An article at The Atlantic about Tidal. It focuses on pop releases, intra-industry politicking, and the odds of survival.
@Danny, I know it is hard, but you guys have to find a way to connect to another service, adding your own metadata. Tidal integration in Roon is too critical to the music discovery experience and Tidal’s survival is too unlikely to let me sleep well.
A similar article in the Guardian
On the other hand Qobuz should have ceased to exist about 18 months ago according to all the pundits. it would be good to have an alternative though.
I take your point, but relying on any commercial streaming service will not make me sleep well. There’s no chance that for my listening life one service will provide the same music consistently enough. You have to buy music if you want stability over decades. And if you don’t want to buy you can’t expect stability, and therefore can’t expect “to sleep well”.
I’m torn on this. I have always thought in terms of discovering on Tidal and then buying the winners. But looking at my Roon library, I am not living up to that principle: I discover albums on Tidal and add them to the library faster than I buy them.
And the world at large is rapidly shifting to streaming.
Relying on Tidal is unsatisfactory. Apple isn’t going away soon, but doesn’t meet quality demands and doesn’t integrate with Roon.
Oh, the strain of our first-world problems.
The silver bullet is that Roon is the only library manager I have seen that let’s you focus on your streaming library and then export the artist/album list as Excel, which is invaluable should we have to migrate from Tidal.
The online migration managers only let you move playlists between services, afaik.
I will be pissed if tidal folds. Roon is dependent on tidal. Can I get my lifetime money back?
What roon needs is indeed more streaming services. On one side to give users more choice on the other to mitigate the risk in case Tidal folds.
On a side note I would be more worried about allmusic or one of the metadata providers folding, this would be a bigger issue for roon then Tidal folding.
Quite. I don’t subscribe to any streaming service, nor do I wish to.
The media seems to jump all over Tidal and likes to predict its demise mainly because it’s run by celebrities. Remember how much media attention it got before it was purchased?
I’m surprised that when they purchased the company, it had 500,000 subscribers and now they’re at 2.5 million, in just one year, and still everyone thinks they’re doomed.
Although I think it’s a corporate mess (3 CEO’s in 1 year), I don’t see it folding. In the future there’s a possibility that it may sell and hopefully any new owners would continue its relationship with a Roon.
Cheers, Greg
ps. I’m not currently interested in Qobuz, since it isn’t available in Canada.
I don’t seem them folding either, but I agree more services need to be added.
There are 2 others right now that provide lossless content: Qobuz and Deezer Elite (which still has a Sonos exclusive in the US).
I am bound by NDAs, but believe me, there will be more.
I find this statement to be very accurate. The press are fools when it comes to TIDAL… and it’s due to celebrity.
I think its probably a sign of a slow news day 
I remember a similar article about eight months ago quoting a survey that most music industry executives expected Tidal to fold. It gave me hope that a group who have such a terrible record of predicting the future of their own industry thought that.
I’m not that worried about streaming services in Roon. It is a worthy product without streaming. For me Roon is first and foremost about discovery in my music collection.
That is indeed the way I use it myself at the moment but the inexorable march towards streaming necessitates that Roon integrate with streaming services.
What I’m looking forward to is when MOFI and AF put their catalogues onto streaming services or start their own.
It would be great to have access to services where the audio quality was guaranteed (or at least known)
SJB
Roon should aim to include more streaming options. Spotify is one example - I know for now it doesn’t stream lossless, but in terms of image is could immensely help Roon gain younger customers. Those who care for Beyoncé, Jay-Z and Madonna’s lastest hits may be perfectly happy with lossy streaming - with the option to buy higher quality if they so wish.
There may be many good reasons for Spotify integration, but I’m pretty sure that increased access to Tidal owner’s music isn’t one of them. You can even get it lossy in Tidal if you prefer.
Agreed. But besides the fact that overall offers widely overlap, Spotify enjoys a kind of popularity that Tidal is still lacking - again especially among young customers. To many people Tidal remains a mysterious company - do they really care about lossless music, fair payment of artists and so on, or are they just a company with superstars at the top that make it just as likely to go down or become the next best thing in the universe ?
Adding a streaming service, I suspect is not as easy as it sounds. For Tidal to work as well as it does with Roon, Tidal and Roon had to work closely together. Other companies may not be so willing. Additionally, lets say that Quboz came onboard. How will Roon work if you are subscribed to both services? Suddenly, you’d be finding duplicates as music is in both services. And keep in mind, that through Roon you would be able to begin to quickly compare and contrast these various streaming companies. That may be something they don’t want to happen.
