Yep, nice edit. That’s my position too. You have to figure out if a recurring subscription is worth it “for you”. It’s obviously never going to be for everyone in every case. I’m running out of 9.99’s/month for all these things.
…which then you hope to sell to existing customers as an upgrade.
This isn’t Roon Lab’s model, and I doubt that they will switch.
You obviously done sums at school, Ace_Winston - well done you. What you 'ain’t done is express ‘lifetime’ in terms of a 10 year expectation - it looks different when you do that.
And if you express the numbers in GBP, it looks even smaller.
And then you’ve used the infamous ‘whatif’ argument - always raises a red flag “something far better MIGHT come along” - yes, Roon MIGHT get far better in 18 months time. Let’s assume the boys & girls working at Roon are not sitting on their arses waiting fir the next plonker to send them USD700.
Actually, forget what I’ve said - it’s the mathematicians like you who want to pay monthly that pay for future innovation - my lifetime GBP500 has long since been spent on beer & sandwiches, and nice chairs to rest their bums on !
PS - BTW, I failed my sums exams - not that that’s relevent 
1 Like
That’s a poor example because it would only be the case if TVs could be copied at marginal cost like software. It’s precisely why software is such an attractive business: if you wrote it already, selling it to twice as many people costs you essentially nothing.
Nevertheless, the subscription model makes sense for the reason you stated, you can’t grow forever by gaining new users, and you still need a steady income stream.
Although the traditional one-time payment for software was for a specific version, like Office 2003, 2007, 2010. So part of the income was always expected to come from existing users licensing a new version. Though this has the problem that users have all they need and don’t require new features. That’s problematic from an income point of view, but also with regard to security even for stand-alone software if it interacts with the outside world (even if only through files), and is a major headache with software that interacts with servers.
Roon’s single payment to cover all versions for life is rather unusual
And for the customer, this ends up being a subscription with another name, anyway
I’m sorry, but this is not how it works. It’s very expensive to maintain and develop software. If Roon was a “as is” final product with no further development, your statement is valid. “Unfortunately” Roon is a work in progress, and progress does not evolve by it self. If Roon could charge 700 bucks for each update, that would be a whole different story. A lifetime subscription is infinite.
Look, I’ve been working with and in a software company of probably approximately the same size as Roonlabs and with a similar structure (privately owned) for 20 years since its founding, and that’s exactly how it works.
We have always used an annual subscription model (long before it was common). You have to develop the software and continually new features anyway, whether you sell it to 100-250,000 users as Roonlabs does now and as we did 10 years ago, or to 1,000,000 users as we do now and Roonlabs hopefully will. The developer staff (if constant numbers) and hardware costs are independent of units sold. Stuff like customer support, data transfer and hosting, as well as accounting and similar backoffice stuff goes up, but that’s a small part. Essentially we have very similar costs now as we did 10 years ago (bar the amenities that we afford ourselves and the additional developers we can afford), and we have 4 times the income and growing.
It’s simply the difference between being a hardware company, where every unit sold has to be sourced, manufactured, and delivered at substantial cost, versus a software company where every unit is copied off the server by the customer at very little cost to us.
I already wrote (in the part of my post that you ignored) that the once-in-a-lifetime cost like Roon’s lifteime license is unusual for non-subscription software. Usually you paid once for every new major version. If you pay 300 every three years for a new MS Office version or whatever, it ends up being a subscription in all but name anyway. And for the developer it comes with the issues I mentioned above.
1 Like
Just out of curiosity, how would Roon know that I have died
The smell ?
9 Likes
To be honest, once I’m dead I couldn’t care less what my family does or doesn’t do with anything I own. And even if I did, the Roon lifetime subscription is at the absolute bottom if my list!
By the way I’ve told them to cremate my body and throw the ashes in the toilet.
6 Likes
That’s why my sub keeps getting cancelled…
2 Likes
April 2016. Playing with the house’s money now. Joyous. 
4 Likes
According to my Father-In-Law EVERYTHING is Greek in origin 
5 Likes
I’ve been a lifetime subscriber since early 2019. The cost for a lifetime subscription was $499 in that days. Even for $699 I still would have bought the lifetime subscription. Why??? First of all because I could afford it easily then. Also I think spending $499 or $699 on a piece of great software is even a small part of the amount I’ve spended on audio-hardware. I often wonder why people spend thousands of dollars on hardware and are not willing to spend it on software. Maybe because hardware is more ‘touchable’?? Of course it is wise to think about the break-even point for the lifetime vs. the monthly subscription. I think I will be a Roon user as long as Roon (or myself) exists, and for every piece of software I think it will be part of my life for a long time, I allways prefer a lifetime subscription. There is another advantage I notice allmost daily in these days of extreme energy costs and raising prices of groceries. Some of my friends gave up annual subscriptions to save money, the gym, streaming services, sports etc. etc. In this case I’m very-very happy with my lifetime subscriptions of various software including Roon. 
2 Likes
I bought in when the lifetime was cheaper and I’ve already got enough out of the product to justify its cost. Monthly reoccurring revenue is important and so I am happy Roon and users prefer monthly as it keeps the product profitable.
1 Like
Hi, I have been a lifer since nigh on the beginning, so i feel i am quids in, also what you cannot put a price on is all i have experienced with the way Roon takes you through other music genres and titles etc, to me that is priceless so i have long forgotten the initial cost and am so glad i found the amout back in 2016 ish.
Henry Royce said “The quality will remain long after the price is forgotten”
2 Likes
A couple of thoughts:
There are a few threads in the community on this that weigh a lot of the factors in making this decision.
If one doesn’t have the cash upfront, or credit, it’s not really a decision.
If the purchaser has credit card debt, they are essentially borrowing the $700 and the cost of borrowing probably should be considered.
Now that inflation is a thing again, it should be factored in the equation. $700 won’t be worth $700 five years from now, and just like rents, it is likely the monthly subscription costs will increase over time.
People have different situations. I spent the last year, before retiring, buying things that I figured that I’d want or need over the next 10 years. A new car, some new furniture, a big vacation…… and a lifetime subscription for Roon. I knew that I’d have a lot less disposable income after retiring, and this a way to have something that I wanted despite that. If I was 30, and was raising kids, and paying a mortgage, I might have thought differently.
1 Like
This maths assumes the annual price won’t go up. A lifetime subscription protects against future price increases.
1 Like
So much hand wringing over $700.
3 Likes
I spent that in one day at one of our LRS😕
So…yea…it’s not worth doing the math IMHO.
2 Likes