Category: Announcement

Classical music reimagined

We understand that not all music fits into the artist-album-track mold of popular music. That’s why we’ve come up with a completely new visual style and information layout for classical music, designed to make it easy to find the recordings you’re looking for.

Our new Composer Discography view lets you browse albums by composer, and you can Focus to find performances by conductor, performer, form, period, and more. Interested in recordings of Martha Argerich performing Chopin? Maybe a Nocturne? How about von Karajan conducting the Berlin Philharmonic performing the Eroica? In just a few clicks, Focus will get you there.

Valence recommendations for art music are extraordinarily nuanced; you’ll never see a suggestion to check out Haydn because you’re listening to Mozart. You’ll find notable compositions by composer, top conductors of composers’ works, and best-known performers of compositions.

Many Roon users are avid collectors who have assembled their music libraries over years of listening. In classical music as in other genres, Roon 1.8 shows you the recordings in your library first, but then also provides a bridge to the world of streaming music. The ability to instantly compare hundreds or even thousands of performances of your favorite compositions is unique in the music world.

On Monday, we’ll take a look at how Roon 1.8 is personalized for you!

Focus: far beyond “search”

Roon’s Focus feature has long been a powerful way to filter and sort the albums in your library using Roon’s extensive metadata. Our real aspiration has always been to make the power and flexibility of Focus available in more contexts.

To accomplish that goal, we redesigned Focus to combine multi-criteria filters with sort and text filter, creating a unified interface that’s available virtually everywhere in Roon. Now you can Focus on tracks on an album, artists in a genre, albums in an artist’s discography, or collaborations among artists.

The impact of this new design on classical music (and composer-based browsing in other genres) is profound. It’s now possible to Focus on compositions by period, instrumentation, and form, and to sort them by title, popularity, and composition date. You can now also browse albums which feature works by a composer.

While Focus once let you filter and sort the music in your library, it now extends to all the streaming music available on TIDAL and Qobuz, giving you a truly 360-degree view of artists and composers – whether you have their complete discographies in your library or not.

Tomorrow, we’ll be sharing a preview of the new features designed specifically for classical music!

Context & meaning, powered by Valence

When you think of discovering new music, you may think of reading a great review, or finding that you love the opening act at a concert. You might imagine a conversation with a friend – maybe one who really knows their music history or stays on top of new releases – who happens to know what you like, too.

You probably don’t think of a network of servers analyzing the listening habits of zillions of users, using collaborative filtering to identify patterns in the data and find other content that you just might like. That’s the reality of algorithmic recommendation, though, which is why it often falls short of expectations.

Valence does more than compare you to other users. It uses Roon’s deep metadata as its foundation, providing context about music and connections between the people who compose, perform, and produce it. Next, it considers your listening history before filtering for the results that are most popular, but only among listeners who are experts in that genre.

This multidimensional approach is what gives Valence recommendations meaning. The very idea of “Top performers of works by Johannes Brahms” (or any of the examples in this post) would be impossible without a fundamental understanding of composers, genres, time periods, geography, compositions, form, instrumentation, performers, and collaborations.

Tomorrow, we’ll be sharing a preview of the new browsing tools available in Roon 1.8!

A completely new look & feel

We’ve rolled out the latest version of Roon, which is so big that we’ve put together a series of feature previews to show off its highlights. Today, we bring you a peek at Roon’s completely new look and feel.

Roon now has a fresh new visual design that takes its inspiration from the concept of the museum – an airy, neutral environment in which to display things of beauty. You’ll see your music right where you want it: front and center.

True to our founding principles, we don’t think of music as data, and we don’t think it should be presented as if it were. We took cues from classic music magazines, using bold typography and innovative layout to bring music to life.

All this beauty is much more than skin deep. With our latest innovations in data presentation, Roon is now easier and more engaging to use than ever. More on that tomorrow!

Welcome to an immersive new music experience. A new look, new intelligence, and new features, designed for the community of experts that call Roon home.

A completely new look & feel

Roon now has a fresh new visual design that takes its inspiration from the idea of the museum – an airy, neutral environment in which to display things of beauty. We also took cues from classic music magazines, using bold typography and innovative layout to bring music to life. Along with innovations in data presentation, Roon is now a joy to use.

Context & meaning, powered by Valence

Roon goes far beyond the “algorithmic recommendations” you’ll find in mass-market streaming products. Using its deep metadata and an understanding of over 100,000 expert listeners from Valence, Roon now surfaces and suggests music with uncanny sensitivity and insight.

Focus: far beyond “search”

Roon’s Focus feature has long been the most powerful way to explore your own music, but now it goes beyond your library, giving you a 360º-view of artists, genre, performers, and composers. Filter and sort virtually any music in Roon by performer, producer, composer, label, and a wide variety of other parameters.

Classical music reimagined

The way you explore classical music is different; that’s why we’ve come up with a completely new visual style and information layout, designed to make it easy to find the classical recordings you’re looking for. Valence identifies relationships between composers, conductors, and performers – and helps weed out the no-name releases – so you can find well-regarded performances of any composition.

An experience tailor-made for you

Valence now makes suggestions based not only on context (what you’re looking at and what you’re listening to) but also on your taste. Right on Roon’s brand new Home page, you’ll see a dashboard which lets you explore your listening – both the fine-grained history of the last few weeks, and the statistical view of your listening over time.

Since the success of the 1.7 release in November, we’ve received tons of great feedback from our community, and we have been listening.

We’ve implemented a number of features in this release (version 1.7 build 537), including improvements to the “New Releases for You” and “Now Playing” screens, as well as a number of other changes to improve the way you discover and listen to the music you love.

Continue reading “Discover even better music recommendations and “Auto Sleep” with the latest version of Roon 1.7″

Roon Labs is proud to announce the largest project we’ve ever undertaken. After two years of focused design and engineering, we’re unveiling an entirely new technology we call Valence.

Continue reading “Introducing Valence — finding your next music obsession with Roon!”