I bought mine when it was first offered for 500$—and took unmitigated grief from my CFO but it has more than paid for itself just wish TIDA and or Qobuz offered the same thing. Bobbmd
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One thing not much discussed here is the ‘hop in and out’ model. I don’t use Roon every month. I travel a lot and so the monthly option is of interest. If I use Roon 6 months a year that’s $78 a year or $6.50 a month which gives the lifetime option a run for it’s money.
I guess it depends on one’s lifestyle but if you don’t use Roon every month then the lifetime option maths gets wobbly.
I bought a lifetime subscription to SiriusXM 30 years ago…
For me, it worked out great.
But the math for a Roon lifetime can be calculated if you know the interest your money would get.
Using “Uniform series” at 5% interest, the payback breakeven for a lifetime outlay is between 5-6 years.
I’ve used Sirius / Sirius XM after and on since about 2004. How was it in the earlier (1990s) days. I remember the opportunity to buy a lifetime subscription but never did.
Currently, I sign up for an annual plan and renegotiate a better price than standard every year. If they don’t offer one, I walk away, but they always offer one…
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I bought the lifetime when Sirius and XM were separate. I had Sonos speakers in each room and Sirius was available on Sonos’s app.
It hasn’t changed too much over the years. A lot of extra channels with no ads were added to the internet version.
When they merged, they honored my lifetime but limited the number of transfers – so when I sell my car, I have to remember to transfer to the new car.
I used to have two lifetimes and one of them went with the old car and when I tried to retrieve it – it had been deleted.
You can get Tidal through Best Buy with substantial discounts if you start a new account (different email) and it renews every year for the same price.
Robert, how do you do this? Seems like they make it difficult to cancel other than calling on the phone or getting involved with an on-line chat.
Are you a time traveler? You are a decade too early. XM and Sirius did not begin satellite radio service until 2001 and 2002, respectively.
AJ
My only worry (with being burnt in the past) and, with what the other competitors have done in the past to is cancel the lifetime licence with a version (let’s say, v2 or v3). Which then leaves people with a lifetime licence with that version only. Then have the company move fully over to a subscription service starting with a new released version and possibly a price increase.
I’ve had this done to me with forum software (perpetual lifetime licence) and, with other recent software, which was only made up with a highly discounted monthly rate as a one off opportunity (during a certain period) which would now take me over 15 years to break even, if I was a new customer.
This is what stops me going lifetime at this new rate…
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Never happen with current owners.
Yeah. I said the same about someone else I had been using for over 12 years.
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It’s true that financial circumstances and business models change. If it’s a choice between “ethics” and staying in business, guess which wins?
For a final word on “has anyone done the math?”, this guy for sure…
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Let’s hope they stick with true lifetime for all versions to come. $700 is not cheap for software.
It seems that nobody is worried about the lack of support for Roon by the streaming companies.
I raised my concern before, but nobody has picked this up.
Does Roon itself, or Roon users have a view on this issue?
It’s a constantly reappearing topic actually. But everyone is aware that it would be a problem for Roon if both Qobuz and Tidal went away before another service is available to work with Roon, so there is pretty much nothing new that can be said.
Well I would keep the CD rips, if you compare versions between your CDs and Qobuz or Tidal version of them, you will have some surprises 
Streaming versions are almost always heavy compressed with a good amount of loudness.
Philippe
My view of the issue is that if Roon requires a level of support that only Qobuz and Tidal offer, after all this time, then probably Roon requires too much. If you can integrate search, do it; if not, letting users search specific providers is a totally acceptable compromise to me.
But it’s not just about integrated search at all
Whatever it’s about, I’m sure there is an acceptable compromise. Having access to the streaming service of choice should be the ultimate goal.
You just don’t get it…