread, and in the thread on Tidal, I’ll bet Roon loses a minimum of 25% of their subscribers if they do not have a second streaming service already incorporated within Roon when Tidal ends.
My suggestion solves a current problem – the lack of discovery of music within Roon – and a future problem – the possible collapse of Tidal – and does both in one step. (Roon could then negotiate with other streaming services that offer lossless music, which at this point means only Deezer, at least in the U.S.)
Then Roon will both be fabulous, and it will survive a possible termination of Tidal. I want Roon to survive and to thrive, thus my recommendation.
Hi allan2, it’ no secret that Roon Radio will access the Tidal library in future. Brian himself has confirmed this is coming (no timeline).
It’s also no secret that Roon continue to talk with at least one other streaming service…
As above, I don’t think there’s a need to worry about either of these…
There’s a lot of worrying about things that will probably be solved in 2019 (only my guess) or maybe sooner.
Glass half full and all that 
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Is Apple Music discovery really that good? When I subscribed to AM a few months a go, the discovery stunk! For me, Spotify blows away AM for discovery. I get more relevant recommendations from Spotify than can I listen to. Spotify has some great algorithms that generate the Discover weekly and other recommendations. Spotify isn’t the only (or even primary) method of discovery for me, but it’s a good source. The Spotify app stinks, but wow it can kick out some great finds for me. I know some people don’t have as good of luck as I do with Spotify discovery, but I love it.
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I hope all of your predictions come to pass!
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That’s rather presumptuous, and incorrect. At least some of us do.
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It could be said that Roon is fabulous, but there’s always room for improvement. Nothing wrong with being even more fabulous is there?
During the last couple of weeks, I listened a lot of Tidal on my mobile and at that moment realized how much I was used to the navigation, selection, etc… with roon and really missed that.
So for me it is not only metadata, but also the intuitive way of listening to music in roon.
But what really sets roon apart is the seamless integration of Tidal. I can only applaud roon for holding the line in this, to only integrate if both parties are willing to go all in. The integration of a second or third streaming service will happen in due time, I am convinced (personal opinion).
I also get a sense that roon is trying to focus more on the business side of things first. Getting more hardware manufacturers on board, becoming a player in business side. This is the most sensible and safe way. Hardware manufacturers also bring in a lot of users. This also helps in getting other services onboard. The bigger roon is the more those service are willing to play ball.
Can things be approved? Always. Read thru all the, sometimes passionate, threads.
Are we spoiled? I think to a certain degree yes and roon brought this upon themselves. We came and saw the potential of roon and started asking all kinds of features (some are already implemented) and are now wanting more, more, more…
Roon needs to follow its own course and they do and I am for one happy to be part of that journey.
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