i can not afford 119 dollars
wish i could pay 12 dollars a month for a year…
I did not feel like the annual subscription was for me and initially the lifetime subscription felt way too expensive. But then I thought that buying the lifetime membership and two hifiberries would be cheaper than buying two Bluesound Node2s. Not to mention how cheap it will be to add more nodes/renderers/bridges/players/whateveryoucallthem.
Really happy with my investment and as an added bonus, now I can play my flacs from my NAS to my laptop also. Can hardly wait what the future will hold.
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I am an audiophile and am very new to Roon, just downloaded a 14 day trial and I am blown away at how inexpensive it is.
Let me explain.
Two years ago I purchased a modestly priced music server, in the $4k (USD) range. I am able to “sync” my iTunes library of 44.1/16 or higher AIFF files, stream Tidal and a few other services, back up my content to my Google Drive account. I am very satisfied with this machine. Having said that, if I did not own this server, or if it broke and needed expensive repair, I would not replace it! Instead, I feel like adding Roon for about $10/month is a “bargain”, compared with purchasing a dedicated music server. Plus the app to control Roon is just plain “excellent”.
So for the price of Roon on my existing Windows 10 machine, to get all that functionality, the price to me seems to be one of the best bargains in audio!
I understand that, when MQA becomes available, Roon will do the “translation” in their software. No way I would dump my excellent DAC, so the savings continues!
Great value in audio!
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At 30 bucks a month Roon and TIDAL HiFi are the greater bargin in audio. In less than a year I have added 350’albums to my collection and been finding lots of forgotten gems in my existing collection.
I’ve been enjoying music more than I’ve done for years and that’s what it all about.
Pretty much all I’m missing is being able to stream the ECM label.
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To revive this issue for anyone considering Roon. It’s quite a specific piece of software aimed at a certain kind of client who is obsessed with music; collecting it, cataloguing it, learning about it AND listening to it.
A potential client will either “get it” instantly and think “THIS is what I’ve been waiting for all these years!” and instantly fall in love with it and won’t be able to do without it from day one, or view it as “another music player” and won’t be able to see what all the fuss (or cost) is all about.
If you fall into the former camp, me included, then we just keep quiet and laugh at how little we have to pay for something which has transformed our lives, literally.
To put into perspective, prior to Roon, I was collating music files for many hours a week with a growing sense that my collection was completely out of control and becoming soulless at the same time. Now Roon has done the collation for me AND made sense of the collection. It has brought it to life.
Cost is not an issue for those that NEED Roon.
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Roon provides a less expensive way to use a Meridian Sooloos Endpoint which originally needed a Meridian Core (server) to control it. Now Meridian allows its Core to run on a QNAP device but this could be more expensive if you already have a suitable PC or Mac.
How much extra?
This idea does not work for us. We offered the lifetime for early commitment, not so people can rent-to-own. The lifetime won’t last forever either, we often consider removing the lifetime option completely.
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Oh no! Now I better consider getting my second copy.
[quote=“danny, post## :28, topic:3628, full:true”]We offered the lifetime for early commitment, not so people can rent-to-own. The lifetime won’t last forever either, we often consider removing the lifetime option completely.
[/quote]
I’m very pleased to see this point made. Lifetime membership is equivalent to “angel investors” in a startup. It’s not a forever option.
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I’ve deliberately gone for the subscription over lifetime for a few reasons:
- $10 a month is affordable and easily ‘written off’.
- It means Roon is more likely to stay around in the long term.
- If the quality of Roon declines, I can just walk away.
- It provides an incentive to Roon to keep improving, due to the point above.
Lifetime memberships are good and bad. If everyone gets a lifetime membership and Roon hits ‘peak user base’ then there is no more money coming in and the software dies, but the users that buy a lifetime membership feel good because they have got a bargain.
The trick to subscription based software is the cost vs benefits balance. I need to feel I am getting enough benefit now and in future updates to warrant the monthly cost. At present with Roon I do, especially with the recent 1.3 update. I look forward to future updates 
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I always thought 20% uplift sounded reasonable. So $12/m vs $119 annual.
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I wonder if the retention rate might be lower if a monthly plan was offered. There are many threads on the forums from new users who didn’t “get it” until they used Roon for a couple of months. Those people would have left after month1 if they had not pre-paid the whole year.
That can be the only reason I can think of as any commercial director would advocate smoothing out cash flow with a monthly option that gives Roon a higher overall return. The trade off is the number of people who don’t sub at all because of the high upfront fee.
Perhaps a return to 30-day trial is needed (if it’s not already being offered). It syncs nicely with Tidal’s trial period too.
Hmm, the 15 day trial is a bit short especially when someone new is trying to figure out how to setup Roon in the first place. And certainly the extra time will give the Roon experience time to sink in.
Could you expound on this a little? It’s entirely possible that you have a more sophisticated understanding of cash flow than I do, but if a customer says to me, “We received your invoice for $100,000. Would you like that all at once or in monthly installments with a little extra tacked on?,” I’m going to say we’d prefer the total amount all at once and much sooner … because I’ve already paid the direct costs associated with that invoice, and I have new bills to pay coming in every day (not to mention overhead).
There are dozens of primers on basic accounting available on the web.
Um, thanks.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to be facetious, but if you think of a graph your cash flow with time/cash axes and compare a ragged sawtooth flow to a smooth line, everyone will go for the smooth line for reasons like forecasting, dealing with cash out, etc. Add to this if your net revenue in is higher with monthly (which you would do to cover the cost of credit+) then it’s favoured.
Okay, that’s more enlightening. Most of that probably applies to businesses that are orders of magnitude larger than mine, and also (I think) to businesses where’s there’s a less straightforward relationship between direct costs and amount charged to the customer.
Yep, and it’s just one of the reasons why all the big software houses’ payment models are moving toward SaaS - think Adobe, MS etc.