Apple could ‘buy’ Roon with the spare-change in their back-pocket.
Roon is absolutely bloody-brilliant. Rather than try and integrate Apple Music with Roon, if I was @danny I would try and sell Roon to Apple for a ‘pretty penny’.
Yes, you would lose the independence of Roon. But with Apple on-board, maybe as some-sort of Apple ‘add-on’, you could guarantee Roon’s future.
With Apple going lossless, the ‘writing is truly on the wall’ for smaller players such as Tidal & Qubuz.
As much as I love my Qobuz subscription, in combination with my local library, it’s no competition for lossless Apple Music in the long-term for most consumers. It’s not for consumers like me, I hasten to add. I just love Roon as it is. But things change…
‘Progress’. Don’t you just f ****** hate it sometimes…
I think there is a possibility of a Roon/Apple relationship. In Apple’s press release they state that the high res playback may require the use of an external DAC. Who better to present that hi res goodness to a DAC than Roon, with the added benefit of all Roon’s library analysis and recommendations.
This could be the in-road to the audiophile market for Apple. May not be huge numbers for them, but it gives them credibility and differentiates themselves from Amazon.
As the number of Roon users represents only about 0.14% of the number of Apple Music users, it would not benefit Apple at all. In fact, their cost to do what is necessary would outweigh any theoretical advantage. The numbers are the same, basically, for Amazon.
My son & daughter, both are PhD from Ivy League Uni, do not care about about hires Qobuz, etc at all, despite how many times I told them about SQ benefit, Apple Music/Spotify is good enough for them.
@danny I just love Roon. Thank-you to you, and all of the Roon team for just making my life ‘better’. It has literally transformed the way I listen to music. The last thing I would like to see is Roon become irrelevant.
It’s obviously a very complex, and emerging landscape. For example, I remember a time when Qobuz was dead-against Roon integration, because they ‘believed’ that they could develop their own UI to rival Roon. They (maybe?) tried. And they failed. Hence their decision to eventually integrate with Roon.
Apple Music is a different beast. With their announcement, IMO it is a direct ‘assault’ on Roon’s business-model. Well, maybe to last-year’s business-model?
I hope with all of my heart that Roon is still ‘here’ in a couple of years time. I would hate to see the ‘Big Apple’ and/or other players in the market decimate what has become one of my central joys in life - Roon. Thank-you.
Someone there might know about it… although maybe not, Tim Cook didn’t even know who Tim Sweeney was. Lol.
I wouldn’t put it past Apple, if they like the way something works they take it change it just a little, usually a new name, and strip away all the settings… they like to put a “i” or some call it some stupid Apple kind of name and brag about it as a new great app/feature they created in their new macOS version.
Meanwhile the poor developer that originally came up with the idea and had a hell of a time getting Apple to allow his App in their store sits back, scratches his head and says… hmm that’s almost exactly the same thing I’ve been trying to get out there for 2 years!
