Will the pandemic change our attitude to streaming?

Roon Software Discussion
36

They have multiple copies on multiple disks, on multiple racks, on multiple places (geographic redundancy).

Usually a private cloud will have a high availability system which one is master, the other slave and when one breaks, the other takes control. Some will have a Disaster Recovery plan in which they will have 3 systems just in case, and so on and so forth.

I was fortunate enough to have a project with a bank for Cloud services, and they have this information stored on high tech facilites, in a ground where no earthquakes are big, thick walls, redundant cooling, energy systems, arm guards in order to avoid breach, super systems monitoring digital attacks, and a large etcetera. They are guarding financial data, one of the most critical mission information one could ever think of, and so far, data is safe.

Our humble music libraries (even the biggest collector with 1 million albums) is pretty much safe that nothing will happen to their data. And before anyone says that hackers have stolen millions of stuff, let me remind you that those cases are because the security put on those Data Centers were not up to the task.

If a disk is broken, they open the rack, hot-swap the disk (no turning off of any equipment), change it, then the disk replicates and then the disk is operable, no data loss.

In my personal case, I will keep relying on Data Centers for my info, including my music, plus I will keep having my streaming services (if data is lost, its their responsibility not mine haha), and storing my local media in my computer, and in two or three different storage hard disk, just in case.

37

When I worked for McAfee, we had old drives with thousands of computer viruses on them. We actually took them to a foundry and physically witnessed them being destroyed.

38

To get back to the OP a bit, it isn’t about whether each of us likes streaming, and it isn’t about whether cloud will be an important trend. Will our mindset shift, and what does that mean?

One discussion that triggered the question in my mind was this mundane issue: you find an album on Tudal or Qobuz, and the LIKE button doesn’t work. Of course, you have to add it to your library first. WTF? Why do I have to go through that step? Of course, the LIKE setting is stored in Roon’s own database so it can quickly focus on it, you can’t set a LIKE flag in the database for an album that’s not in the database.

Ok, but when I click LIKE, that means I want to do that, Roon should do what is necessary, add the album to the database. Yes, it’s reasonable that an album that I like should be added to the library. No, got nothing to do with liking it, I may HATE the album, want to be able to do that too, add it to the library if you want, but flag it as HATE or LIKE, that’s what I want.

Exposing the requirement that the album be added to the library is wrong in two ways. First, it exposes an implementation detail to the user, breaking the abstraction. It’s like the save function, which is just about the cost difference between RAM and disk. I shut down Word, and it says “do you want to save your document first?” Of course I want to damn well save it, I worked on it for an hour, what are you, an idiot? “Uh, yes.”

But more deeply, it exposes the distinction between my stuff and the universe of music. Not my owned, local music, Roon hides that distinction, one of its most important breakthroughs, together with hiding the distinction between file formats, sampling rates, PCM vs DSD. But this exposes the mine distinction.

This is old fashioned. I think I swim in an ocean of music, millions of albums, I talked about the long tail in the discussion of The Fabulous Value of Recommended For You. Yes, things I have “added to my library” is a meaningful practical distinction, it’s easier to browse among a few thousand albums I have selected than among 100 million. But it’s only a convenience, it isn’t fundamental.

I can already play an album directly from the cloud. Why should we insist on the distinction?

But I know there are people who dislike the idea of cluttering up their library with stuff from the cloud.

This is what this thread is about. A mundane operational complication, that at heart illuminates a philosophical distinction that maybe can and should go away.

39

No. That’s what the “set” is about.

But what you’re really talking about is a minor feature request for Roon. To auto-import albums from “remote” clouds when you press the “Like” button. Roon already supports multiple “cloud” sources: your local “cloud”, Tidal, Qobuz. It’s the Roon mindset, that regards the local cloud as somehow “special”, that has to change.

40

That minor feature request triggered my writing this post, but it is about something deeper.
First, it’s not about local files vs. cloud, add to library doesn’t make it local. It blesses the album as mine.
Second, it’s about softening the distinction.
Practically: Roon has a lot of capabilities, edit metadata, add to playlist, add to tag, share, view credits, go to composition, radio, seeding Vālence — do you know offhand which work for albums that are not in the library? When I look at it, the choices are not unreasonable if you understand Roon’s architecture, but that’s the point, why should I have to understand Roon’s architecture? And what about my mother-in-law? Consider this: I look at an album that I have not added, I select on of the artists who is not in my library, click on composer, I see some compositions from this album, but she had written other compositions that are on another album that is not in my album either, will it show up in the composition list? Can you guess. I guessed wrong. But I don’t want that question to even exist.
Philosophically: it’s about my ocean mindset. I want to think about the ocean. Favoriting is a good thing. The library is about a second level of favoriting, that’s good too. But there should be no difference in capabilities.

