Oh come on, there are luxury car vs normal car analogies all over the place and a general air of “if you can’t afford pay for it then you shouldn’t be here” or “Roon’s a snip compared to the 100000 we regularly pay for our hifi” etc. If that’s not elitist or snobbish then I don’t know what is.
I don’t think it’s expensive for what it offers mysefl, but it’s still relatively too much for some in these hard times, I applaud any way in which the goodness can be experienced for less so more can enjoy it.
They would probably offer you the 540c, or perhaps a used model. I’m sure if you wandered into a McLaren showroom with 150k they would at least show you some respect.
You obviously have not walked in to a luxury car show room… Mclaren dealership do not sale used car unless you go to private dealers… The same goes for Roon, Cant afford perpetual license? Buy a yearly one… I am not sure where the comment of respect comes from??? Has anybody disrespected you up at Roon Labs?
My comment re lack of respect comes from the tone of posts like ‘you obviously have not walked in to a luxury car showroom’. Anyway, I think my earlier posts cover all I want to say in this thread, so I’ll leave this one for others now.
The Roon development team ostensibly believes that it has found the inflection point in the maximum revenue curve with the $120/500 pricing structure. Raise prices and demand will decrease enough that revenue will decline. Also, lower prices and demand will increase – but not enough to offset the lower prices, thus revenue will decline again. Elasticity of demand. No rhetorical arguments here will change that.
The important piece your chart is missing is profit. Assuming that the info from the metadata providers makes up the largest chunk of price and that is a flat cost regardless of the number of subscribers then your chart might be correct but if there are significant decreases per user at certain thresholds (and i have no clue if there are) then lowering the price to attract more customers might be more profitable.
That being said while profit may be better with more users (assuming economies of scale applies), the additional users can also bring about more headaches with support and demands. My guess is the Roon has set the price accordingly to accommodate both factors.
Just a reminder folks to keep discussion civil and on point. The object is to share knowledge and points of view about a feature request, not win a debate with rhetorical flourishes. Try to talk about ideas rather than other posters.
The single most helpful thing to do in a Feature Request thread is “like” a previous post that represents your view. If you like the original request or a later revision, hit the heart rather than adding a further post. If you think that an objection to the request is valid, like the objection rather than restate or develop it in your own post. This gives the devs a simple rough guide to users views without needing to analyse screens and screens of posts.
I could easily justify to myself paying the Roon annual or lifetime fee. My difficulty is that if I want to use Roon, given my current home hardware setup and the size of my collection, I apparently would have to spend about €400 on an Intel NUC or equivalent plus another €400 or so to buy a newer iPad than the one I have. So together with the Roon licence, that’s more or less a grand. And the main benefit for me is what seems to be a really nice browsing experience when I’m sitting on the sofa listening to music plus perhaps better metadata. I’m not interested in the many sophisticated technical audio capabilities - I don’t mean to belittle them, they’re just not for me. Unfortunately most of my listening time is while I’m in the car, as opposed to on the sofa, and so I won’t have much time to enjoy the aspects of Roon that most appeal to me. This means it’s impossible for me to justify (to myself and my financial conscience) what I would need to spend to implement Roon. I’m not asking Maserati for a steering wheel, I’m just saying Maserati isn’t offering anything that would be a sensible purchase for me, so we won’t be doing business together. If Roon had an offering which didn’t require me to buy a NUC and an iPad I would be happy to sign up and Roon would get the same licence fee from me. All of which is a long winded way of staying I agree with the OP and would love a Roon lite which gave the enhanced “browsing while listening” experience plus maybe better metadata without requiring a large extra hardware spend none of which goes into Roon’s pockets. I will keep tracking what Roon is doing because I love what they are doing and the respect it shows for music listening. I just wish it would come to a point where it makes sense for me to join in as a paying user.
You may be unnecessarily complicating things wrt to cost. First of all ripped music has to be stored somewhere, for most of us it’s a NAS or PC, which both can run Roon (within reason).
I’d guess by your description of what you think Roon can do that you haven’t actually trialled it yet? It really offers a phenomenal window into your music collection, the discovery feature and the focus option, showing roads and pathways that no other software has. I’m constantly rediscovering albums (or discovering ones I bought and never listened to).
As for the iPad, second hand they are available quite reasonably and there’s always Santa Claus - I could always put in a good word for you!
You don’t need a NUC. I originally ran Roon on a Laptop. You don’t need an iPad (Which you will want or need to upgrade at sometime anyway) There are other options including just a laptop.
On Holiday recently I used Roon with a Laptop and Explorer2 into a small radio. Worked a treat.
I agree, if you dont listen at home, Roon maybe isn’t for you but that’s hardly Roons fault either. (Not that you said it was)
Roon does what it does very well, but this means it needs what it needs to work. Hence the hardware requirements.
The trial is great, you can try it and if you like it buy it but it isn’t for everyone.
I’ve often thought that if Roon was a competitively priced piece of software I could outright buy, I’d be in. But I don’t need or want yet another subscription in my life, especially just to play/manage stuff I already own. It seems like a promising piece of software, but considering I already have a functioning media player, spending $300 is kind of absurd. But then again, I suppose this isn’t a product intended for music fans on a budget, which is unfortunate.
Not suggesting free/cheap at all. Just competitively priced and sold as a regular piece of software. Both JRiver and Audirvana are around $70, which I think is fair, and not remotely ‘free’ or ‘cheap.’ I would definitely purchase Roon at that price. Just zero interest in yet another subscription, especially since it seems like the sources of all the Roon ‘experience’ are from open/free sources like Allmusic, Wikipedia, Last.fm, etc. It’s super cool that Roon puts them all in one place in a really nice UI, but I’m not sure, from an information standpoint, what the subscription is for or why it’s necessary.
[quote=“Steve_C1, post:58, topic:27764”]
… sources of all the Roon ‘experience’ are from open/free sources…
[/quote]Hi Steve,
That’s a false assumption. Roon has commercial licenses ($$$) that grant access to the metadata sources they use, plus the cost of the cloud services in use to meld and groom all that data into a coherent information source.
It’s down to each of us as individuals to decide if Roon is value for money or too expensive for us … but I’m not aware of any other media server application that comes close to offering the functionality that Roon offers. So comparisons against the cost of other applications is quite difficult to make.
I am getting the functionality I need out of my relatively simple MacMini>DAC>single output setup with JRiver + an iOS remote. My interest in Roon is largely just because I like the UI and native Mac support (JRiver is powerful, but ugly and not really fun to use), and again, I’m totally interested in supporting it if it becomes a purchasable product, instead of a subscription. When you’re a freelancer with wildly varying income month-to-month, every monthly cost is a significant decision, which probably isn’t the case for much of Roon’s userbase, I suppose.
