CUSTOM TAGS FOR TRACKS , ALBUMS

[Ted208]

Feature description:

Hi there,

First off, I want to say how much I appreciate the work that’s gone into Symfonium — it’s a fantastic app with a lot of flexibility and power.

One feature I’d really love to see added is support for custom tags, similar to how Roon handles them. In Roon, tags can be applied across different types of content (albums, artists, tracks, playlists, etc.), allowing users to create their own personalized filtering and organization system.

For example, I often tag albums — this makes it incredibly easy to pull up just the right music depending on what I’m feeling. It also helps with things like curating collections (e.g., “vinyl only,” “high-res,” “summer vibes,” “5-star picks,”, “New-Releases” etc.).

If Symfonium could support user-defined tags with multi-item support and filtering/sorting based on those tags, it would add a powerful layer of personalization and music discovery.

Thanks for considering, and keep up the great work!

Problem solved:

Currently, there isn’t a flexible way to group or categorize content across libraries in a personalized way. While filters and playlists are useful, they don’t offer the same level of customization and cross-content organization that custom tags allow.

Custom tags solve the problem of:

Cross-content categorization: Tags can link albums, artists, tracks, and playlists under a single theme (e.g., “Chill Sunday”, “Workout Favorites”, “Live Recordings”).

Better personal organization: Users can build their own systems that reflect how they listen to music, not just how it’s structured in the metadata.

Faster discovery and recall: Instead of remembering album names or digging through filters, tags offer a quick way to surface music that matches a user’s mood, activity, or preference.

Multi-dimensional sorting: Tags go beyond genre or year and let users add context — like “vinyl collection”, “high energy”, or “favorites from 2023”.

This would make the app far more powerful for users who manage large libraries or want more personalized control over their music experience.

Brought benefits:

Enhanced Personalization: Custom tags let users organize music in a way that reflects their own habits, moods, and styles — going far beyond standard metadata like genre or artist.

Improved Discovery: With tags, it’s easier to rediscover forgotten favorites or explore specific vibes or themes across your entire library.

Flexible Filtering: Users can create powerful combinations like “Jazz + Instrumental + 5-Star” or “Summer + 2022 + High-Res” to quickly zero in on what they want.

Streamlined Navigation: Tags offer a clean, consistent way to jump between content types — artists, albums, playlists, etc. — based on shared themes.

Collection Curation: Perfect for users who like to build and manage music collections based on personal criteria (e.g., “Vinyl Only”, “Grammy Winners”, “Live Sets”).

Future-Proofing the Library: Tags evolve with the user’s needs and grow organically, making the library more usable over time instead of more cluttered.

Other application solutions:

 
Roon: Roon offers a robust tagging system that allows users to create custom tags and apply them to almost anything — albums, artists, tracks, playlists, and even genres. These tags can then be used for filtering, sorting, and creating dynamic collections. This makes it incredibly easy to navigate large libraries with a personal touch.
 

Additional description and context:

 
My music library is quite large and diverse, and I often find myself wanting to group content in ways that go beyond standard filters. For example, I’d love to tag albums as “Vinyl Rips”, “Evening Vibes”, or “Family Friendly” and be able to quickly browse or filter using those labels — regardless of the source, genre, or artist.

It would be ideal if:

Tags could be applied manually (individually or in bulk).

Tags were browsable and filterable from the UI.

Tags could be synced/exported, or at least backed up with the library.

Tags could be applied to multiple content types (albums, artists, playlists, etc.).

Even simple implementation (like one-word labels or tag groups) would be a huge step forward. Power users especially would benefit, but it could also be a very intuitive feature for anyone who wants more control over how their music is organized.

 

Screenshots / Mockup:

 

 

 

 

[mista_j]

Well I have good news for you. This app supports Album, Track, Artist & Composer tags

As well as Mood, Style & Releasetype Tags

In my setup https://support.symfonium.app/t/my-basic-adaptive-now-playing-screen/7842?u=mista_j you can see how ive chose to utilize & display many of my custom tags.

I think much of what you’d like can fall into the tags currently offered.

If you are like me you may jerryrig some standard tags to get more information through but in your case that may not be necessary.

In my library I use the composer tag for composers as well as samples & interpolations, all my samples have a special character in front of them though so I can use the filter chips to see only my samples or actual composers.

You also have full use of the comment & description fields.

Here is one of my files:

I have content tags in my track tags to denote what a track is about, the message / topics

I also have a custom Track releasetype “TRT” & Race / gender tag

My comments host a bevy of info
MA - media added timestamp & person
MS - media source
MT - media type
CC - custom cover info

Playlists get listed here as well as what i call my Rapsheet which is a list & count of Explicit words

I dont think theres a button to press where the dev can just support all custom values & then theres a question of creating an app view or multiple views to host any possible custom tags.

Some of my custom tags would be standard had i been using a server / web host but everything is currently local so ive adapted my library as such.

