Music provider priority

[sad-error]

It would be great if there was a way to choose provider priority. I know the Usage and Notes say that MA is supposed to provide the highest quality possible, but I think this isn't the case - case in point, my MA will gladly stream lossy spotify over flac tidal of the same song. If this cannot be made more robust, an option to arrange providers by preference would be very welcome.

I am attaching a screenshot of a scenario where MA clearly knows it has better quality in other versions but will still stream the lossy version.

[marcelveldt]

Provider details only shows spotify so it cant stream Tidal.
Only if you add an item to the library we will lookup and match all providers, we will not do / can not do that automatically

[sad-error]

I am confused - I did not add this to the library manually, it was part of the radio and was automatically found on spotify - so why not on tidal, if it's there? Actually, all the songs that are part of a radio are streamed from spotify unless they are on the local drive. The provider settings on this window show only the source where it's currently playing from, it seems?

[OzGav]

You are looking at a track from the Spotify provider, that is, it is not in your library. You didn’t provide enough context before, so it seems you are using radio mode. What was the first track that you started radio mode on and how did you find it? Was it in your library?

[marcelveldt]

We can't auto match everything as we will burn too many api calls. Only your "favorite" tracks, added to the library, are matched.

[sad-error]

We can't auto match everything as we will burn too many api calls. Only your "favorite" tracks, added to the library, are matched.

I understand the api limitations and that makes sense, but when I click on play radio, 99% of the tracks come from spotify. The only way for me to get tracks from tidal seems to be by removing spotify from providers alltogether - is there a way for it to prioritize tidal?

[sad-error]

The (reproducible, at least for me) steps are these - go to the search field, search for an artist, click on any. Under the artists, the provider details are listed as spotify, jellyfin and tidal, in this order. Click on the blue play arrow, select play radio. All the tracks in the radio are either streamed from spotify or jellyfin, very few from tidal, even though in most of the songs when I go to show info, there are clearly tidal versions listed as well.

[OzGav]

So you are seeding the radio mode with an artist. When you do the search you will likely see results from multiple providers for the artist. Are you selecting the tidal version of the artist?

[sad-error]

Ah I think I see what's going on. I open the artist in the library, and it seems that the library for this has been automatically populated mostly with spotify songs - I'm assuming it's pulling liked songs from spotify and adding them to the library when I add the provider? With some other artists I don't have this problem and will mostly pull songs from tidal.

[OzGav]

I dont see any evidence that anything is getting added to the library. https://www.music-assistant.io/usage/#the-library

[OzGav]

Here is some more detail about how it works

Starting from a Track or Album:
Radio Mode retrieves similar tracks using the track's provider mappings (which is shown in the Provider Details section in the UI). When you start from a track in the library, Music Assistant checks each of the track's provider mappings in order and uses the first provider that supports the similar tracks feature (Apple Music, Deezer, Spotify, Subsonic, Tidal, or YouTube Music). For example, if a track exists on both Spotify and Tidal, and Spotify is listed first in the provider mappings, Spotify's similar tracks algorithm will be used exclusively. When starting from an album, Music Assistant first selects base tracks from that album, then applies the same provider selection logic for each track. If you start with a track or album that's not in the library (i.e., directly from a music provider), that provider's similar tracks implementation is used.

Starting from an Artist:
Radio Mode works differently when starting from an artist. For an artist in the library with multiple provider mappings, Music Assistant fetches the top tracks from all providers where that artist exists, combines them into a single pool, then randomly samples five tracks as the base. Each sampled track then queries its own provider for similar tracks. This means radio mode started from an artist typically produces a diverse mix of results from multiple providers, as each base track contributes similar tracks from its respective provider (e.g., some from Spotify, some from Tidal, some from Apple Music). For artists not in the library, only that provider's top tracks are used as the base.

[sad-error]

I dont see any evidence that anything is getting added to the library. https://www.music-assistant.io/usage/#the-library

server info shows some 20k tracks in the library, and I haven't added any of them manually, so it had to pull them off something when i added the providers.

[OzGav]

In the screenshots and information you provided above there is nothing which shows you are accessing an in-library item. Maybe that isn't the case but we can only go on the information you provide. Rgeardless I have supplied an explanation of the logic used when radio mode is selected.