TL/DR version: I want to quit Tidal, but Roon does not integrate with Spotify (didn’t it used to?) or with Apple. The last posts about this are months or years old … so any news from the integration wars?
I’ve been using Roon for 2+ years now, and I’m still very happy with it. And there are ways I’d like to see it perform better for the way I buy, catalogue, and listen to music.
Specifically, I subscribe to three music streaming services: Apple, Spotify, and Tidal.
Apple Music because of legacy reasons. I’ve got gigs and gigs stored on their servers and it’s taken me years and years to get the metadata and categorization right. If I ever let go of this one, it’ll have claw marks all over it.
Spotify for my kids. Apple Music’s shortcoming meant that my music master library was filling up with so much music that was not part of my universe, plus all their friends use Spotify and they liked the social media aspect of it.
Tidal, because of Roon, and, at the time, the higher quality audio stream.
I’d like to drop Tidal, and use my Apple Music library (both owned by me and “borrowed” via Apple Music), or maybe Spotify.
There have been plenty of posts and feature requests about this. The Tldr is, Apple Music and Spotify is not happening. Roon wants tight integration and those companies are not interested. Deezer has confirmed they want to make it happen but that has been going on for a while.
Shame on Spotify. Tidal is expensive and poor for music discovery, Spotify is excellent for discovering random racks and artists - the community element here is great.
Qobuz - very limited - but may retry.
Tidal - hate paying it money.
Deezer - ?
Apple Music - don’t care preferably not
Amazon music - too tied into crappy services
Real shame as Roon plus Spotify HiFi would be a perfect combination. Wha steps are Roon taking to address the collaborative playlist access? Even a Spotify conversion utility would help create new experiences…
Yes I know - but the world changes so they may have to repeat that position time and time again… But it also erodes Roon’s usefulness in my use case. Hey Ho - need to ensure that Roon offers me additional - even though its not their fault.
Am considering between Qobuz and Tidal to supplement. Sounds like monthly payments will run as follows:
Roon
Spotify
Tidal / Qobuz
That gets me the full audio experience (as well as buying physical esoteric media when not available).
Tidal, Qobuz, and Apple Music. Players are Roon, Audirvana 3.5, Audirvana Studio, and Apple Music. I pay $120 for Tidal Hi-Fi Plus (Best Buy) and $130 for Qobuz. Roon and Audirvana 3.5 lifetime are paid for. Apple Music is free from Verizon Wireless. I paid $50 for Audirvana Studio for year one and will need to decide if I want to pay $70 per year to keep it.
I keep Tidal and Qobuz synced with Roon Versions and use Tune My Music to keep Apple Music synced with Qobuz.
I use soundizz to transfer over discover weekly, release radwr any mixes i like and favourite playlists from spotify to tidal. Using the free spotify subscription.
That feels like a balance but if you want your Spotify playlists synced you’ll also need to pay out for TuneMyMusic, Soundiiz or FreeYourMusic account.
Although short of full Spotify integration — which is unlikely to ever happen due to Roon’s architecture / business model not alining with Spotify’s — it would be great too see Roon incorporate some of the more basic playlist sync features (offered by Soundiz etc.) directly into Roon, rather than having to pay out for another subscription with a 3rd party.
There seems to be a whole area around playlists that could do with a revamp in a future Roon release. Not only the management of them in Roon, but also the import, sharing and syncing of them with other platforms. The logical first step would be the sharing back of Roon playlists to Qobuz/Tidal. But after that Spotify would seem like the next likely candidate to look at syncing playlist with esp. given it’s ubiquitous usage and strong ecosystem of playlists.