I’m Using mp3tag to sort of concatenate my custom tags to the fields supported in Symfonium so if need be I can use mp3tag to reverse this or move that info elsewhere if I ever decided to play my music elsewhere but I’m very happy staying lol

[Tolriq]

You can already add custom tags in the tags of the media, but they are not cross type, so tags for tracks / albums / artists.

[Ted208]

Thanks for the information, is there any way to add custom tags without mp3tagger , Roon provides a way to add a custom Tags directly without changing the metadata of the file itself !! I would like to do that instead of adding metadata like Tags to each and every Track !! Thanks in advance for the reply !!

[mista_j]

There are other programs for tags but unlike roon they will be editing the actual metadata of files. Other servers may offer that functionality though. Youd need to research that as im not sure.

If you don’t want to add to the metadata of the files then what you need / want is a bridge from roon to Symfonium to read what you already have on their end. That may be a conversation to have with the roon dev as well to see if they are / have been willing & able to make that info available.

The downside is if for whataver reason they don’t make that info available or this dev doesn’t implement that “bridge” your extra info is stuck with roon.

If all that pans out The difficult questuon is how does the dev support ANY & ALL roon rags?

As a civillian.. I have no clue.

Out of curiosity what are the pros to not altering actual files?

Is that feature that simply makes the roon experience across multiple devices more uniform?

Other than that you wouldn’t have to deal with the oddities of each codec when it comes to tagging so that’s nice but its possible that none of your custom tags are transferable outside that ecosystem.

[Ted208]

I just took a free trial to access and see the features of Roon , and its amazing !!

Roon has so many features that symfonium doesnt have !! I mean not saying anything bad but if symofonium dev could add those features it could be awsome , becuase im having a tough time setting up roon on android and im not able to figure out how to access Roon outside my home , got to do some port forwarding but its tough , symfonium simplicity is damn good but some features i wanted to see on symfonium as well , like on Roon we have a feature where we can bookmark albums and tracks , and we can also add albums and tracks to listen later , same like Netflix , in symfonium its resume point but that functionality is completly different tho , then in Roon you can make profiles and lots of stuff , if your intrested to know more you can refer Roon-s 100 days master series , its just good but on android i was having some difficulity setting up roon !!!

Coming back to your question , i dont want to edit each and every tracks metadata for tags , thats the simplicity roon provides , like click a album or track or a playlist and just give a Tag and on the go you can access it easily !! I wanted to add one more thing there a focus feature on roon which im loving so much , click on that focus feature and you can filter out with high res quality , codes like 24 bit or 16 bit , whcih year the album came out , who was the artist or the performer , its just next level !! Its filters are damn good !! If you want checkout it out !! Man roon is addiction, its ecosystem is lovely , once you enter you just cant leave !! I cant define their ecosystem also !! Its just awsome

[Tolriq]

People don’t want to pay 6$ for an Android app and you want the features of a 900$ solution

Furthermore the main point of roon is that there’s a server running on proper hardware not a phone app.

I’m working slowly on bringing Open subsonic on par with best solutions but this takes time.

But anything you add in Symfonium and not in tags or in a server is something not shared with other devices and so less interesting in the scope of Symfonium.

If people are willing to pay more on day then maybe they’ll get more but for the moment you are not really comparing comparable things.

[Ted208]

Im sorry if i said anything wrong , your efforts are next level man !! But i took a trial for Roon not paying for Lifetime atm , i did settle for symfonium just wanted to say that roons features are extraordinary and whether if they could come on symfonium !! Im not trying to compare anything , just a normal guy asking for more features !!

[mista_j]

I think for definitive tags editing the metadata is a better solution. Bookmarking sounds like favorites just has a new name lol. I also think the filtering in Symfonium is S-Tier in my opinion & you can definitely sort / filter by quality or codec if you want.

I’ve heard great things about roon i know its very expensive but people love it. My household is heavily invested in Sonos equipment so I’m just taking advantage of that for now, though they are far from perfect

The ability to add tags from within the app is cool. Adding tags on the fly seems nice. I dont think I’d pay that price tag for it but i do see the appeal.

For listen later you could just add those tracks or albums to a playlist & in Symfonium playlists can be tagged within the app.

Not knocking roon or its feature set but many of these festures sound like repackaged standard music player features which im sure UI wise they’ve perfected.

But at the core I think alot of what you want is possible in Symfonium albiet in a different presentation.

It’s highly customizable but you’ve gotta get under the hood & fine tune it to get peak performance for your needs especially if they are niche.

All that said it seems for now we’ll need to ride the wave as Symfonium progresses & it’s moving fast IMHO

[splinter]

@Ted208

Man roon is addiction, its ecosystem is lovely , once you enter you just cant leave

That’s why they built it that way. And they also charge you big money for it, so it makes it even harder to leave. They probably learned from Apple and found a similar-minded target group.

Here again, you can switch servers or players or platforms whenever you want. Having been through a number of technical revolutions regarding music playback, I wouldn’t want to miss that feature, because it is the most valuable.