I like roon's basic premise that simply looking at a basic folder is dull, uninformative and uninspiring. If you only ever have music in a digital release, unless you then google and find the information yourself, you don't have anything like the information you had on an lp sleeve. The internet puts that all information at your fingertips but not necessarily in a convenient or helpfully structure way, this app hopefully offers that.
For example, you're starting out getting into jazz & you download some Miles Davis, you have no idea of the other great artist involved in that release. You'd have to look it up and either commit it all to memory or save a link in a separate app. This is all too disjointed for 2016 IMHO.
I have have a pretty large digital collection that I have amassed over the years, something like 90,000 songs, that covers numerous genres, sub genres and micro genres, with thousands of artists. I just don't have a good enough memory to remember all those names and connections. Every music library app I've come across has been poor at handling very large libraries or multiple genres, so I've stuck to browsing by folder, which is unsatisfactory. If I open Misami Tsuchiya, and it tells me that he was the guitarist / lead vocalist of Ippu-Do, and also has connections to Japan, Bill Nelson, Ryuchi Sakamoto, Duran Duran etc, then the experience is exponentially enriched. Same for (picking at random) The Flamingos, Model 500, Tartit, Pauline Anna Strom, Julianna Barwick, Young L, mmm, Hopeton Lewis, Doris, Dino Saluzzi, Thomas Esterine, Chuck Person, Spencer Nielsen etc etc, instead of just names and basic connections you have the option of their entire history at your fingertips. Also you could go into label discographies, producer discorgraphies, studio connections etc etc. The possibilities of harvesting the huge amount of information available on the internet and presenting it in an attractive and easily available application seem obvious to me.
For me, that is what a music library app should be doing. You have cataloging software that will do this for your physical collections, but there's little financial motivation for a digital version it seems. Most who offer a remotely similar service do it through basic streaming service connections and whilst their libraries are getting better and better I still prefer my personally curated selection, that contains plenty not available on Spotify.
For example, you're starting out getting into jazz & you download some Miles Davis, you have no idea of the other great artist involved in that release. You'd have to look it up and either commit it all to memory or save a link in a separate app. This is all too disjointed for 2016 IMHO.
I have have a pretty large digital collection that I have amassed over the years, something like 90,000 songs, that covers numerous genres, sub genres and micro genres, with thousands of artists. I just don't have a good enough memory to remember all those names and connections. Every music library app I've come across has been poor at handling very large libraries or multiple genres, so I've stuck to browsing by folder, which is unsatisfactory. If I open Misami Tsuchiya, and it tells me that he was the guitarist / lead vocalist of Ippu-Do, and also has connections to Japan, Bill Nelson, Ryuchi Sakamoto, Duran Duran etc, then the experience is exponentially enriched. Same for (picking at random) The Flamingos, Model 500, Tartit, Pauline Anna Strom, Julianna Barwick, Young L, mmm, Hopeton Lewis, Doris, Dino Saluzzi, Thomas Esterine, Chuck Person, Spencer Nielsen etc etc, instead of just names and basic connections you have the option of their entire history at your fingertips. Also you could go into label discographies, producer discorgraphies, studio connections etc etc. The possibilities of harvesting the huge amount of information available on the internet and presenting it in an attractive and easily available application seem obvious to me.
For me, that is what a music library app should be doing. You have cataloging software that will do this for your physical collections, but there's little financial motivation for a digital version it seems. Most who offer a remotely similar service do it through basic streaming service connections and whilst their libraries are getting better and better I still prefer my personally curated selection, that contains plenty not available on Spotify.