So in my mind, it starts with a philosophy and leads to a variety of design decisions, and in turn to engineering decisions.

But as I said, there are people who disagree with the philosophy. Perhaps also with the feature decisions, but we can’t resolve the feature decisions with resolving the philosophical decisions.

And we should note that this conversation could not even be conceived of with Roon 1.0, before the addition of streaming. And really not before the addition of Vālence.

41

I just saw this post in another thread, gets right to the heart of the matter:

42

I’m thinking that the bug is that Roon treats the local cloud, the files accessed directly by the Roon Core, differently from the remote clouds. It auto-imports anything from the local cloud, whether you want it to, or not. It should treat them all the same way. Maybe with a button “Import everything from the local cloud”, as well.

43

Outboard Back up drives are cheap…I would never trust anything to anyone’s cloud…I back up my own music…Why would I trust huge entities that always seem to dump personal info back on to the net…saying only “ahh—we sorry”…I’ll trust my own gear …thanks!

44

The pandemic hasn’t affected my attitude toward streaming but it has affected my family in ways we’ve not experienced before. As it has for millions of others.

Gone are the days of complacency, thinking we can just run to the store for food, the electricity will be on, we can always get a haircut, and we can see our friends, kids and grandkids whenever we want. We used to joke about running a B&B with family and friends visiting all the time. Now, we have not seen any friends or family in person since the holiday season ended. That is the hardest part for us.

With my wife working from home my new job is her IT support. She has to have access and a fairly comfortable workstation setup. Her laptop doesn’t cut it without a big monitor for Zoom meetings with her staff, keyboard, mouse and good internet speed with Ethernet. Good thing we had the house wired for Roon.

For the basics needs, we are covered. Our neighbors gave us a big upright freezer when they moved away, and we ordered a big separate refrigerator (no freezer) to keep food on hand, and we’re having a whole house backup generator with a 500 gallon propane tank added to keep the power going.

When the planes hit the towers on 9/11/01 things changed. I didn’t think it could get any worse at the time but now it has, although for different reasons How long this will last or how bad it will ultimately get is unknown. We can only do what we can do.

Hope everyone reading this and everyone they know is safe and have the ability to stay that way.

4 Likes
45

I am guessing that you don’t work in enterprise storage. The vast majority of data loss comes from user error (i.e. you). My agency uses Dropbox for team collaboration and archival of work files. The folks that run Dropbox know a lot more about managing reliable, secure, shared storage than I do (even though I do have a career background in storage).

But the point is to use both: local and cloud backups.

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46

So this entire, philosophical, existential discussion was about a “like” button? First world problems, indeed.

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47

Triggered by that, but I could just as well say, triggered by newspapers, or by some private conversations I’ve had.

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48

I’ve had to turn off cable news. I still read papers online, but depressing, nonfactual opinion, and other BS is easier to skip.

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49

Yes. I turned off the TV altogether on January 1.

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In fact, I’m a bit torn. I have learnt through my life and career that proposals and ideas get more understanding and agreement when I anchor them in concrete examples.

On the other hand, people tend to latch on to the concrete example and come up with a hack solution to it.

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I think so, and in my case, I am getting tired of the same TV BS, Music and even live radio makes a better way to pass the time. So in that case, it has changed my perspective.

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52

I don’t know about that - when I listen to records (yes, I still refer to all recorded music, streamed or otherwise, as “records”) I often have friends over for listening sessions… I love having my collection in a merged library. I pass my tablet around so folks can see my collection or find something they want me to listen to.

It’s not the same as the old days when we had the shared experience of reading liner notes to each other, etc. but it’s still shared experience.

2 Likes
53

Simple. After the Covid thing is over, call a few friends and invite them to your home to listen to music. Just like always. How does streaming change that? Am I missing something?

55

Too bad you withdrew both comments.

57

Different ways of streaming, I think. Hooking up to Spotify’s mass market playlists is one thing. I select albums and add them to Roon’s library, just like with CDs and downloads. So it’s a different way of acquiring.

I have spoken of appreciating Roon’s suggestions. They are remarkably good. But inevitably, many that I add to the library are not keepers, and I delete those (Hide, actually).

Because it is, as you say, my taste and my personality.