#3 streaming service behind Spotify and Apple is Amazon. Probably gaining fast. It’s a matter of time until Amazon is larger than Apple in market cap. I’m not aware of Amzn moving to Hi Res though. But maybe open to Roon integration.
Qobuz would be useless to most of us, given the fact that it is available in only a few countries. And, yes, it has a checkered financial history. I was able to subscribe for a year or so despite not living in one of those countries. This was when it was the only high-res service. I liked Qobuz, but had horrible buffering issues. I speak French, though, and back then that was all it offered. I’m betting it doesn’t have a content distribution network that would allow for trouble-free use throughout the world. Why would it, given its narrow geographic focus and previous money woes? When I used it, all servers appeared to be in France, not exactly great for someone like me, living in Brasil. Tidal, Spotify, Deezer etc. have CDNs in Brasil (or just about anywhere you happen to be). I use all three and seldom have playback problems.
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I suspect Roon would be an Apple partner for about five minutes. It’s not going to happen, anyway.
…“the press is not known for being knowledgeable, nor is it known for being wise, when it comes to business growth/operations/risk.“
I’m a former financial journalist, both writer and editor. There’s nothing substantive in the report cited here, and I wouldn’t call it a shining example of business journalism. However, your comment about the business press is utter nonsense. The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, to name two publications/online media organizations, are pretty damned good at doing what you say they don’t, Danny. It may surprise you to know that many of us are Certified Financial Analysts, have one or more business degrees, have passed the requirements to work as stockbrokers…etc., etc., etc. That’s not so we can work in business, but so we can be informed, intelligent members of the business press. I’ve seen many stories during my career correctly predicting the demise of businesses before the CEO was smart enough to know he and his company were about to be toast.
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Given enough words, someone’s bound to be right – easy to confirm with hindsight. In my very first comment, I even said: “I’m not saying that Dagens Nærringsliv is wrong because even a broken clock is right twice a day.”
It may surprise you that I have had years of experience in both finance and financial related news in a previous lifetime at Bloomberg LP. We are both entitled to our opinions, and yes, I’m generalizing – I’m sure there are exceptions.
I’m sure you and your friends are all CFAs w/ multiple business degrees and actively chose not to run billion dollar companies so you could critique them instead. However, you guys did not write that useless article, hoping to get a few ad impressions, and I’m sure your reputable publishers would have prevented such drivel from being published. Dagens Nærringsliv however, did not.
This was not meant as a personal attack on you or anyone else. It was an attack on the general state of shitty internet “journalism”.
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Having Spotify connect is great when you have guests that want to play their own playlist or there are users in the house that use Spotify.
The way I would prefer it implemented is in the RoonCore not RoonBridge so that it could be played to grouped zones just like a internet radio station.
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Since you did work at Bloomberg you should know the difference between a simple report and an opinion piece.
With respect to “internet” journalism, there is as much “shit” on the net as there is in print. You just need to know where to look.
I have seen much much worse than the article being refered to in this thread. Instead of shooting the messenger, you should address the issues maybe ?
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Danny, with your years of business experience, I’m sure you’re aware of the extremely high rate of new-business failures. Employing your logic, I could comment on the “shitty state” of the business community. The figures, in fact, might lead some to conclude that most people who start businesses are relatively clueless. I try to avoid uninformed generalizations.
Personally, I have never had any desire to run a company. My goal was to be a journalist, a career from which I am now retired. In fact, it was not my original intention to be a business journalist, but when I did become one it was my obligation to equip myself with the tools to be a good business journalist. Those tools have also equipped me to be a successful investor, for which I am thankful. I was also a political journalist for part of my career, but had no intention of trying to run a country. Just as in your field, some suceed and some fail. Some are excellent at what they do; some are mediocre. But to criticize an entire industry is, in my opinion, ill-informed. It is, however, very Trump-like.
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I also understand the difference between a simple report and clickbait.
Agreed, but the internet has enabled so much more since its easier to create.
The issue has not changed: TIDAL is exactly the same as it always was (external investments away from death). Roon is at risk as long as it does not provide its own streaming service or has multiple partners allowing the full Roon experience. Roon members are at the mercy of streaming services unless they own all their content.
What is there to address? Do you want to know our plans with other streaming partners? We continue to poke/investigate/talk-to/etc many streaming providers. No movement worth reporting has occurred. We’d love to do something. We are not willing to dilute the Roon experience – there is no point to Roon if we do. I asked a legit question about Spotify Connect + Roon above, and the response is basically an auxiliary use case for third parties coming over or to use Roon exclusively as an audio streaming network system. While both are interesting use cases, we do not believe it is core enough to justify the development effort at a high priority. There are much better fish to fry.
