KKBOX usage in the UK

I live in the UK and have just looked (or tried) at the KKBOX site to get more information about the new service linked to Roon. I confess that I am completely confused. Are we meant to have this link in the UK?

According to Wikipedia:

The service mainly targets the music markets of East and Southeast Asia, focusing on regions including: Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Japan and Singapore.

AFAIK, the service is not available outside these regions. Compare to Qobuz only being available in a few handfuls of Western countries.

Anyway – great news for our Asian friends.

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Good news indeed and thanks, Roon, for this delightful surprise! Listening to build 1299 here in East Asia in FLAC, 44.1/16, 96/24 and 192/24.
We have been either unserved or badly served by the big two CD-res streamers. Logged out of my cludgy workaround for TIDAL and my library instantly transformed itself to KKBOX seamlessly.
Sure, there are a few missing albums c.f. TIDAL but, so far, I’ve found the major part of the ECM catalog and more music than I can listen to for 10 bucks a month (‘lossless’ subscription). That’ll do nicely, thanks.
Some of the recent, um, innovations by Roon have left me cold but, this one…. fantastic job, guys.

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You need to be using Roon Early Access Build 1297 (Edit: should be production 1299) in order to see this setting.

As for whether you can access this service from your country, this is a different issue. In some cases VPN may help.

It’s just been released to production in yesterday’s update

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Actually, KKBOX integration has just been released to Production…

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KKBOX? Unfortunately, I can’t do anything with this service. Only two streaming services (without KKBox) is simply no longer up to date. I would like to see the two market leaders Spotify and Apple Music. Yes, I know, it’s the providers’ own fault. But I don’t care, for a system as expensive as Roon, such providers are a must.

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Other people in Asia can do something with KKBOX. Not every improvement has to apply to everyone.

If Spotify won’t do it and Apple would do it only for Apple devices without giving Roon any control over streaming, as you seem to be aware anyway, there’s little Roon can do about it, no? Whether you care or not.

You can add your vote to one of the existing #feedback:feature-suggestions of course.

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Thanks @Suedkiez @Geoff_Coupe . I actually checked for updates in Roon before posting my incorrect answer. Should early access prompt for update to production?

An Early-Access Roon Core knows nothing about the Production release tree and will never inform you about new Production releases.

Update: If you don’t run a Production Roon Core in parallel or want an additional notification, you can use this forum’s capabilities to watch the Software Release Notes category so you get an e-mail whenever a new release gets announced.

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Yes this is open to us all.

OOPS it seems it is only open in Asia at the moment. just tried to use it and no joy.

You can access it via a VPN and sign up that way. Should you wish to pay monthly for the service, it’s around £5.80 a month. (Of course that up to your moral compass, I’m simply trialling it)

Screenshot 2023-07-19 at 17.56.18 Medium

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Thnks for thT

Am glad KKBOX is integrated. I tested KKBOX from PC via UPnP to stereo. Liked the Asian music selections. But I (in the US) had to connect the PC to an Asian server of my VPN service to stream. Not sure how to go about doing it with Roon integration. Anyone has any suggestion? Do I run VPN on the same server on which Roon Server is running?

Turn out I just have to sign in to Roon and it took me to KKBOX site to authorize Roon to access my account. The Mac I did this on was online via VPN. From then on Roon can access KKBOX. The Roon Server pc did not need to be on VPN while authoriIng or now playing music.

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So you are basically blaming Roon for Apple’s and Spotify’s refusal to share their API.

I think your complaint is misdirected.

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Do they have Japanese Jazz? Things from the three blind mice label, king record’s etc?

Setting up a account with a VPN is easy enough.

I could not find records from TBM, but there is lots of Japanese Jazz exclusive on KKBOX.
Listen to this one just now:
RoonShareImage-638262471265288105

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I’ll take a look once I’m back home.