That’s how I use it.
It’s on Roon’s roadmap I believe - but it’s been their long-term goal for years, and will probably take more years to realise…
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That would be nice. Now that Google is as usual shotgunning itself in the face by killing Google Play Music for the worse YouTube Music, I’m about to lose easy access to my own music from anywhere. I’ve got it on my hard drive and managed by Roon, but if I’m in the car or traveling, I can’t see how to access it except by planning ahead and transferring files to my phone, or backing up the collection to a USB flash drive or micro SD card.
Music storage is not like other storage, because I’m sure 95% of my files are the same as other users. Especially with CD rips using ExactAudioCopy or whipper, presumably everyone is trying to have bit-identical files, so each new user of online music storage only adds yet another pointer to the one file containing ‘John Mayer - 01 - Still Feel Like Your Man.flac’. (I don’t know if purchased audio files have watermarks that make each one different.) That should make the additional storage cost per user a lot lower.
However, every streaming service seems to be removing support for users to upload their own music library. Is Apple the only one left?
The licensing issues with music labels and performance rights societies make this a complex issue. If you have uploaded a song you didn’t pay for and google then lets 100 people play it (because of pointers) they are likely facilitating multiple instances of infringement. A single infringement can cost you up to $150k in penalties in a court case. You can do the math on potential liabilities if there aren’t deals cut. Apple has dealt with this issue though the deals cut with the music industry. Google may not have done this or doesn’t want to or just wants to put all their eggs in the YouTube basket.
OK, so don’t make it the cloud storage a music service, just offer personal file storage that happens to implement music-file-aware deduplication, and let Roon core access it. I can see music labels and performance rights societies fighting music streaming services that offer a file locker, since as I understand it they don’t collect (pitifully small) fees for plays of users’ files that are often pirated, but Roon isn’t a music streaming service.
OS dependant, you could use something like rclone which abstracts away the backing store.
I drew up a first stab at a comparison table for generic cloud storage services (as opposed to music lockers as @S_Page was getting at): https://www.blisshq.com/music-library-management-blog/2020/10/01/cloud-storage-services-music/
You could run your core on a MacBook Pro, and burn your own CDS to that core, and take the machine with you on travel as required. I guess it would make sense if you had a large collection of your own CDS to begin with…I am 64 years old…and have 500 CDS burned to my MacBook Pro running the core. Of course, I downloaded the full core and remote Roon software to this machine. Back at home, I connect the core to my NAD 765 via HDMI. NAD outputs to 7.1 set up of speakers.