As for the “messenger” - let’s not amplify this noisemaker any further by implying they have a message they carried. The message is of no value. It is just noise being made to make you look at ads, containing no new data.
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That is fair. The wording I used originally was:
I will restate that to be less inflammatory:
but I prefer to look at fundamentals of the company, the landscape of the market and competition, and use a broader extent of knowledge available before relying on a press piece written with no value added beyond singling out a specific data point for the sake of sensationalism driving ad impressions.
Sorry for the debate. This type of noise just burns my chaps and I spoke heatedly and unwisely.
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I appreciate your reply, Danny… Thank you. And I would be the last person to say the article being discussed here is informed journalism. We’re all entitled to an opinion; my major quibble was what I felt was an undeserved generalization. I remain a Roon customer and fan, I continue to wish you and the company the success you deserve.
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Thank you for your honest reply.
Agreed about the use case of a simple streaming connection and the low priority - though in time this could change. I personally would like to see it happen, but I understand other aspects are more important.
One other option I find appealing would be to integrate Roon with an online store/streaming service (for example 7digital) as an option in addition to Tidal, and under your own “brand” of course. The benefits for your customers would be:
- discovery
- Metadata and music reviews on an extended catalog
- ability to listen to track samples (or more possibly) through our dedicated hifi system
- option to purchase, which a lot of Roon customers do, with a seamless and immediate integration into our Roon library
- mobility if storage is cloud based (as well as local)
- flexible pricing schemes (ex: monthly subscription for a “radio” service that would cover an extended catalog, or yearly subscription to listen to x tracks, etc… )
I think this would be consistent with the Roon “core concept” and offer an alternative to those of us who do not want to rely on a streaming service, whatever the reasons may be.
Obviously, this type of solution would require a significant change to Roon as we know it today, and possibly also to your internal organization, but it seems it is worth considering and could really provide some interesting perspectives.
In addition, to emphasize my point, and this has been clearly indicated in numerous threads on this forum : your customer base is not cash strapped and is willing to spend (on hardware and software) some money towards an awesome “audiophile” experience. Why not let them do it? Instead you have to deal with anxiety and complaints (of various nature) about Tidal…
IMHO it defeats the whole point of subscribing to Tidal and being able to add virtual albums to your music library.
It is two different, but perhaps complementary, services.
A lot of the usual streaming suspects are mentioned over and again but have you approached Napster @danny?
They don’t have a lossless offering at the moment, but they may be amenable to sharing their APIs.
IIRC, they were the very first streaming company with an official app for LMS and they’ve also done support for dedicated in-car apps from an early stage.
Might be worth approaching.
At first I thought it was odd that we were combining a discission of the media and journalistic ethos with the business principles of audio streaming. Now, I’m beginning to realize the two may have more in common than I thought.
Both need access to large scale distribution (think many millions of consumers). Both need access to content (think music or information). In the Roon world, we’d like to think of ourselves as consumers of higher quality content (lossless and hi-res streaming and our own hi-res files) and we’d like to think of our world as also wanting higher quality information generally.
But the markets seem to indicate an endless hunger for any content as long as it comes in “my favorite flavors.” The masses seem to be saying they’d rather consume informational content that agrees with their own perspectives over far more accurate content they disagree with. They also seem quite happy listening to stuff that makes them feel good through their ear buds, in significant disregard to it “tonal or bit accuracy.” In either case, it is hard to say “they are wrong” because “they are the market.”
The challenge for the rest of us is to find a business model a) we are willing to pay enough for, so b) it can provide us the quality of content we desire. But, let’s realize that the market that Apple, Amazon, Google, et al want to split amongst themselves is not our market and that so far those who wish to serve our market segment have yet to find a sustainable business model.
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@anon55914447
I am pretty sure that the Roon team know Napster well. It was integrated into Sooloos if memory serves correct.
@seth_Godin1 really nailed this idea:
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2016/04/our-software-must-get-better.html
It’s a weird niche, but it’s our niche.
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thanks @danny
Roon + Tidal + PS Audio + Shindo + Devore = happy day.
I appreciate the work you and the team do, every day.
It’s not clear that more speculating about venture-backed pre-profit companies is particularly edifying, but to each his own.
Keep making a ruckus.
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He did! Particularly this quote: “And free software built by corporations turns us from the user into the product. If you’re not paying for it, after all, you must be the bait for the person who is. Which means companies spend time figuring out how to extract value once we’re locked in and can’t easily switch.”
Today, streaming is still too cheap, meaning that successful business models depend on us being the bait for someone else willing to pay; Tidal, Quboz, Spotify, etc. all have yet to really figure out who that someone is and whether they will pay enough to get what they get from us as bait to make the overall business model work.