I am very supportive of the concept but clearly pricing is a key element. The other aspect is clarity over “what good looks like” for backup strategies and expected recovery times and service levels. I am always impressed with the deep technical knowledge in this community, but not everyone has an IT background and many of us have learned the hard way with drive failures and the like. It would be very helpful to extend the Knowledge base to incorporate key backup concepts, even if the new service takes a while to come on stream.
Regarding pricing, if the new service is just intended to replaces our usage of Backblaze or their competitors, then the pricing needs to be similar or lower - this is a basic utility purchase. On the other hand, if this enables the introduction of a premium future add-on service like Roon Mobile, then you should be able to charge based on perceived value. As a lifetime Roon customer, I would certainly consider an additional monthly subscription in exchange for additional utility and security.
I don’t see why I would not use my existing Rock server for mobile streaming. I can easily open a port for it in my firewall. The thing blocking me is Roon client software support.
Sure, not EVERYONE can, but a lot of people can. High speed internet is getting pretty common. I would argue that in the US, the majority of internet connections are fast enough to stream two channel music, especially if the client provides caching. There is probably publicly available data to show if I’m right or wrong.
Don’t believe anything you read. First, the US definition of broadband is pathetic. Second, and more important, what you get on the paper is not always what you get in the router. In the so called civilized (technological wise) world, the US internet (and mobile for that matter) fits in what they themselves call “third world”…
The trend globally is toward high-speed home broadband and the adoption slope is very steep. Pre-COVID, 75% of US households already had it. So, if you are planning a future product, I think you should be more focused on the trend and less on the here and now. Additionally, I’m unmoved by the argument that you can’t consider it because not all Roon users can use it. Not all Roon users globally can get Tidal or Qobuz subscriptions, but you still support them both. You get my point; I won’t belabor this anymore.
My point is really about the trend line more than the specific number. Additionally, I question if a feature has to be useable by all Roon subscribers. Many regions can’t get Tidal subscriptions, for example.
Nope, it isn’t interesting because existing cloud services do a good job. I have all my own music backed up on OneDrive, for which there is a modest annual subscription. 6 users, 6TB storage, Word, Excel, OneNote for €99 a year. A good deal, and a good service. And a local TimeMachine backup.
Also worth saying that DBpoweramp tried an online music backup service a few years ago, which failed. Their angle was that they only needed to store one copy of the music, which was constant for all users, plus each users metadata. Not enough uptake so it sank.
Now I am listening mostly to Qobuz, I doubt I’d be that upset if all my own rips disappeared. Many I am actually never going to listen to again (just like most of the magazines and newspapers and books you buy you are never going to read again). Most of my rips are available on Qobuz in any case, often in better than cd quality. Other downloads from Linn and Hyperion for example I could download again without paying were my local storage to be lost.
So. Good idea, but no thanks. Plenty better things for you to work on that only you can do. Like make “Only complete recordings” work for a start.
I’m not getting through to you. There is no argument that we can’t consider remote access directly to your Core. You even seemed to acknowledge it, but then you keep creating this strawman. Please stop.
It doesn’t have to work everywhere, but it makes it a much more commercially viable project.
Apples and oranges. We are not DBpoweramp, not even close, and the product we are talking about is different, and the teams are radically different. With this line of thinking, you might argue that Roon itself is an insane product. No one would ever pay to listen to their own music. Clearly, that’s not the reality of things.
I’m mostly in this position too, but if I could throw up the few hundred albums I love that aren’t available into a cloud locker and then have Roon merge that with TIDAL, I’d be happy to never have to deal with a hard drive again.
Let me focus on how this gets done (or doesn’t). You don’t have the information needed to make your opinion in this regard useful.
I would be very interested as keeping a backup of my 3.7 TB music collection is a real hassle right now.
That said, you would need one feature that would make this very very complex.
You would need to offer a service where you could send in a hard drive to pre-seed your library. My library would have taken an unreasonable amount of time to upload to the cloud and a failure/restart would have been heartbreaking.
For this reason and to avoid the expense of your own backup data centers, I would suggest partnering with an existing provider who supports this functionality. Provide a gateway through Roon that backs up to the service.
I currently use idrive and I’m quite happy with it. They provided a hard drive and it then synced up with my home library seamlessly. It was pretty cool.
Idrive is a little more expensive than Backblaze (which I also use) but this pre-seed feature is worth it.
Edit: I would be willing to pay a few dollars more than the idrive subscription if it integrated into Roon.
Can you explain how this works in more detail? or point me to their marketing and/or documentation about it? A quick search did not lead to anything obvious. Maybe I am searching for the wrong thing.
Get off your high horse. If I’m not understanding you, it is because you are not speaking clearly.
I did not make up the idea that you might include mobile access with a backup service, it came from the post I replied to:
The clear implication is that you would include mobile access to make the backup service more appealing. If that is not what you are saying, say so instead of pearl clutching and making accusations.
If i’m reacting angrily, it is because you are being antagonistic and speaking from both sides of your mouth. If there is “no argument” about considering my feature request, why have you immediately shot it down as soon as I mentioned it? No: “we will consider it” or anything. Just reasons why you can’t or won’t. Now you are back tracking pretending you were completely reasonable about my request.
I remember the physical drive coming, I hooked it up to my laptop and copied my music library over. Took a couple days.
I then sent it to them. They uploaded it to the cloud and then voila! It just worked. The idrive application saw my hard drive and started backing it up to the pre-seeded library in the cloud automagically.
The thing you are missing is that it’s not a commutative solution. Just because cloud backup could help remote access, it’s not a requirement that’s the only way to do it.
I’ve said multiple times now that you are putting words in my mouth. For example, you said I have an “objection to using a Rock server for mobile”. I called that out directly and said I have no objection. You followed up with more evidence to your strawman argument.
I think it’s best we drop this and focus on the question of the topic – I’m clear on what you want regarding mobile access and its relationship to backup.
So… would you be interested in a music files backup solution?
I was just reviewing them last week as an online backup solution.
LTDR, when you start with them you can have the option to have them send you a hard drive which you plug in to your computer, and using their application backup to that hard drives in an AES256 encrypted mode. You send it back to them with the included mailing package. When they get it, they load the hard drive backup into your backup account (presumably it is just copying over the encrypted backup file like Acronis). Then, I imagine they wipe the drive and send it to the next user.
Restoration can also be done that way. Residential users get 1 time free per year, business get more “free” back and forths. After that, it is a pay per incident.
It’s more complicated (local backup) than I would have expected, but I guess that’s safer and more practical than sending them your original drive to back up.
It’s crazy they can offer this for free (once a year) – they must not have many people using this feature. Just think about the logistics… if 50,000 users were sending them a drive every year, they’d be processing ~200 drives out and ~200 drives in, every business day of the year!
That would be 2 full time employees processing a drive every 5 minutes non-stop! Wow.
