Just read about this, now downloading an update and rebuilding its database. Listening has just got interesting again. I hope!
Interestingly it doesn’t pickup the folder.jpg to display an image for the folder.
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I must be in the minority, don’t think I’ll ever use this. I suppose there must be a use case as so many have been asking for it, but I don’t need it.
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First observation: I prefer Roon’s discovery function over the folder view. However, the folder view lacks a higher level picture at album level, so it’s not as useful as I had hoped when looking for a favourite album. I miss the visual cue. Then again sometimes Roon does not find the album I want.
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Not sure this adds much to how I use Roon. Other people may and indeed will have a different view
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I think it is a nice feature for some Roon users, but I do not think it is useful for me, and I do not need it.
They should spend their resources in fixing search, it never works whenever I search for a playlist.
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A question re folder view: does it show albums that Roon doesn’t recognise in its database. Perhaps with poor or even no metadata? That would be a real strength for some people.
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To keep the file-level viewer tidy, you’ll only see audio files, images, and PDFs that Roon supports. Unsupported files, empty folders, or folders containing only unsupported formats won’t be displayed. Any corrupted files found in your folders will be highlighted in red.
I think it depends on how you interpret that (which is from this Roon post).
Stephen
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Yes, it is unclear - album tracks may be in a supported format, e.g. .flac. But not recognised due to absent metadata.
But I wonder if it would allow selection of whole album folder containing the tracks, and pressing play…
Sometimes it’s better to not look… 
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Some people have been using folder view navigation for so long . . . they are loathe to change and let the software package do it for them. . . . so Roon acquiesced I suppose.
Not sure what this brings to the party… to me the main reason for Roon is thats its location agnostic, combining local storage and available streams in a holistic view. My local files follow the Artist/Album/Track structure anyway so its just a pictureless artist view for me. Would be interested to know the reasoning and use cases though as it might have benefits unknown to me.
See my post, above.
It allows them to (potentially) sell to those for whom lack of “folder view” is a hard “no.”
I wish I had browsing/searching by file structure (folder view) on my current library/playing software. However I’m not convinced it would tempt me to pay the cost of Roon.
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Are those primarily “elderly”?
Well…. The one story I heard was that it would address the needs of people who had amassed very many unidentifiable collections of music over time and had filed them in a bespoke directory structure that they’d built over time. Might include venue, or promoter etc - so not artist based or album based. There were claims of libraries of many (tens? hundreds?) of thousands of such tracks/collections. You’d need to be a bit long in the tooth to build that much up, I guess.
The Harman buy out does seem to have precipitated quite a change of priorities, though - not quite sure where this goes now…
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Aside from non-standard filing structures, it would address the needs of people who ripped a lot of LPs before being aware of the need for metadata, so having hundreds or more albums with no metadata at all, yet all systematically named and filed. Or ripped CDs, even if at the time of ripping aware of the need for metadata and knowing CDs have it already embedded - but unaware that metadata are often hopelessly inconsistent, at least with classical music. (E.g three different recordings of a particular work, with composer variously given as Mozart Wolfgang, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and W A Mozart; genre given as orchestral, symphonic and classical; recording artist as orchestra name, conductor, and soloist (and any of those might be presented differently in different CD metadata), etc.) once collections have been amassed it can be a soul destroying task to try and add/fix metadata, even with tools that are supposed to make it easy.
Are such people elderly? Ignoring the ageist connotations, it depends on your definition of elderly - but I guess that the chances are that a person with a large LP collection that they have ripped is more likely to have at least reached middle age.
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It has been pointed out on another social media platform that the folder view is useful for locating compilation albums, and those classical albums that have not been recognised by Roon.
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