I am wondering that the recommendations of the software are not fitting with my preferred music at all… it doesn’t fit with the music I play and it doesn’t fit with the music in my bibliothek… In this way this section is completely unusable… On the other hand new music of my favourite bands are not recommended at all… Any ideas? (Qobuz integrated)
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Perhaps because you’ve only just started using Roon (you joined the forum a week ago)?
Roon’s Valence considers what you’ve been playing as well as what other people are listening to.
THX Geoff, could be the explanation, but an example: I marked U2 as a favourite and the system did not show me the new EP released on Friday… But regarding your hint - maybe I need to be patient. Wishing you a great day!
The U2 EP seemingly came as kind of a surprise release, so was not visible in metadatabases for days. I could listen to it in Qobuz´ own app, but roon was unable to synchronize or recognize it until today.
Always showing new albums by artists in your library would be good to have but doesn’t exist and is a specific feature request. There are at least two existing ones, here’s one you can vote for
Two reasons:
No software based music or video recommendations can handle listeners/viewers with eclectic tastes. However if the listeners/viewers have run of the mill, popular tastes then the recommendations will be much better.
Since the behind the scenes calculations for a given recommendation are not accessible to the listeners/viewers then I assume that there is money involved, as in recordings and videos that are currently being “promoted” get recommendations whether or not that recommendation is relevant to the listeners/viewers tastes.
Roon’s Valence looks at what you’ve been playing as well as what other people are listening to. I can see the idea behind that, but for me that’s also where it falls short.
Recently I checked the most popular music among Roon users and it’s very far from my own taste. As a result, about 80 to 90 percent of the recommendations I get don’t really resonate with me. Maybe my listening habits are just too specific or eclectic for the system to pick up properly.
To be honest, I tend to use Spotify for music discovery because, while not perfect either, it works much better for me. In my experience, Spotify handles broad and eclectic tastes surprisingly well. With Valence, I often don’t understand what the homepage recommendations are based on, as they don’t seem closely aligned with what I actually listen to. Roon Radio also tends to circle around the same handful of albums instead of exploring more widely.
I really appreciate what Roon is trying to do, but when it comes to discovery, Spotify feels more refined and accurate for me. That said, I do notice that Valence seems to improve slowly over time. About a year ago I jokingly told myself I would quit Roon for good if it ever recommended Diana Krall to me one more time. Thankfully, those recommendations have stopped, so maybe it is learning after all 
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Certainly with something like Spotify, but if that aids with retention, and discovery is a byproduct of retention, and it pleases some, then I’d consider that a prime alternative.
I’ve found album candidates using Valence by choosing an album, and scrolling to the bottom of the tracks page for “recommended” albums that are relevant to the selected album (perhaps harvested from Roon user data).
Going forward, I’ll try to use Roon more as a music player (over and above the metadata overlay on the digital files) to see whether I can, indeed, train Valence… but so far my rather run-of-the-mill palette is well-sated.
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