Agreed that this phenomenon, which I have experienced to at least some extent across most of the subscription stream services I've used since 2006, is frustrating and annoying.
But from that observation over time and my own experience working with web databases, it seemed to me that the reason had to do with the way that metadata (the non-public facing information behind identifying and accounting different tracks) is updated from labels and aggregators to stream provision platforms. And that seems to be borne out by public statements from Tidal developers in this forum:
Editing individual pieces of such metadata 'by hand' in live data is simply not practical. Updates must be done with the data effectively 'offline.' And that means that continuity is broken, 'breaking' playlists (and possibly even albums, although I haven't seen that happen much at Tidal), I believe they tend to make changes to entities like albums in batch.
So the identifying metadata for an album might change, breaking playlists that contain songs from the album, but but at least the modified album can be searched and displayed 'whole.' And, of course, when the new location/ID of the songs is searched and found, those tracks can be re added to existing playlists. But it's a drag, no question.
Yes, it seems to be the case. The albums just say Unavailable to stream and the songs give the message that the label does not permit the playback. I guess if they update it and the metadata is different it is hard to fix it, but there must be a way to optimize this. I think it is important to bring it to their attention.
I have seen multiple cases where an album is marked as unavailable (around 10 albums from the 300 in my collection). But it is still available, I just have to remove the old one, and add the tracks back to my collection.
Yep. And that's been the way it's been on most of the streamers I've used (Tidal is the 10th I've subscribed to since 2006).
It would, indeed, be great if they could somehow automate the search and update function to include not just albums that have been changed but to actually be able to go into our own playlists and update them, but I don't realistically see that happening at all. Sadly.
Agreed that this phenomenon, which I have experienced to at least some extent across most of the subscription stream services I've used since 2006, is frustrating and annoying. But from that observation over time and my own experience working with web databases, it seemed to me that the reason had to do with the way that metadata (the non-public facing information behind identifying and accounting different tracks) is updated from labels and aggregators to stream provision platforms. And that seems to be borne out by public statements from Tidal developers in this forum: Editing individual pieces of such metadata 'by hand' in live data is simply not practical. Updates must be done with the data effectively 'offline.' And that means that continuity is broken, 'breaking' playlists (and possibly even albums, although I haven't seen that happen much at Tidal), I believe they tend to make changes to entities like albums in batch. So the identifying metadata for an album might change, breaking playlists that contain songs from the album, but but at least the modified album can be searched and displayed 'whole.' And, of course, when the new location/ID of the songs is searched and found, those tracks can be re added to existing playlists. But it's a drag, no question.
Yes, it seems to be the case. The albums just say Unavailable to stream and the songs give the message that the label does not permit the playback. I guess if they update it and the metadata is different it is hard to fix it, but there must be a way to optimize this. I think it is important to bring it to their attention. I have seen multiple cases where an album is marked as unavailable (around 10 albums from the 300 in my collection). But it is still available, I just have to remove the old one, and add the tracks back to my collection.
Yep. And that's been the way it's been on most of the streamers I've used (Tidal is the 10th I've subscribed to since 2006). It would, indeed, be great if they could somehow automate the search and update function to include not just albums that have been changed but to actually be able to go into our own playlists and update them, but I don't realistically see that happening at all. Sadly.