Absolutely on the money, Jez!
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I’m not really bothered as I own enough to last a lifetime anyway. I hope I have contributed more to the artists that way too. ROON is great with local files too.
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I can see an increasing issue for Roon with integrations. Companies increasingly want to control their own experience. I think the likes of Amazon, Apple, Spotify etc are all quite happy with being able to embed an app that gives them complete freedom within. It is also simpler for them so long as the hosting platform is not too different to what they noomally deal with and/or the user base size is big enough to make the development effort worthwhile.
Even with Tidal and Qobuz I can imagine that they may actually have preferred to have embedded apps within Roon rather than shipping metadata. The problem I see for streaming service is they are all desperate to differentiate themselves and a common UI with common features denies that option.
For Tidal and Qobuz, a part of their differentiation has been technical and so less of an issue in the past (MQA for Tidal and now Atmos on Tidal, and Hi-Res for Qobuz). But increasingly all are making inroads into more directly influencing your experience through a fuller search experience, playlists, daily mixes, cast technologies and more generally controlling their own UI with the freedom to update and change as they see fit with the own branding etc. Long time frames for Roon to be able to implement such differentiating features after user demand is not great for anyone.
These latter aspects are all area that seem difficult with integration into someone elses eco system and a user experience that also cover these same features to some degree or other. In effect Roon is becoming increasingly a competitor in terms of control/influence of the end user and less of a partner.
Apple and Amazon are well known for wanting complete end to end eco system control. Spotify I think likewise and increasingly so as they poor more effort into their own search, mixes and other personalized music features, casting etc.
I think they will always be OK with embedding an app to allow them to retain this level of influence and control, but I can see all involved in becoming less interested in supporting someone users user experience.
Perhaps a future route for Roon may end up in having to provide a means to grant these companies a great level of control over the user experience and the unique features available to each service. Perhaps also support operation as a cast endpoint (ie receive audio data over the network and forward it into the Roon core for DSP etc). Perhaps each of the Service headings within Roon needs to expand to become an actual UI embedding point for each of the services.
Even then, I suspect this may be insufficient. I feel this maybe puts Roon in an awkward spot in the future as their metadata integration, cross linking and cross service is their unique feature behind their own UI and I can imagine they have no wish to dilute this experience either.
This is all besides the problem of the user base perhaps being to small for these companies to see the effort being worthwhile.
If full integration is never likely to happen, then I for one would still welcome an option in say Apple devices/apps to select ‘Roon’ as an audio output option alongside Airplay devices etc.
I think the other issue being a local library will also die out as we rely more on online content be that music , film etc.
At 61 although I have my music on a NAS, with local backup and cloud back up, its not linked in Roon and now only serves as a reference to the artist and albums I own.
Tidal content for me is more relevant to the Roon supplied content.
It’s worth understanding that a device manufacturer wanting to add a music service to their device is a different kettle of fish than Roon adding a music service. Auralic or Marantz adding Amazon is very different than Amazon integrating with Roon.
The major music streaming services have no need for Roon. The small time players like Tidal and Quboz have opened themselves up to Roon in hopes of claiming a tiny bit more market share.
Roon has perhaps 100K users. Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon HD simply do not need to satisfy Roon’s extra integration requirements. 100K users is meaningless for them.
Hopefully that will one day change.
Last info was 250k a while back
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Still too small a number to matter….
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Agree 250k is still a very small number in the grand scheme of things…just want Roon to stay relevant and grow since it’s such an awesome platform. Perhaps an option will be a more limited integration with Amazon and then rely on Roon’s metadata to augment. Fundamentally, that’s similar to our own local music data files…not all of it will be in Roon’s db, but most will. Assuming, of course, Amazon is okay with that. But I would subscribe to Amazon if I could access via Roon since my whole music chain relies on Roon feeding hqplayer (which imho sounds best), and I’m not going to switch just so I can listen to Amazon.
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Is there any thought on trying to integrate this service in Roon? Great quality compared to Tidal. Very big library and everyone probably has it.
I believe that AM is a different format. But the first to figure it out will be on another level
Hi, Paul. Welcome to the Roon forum!
I think if you search the forum for “amazon music” (the little magnifying glass in the upper right), you’ll find the answer to this question.
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Thank you for the welcome.
However, your search proved to be what I thought it would…not helpful.
Thus I was simply putting my hat in on a recommendation, should the technology change.
Again thank you.
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I think he was referring to the existing request for this (which search should have brought up for you):
And yes, it says high res, but lets not get picky.
Hi @paul_adams1,
I’ve merged you post into this topic, as you’ll there’s been a lot of discussion on this,
I did do the search and saw that.
Thanks
Any news?
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Any word on Amazon integration? The only way I would subscribe to Amazon is through Roon integration.
Nothing as of now. As noted highly unlikely to ever happen.
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More likely than Apple Music and Spotify, since their exists 3rd party integrations already with Amazon Music UHD (like Blusound’s BluOS, Denon HEOS)
But still unlikely because it actually needs input from Amazon, not just their very basic api
I would think out of all the music services , Amazon would be the most willing to integrate with Roon. Their apps are terrible .
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