See, they got you on their leash 
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roon has no room for growth. less people buy music, streaming ist becoming more popular every year. the left over customers are the only way to increase income. In the end roon will be populated with the people who have a lifetime option or willing to pay every price asked.
Just for perspective…
Nowadays, more people sign up for Roon annuals every day than they did in an entire month back in 2015-2016.
The number of new lifetimers outside Nucleus sales or the Chinese, is limited to a relatively small number daily.
This niche is huge, and growing. The number of people that needed an outside-the-home solution like ARC is tremendous as well.
I’m always surprised at how big this niche is.
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If this nice is growing, than there should be no need for such a huge (25%) increase in prices. The real cost per user for software development and services should decrease or be stable with a constantly growing user base.
I would respectfully disagree with both of your points.
but I would also point you toward this:
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Prices are usually not based on cost. They are based on competition and what the market will bear.
If I had a product that cost $100 and people were willing to buy it for $200, I would charge $200, not $120. Now, if it was food or some other essential item for lower income people, I might sell it for $101.
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While that’s true, a growing user base also means more use cases to support, more features to develop and then maintain (which are needed for achieving the growth in the first place), so the assumption that development costs are constant is wrong to begin with. They might not grow nearly linearly with each unit sold like manufacturing costs, but still. Neither are hosting costs.
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Another data point… At the tech company where I work we have been told to expect cost of living adjustments equivalent to annualized inflation (around 8%) on top of normal raises. Despite layoffs in the news, the job market is still very good for software engineers. I don’t know Roon’s plans, but they have to compete for talent like everyone else.
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Engineering (development) costs often rise more quickly as a company gets bigger. When you are small, you focus your efforts on the MVP feature set. As you grow, you can take on larger more complex projects that require more time before the investment pays off.
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So with more budget available will ROON finally be able to fix bugs like QNAP - Not Showing Local Folders Anymore [See Staff Post - Guest Access Temporarily Resolves - Ongoing Investigation] which is around for 1 year (!) so QNAP users are able to use ROON properly again?
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So true!
ARC features and bugfixes come quickly and easily now, but it was a 18+ month project before release!
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I believe @noris had given an update a bit ago in that thread. Try not to axe-grind by bringing up the same issue over and over.
How much do you paid for your system? Roon lifetime worth every penny.
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Yes it does, I did it at that price and it is now in effect past break even over the annual costs.
Really don’t want to have to bring this up at all. It’s just a very good example of how things have been. Sure there are other „lighthouse projects“ like ARC that are binding a lot of resources but it’s essential not to forget about / sacrifice absolute core functionality for users. And if you are reading just a bit through the timeline of that bug you see that ROON is obviously just starting to investigate things here - after 1 year. It’s understandable in that respect, especially when dealing with a price increase, that users reassess the value received or how things are proceeding.
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The program I use to organise my music streaming library now costs more than the music streaming service itself. There’s something wrong about that. Qobuz has engineers to pay as well, and they also have to pay to license the music, and they can do that for £12.99 a month.
Someone in the main thread said they’re happy to pay the increase because Roon is “an incredibly elegant solution” and I have to say I laughed out loud. The elegant solution is using the built in app of my streamer, not setting up a headless home server that needs rebooting every few days and updating every other few days.
P.s. + 1 for having no intention of ever using ARC.
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Even though I also hardly use ARC currently I think one of very important features is ROON radio which should make a valuable contribution to music discovery.
Unfortunately that is still far away from being „intelligent/smart“ - hopefully this gets adressed finally by ROON as there are also major problems for years (like How to get the best experience from Roon Radio? - #75 by armandhammer )
@danny hopefully has some input on the roadmap.
Nope, don’t use Roon Radio either, I prefer to discover music myself rather than letting an algorithm pick it for me.
And still having to use the Qobuz app for search because Roon’s is so bad.
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Don’t know what your streamer is but all streamer apps I have seen (BluOS, Naim, Linn) were poor compared to Roon. Using them might be more elegant if they were any good, but they aren’t.
Personally I didn’t have to reboot my Rock in two years except for updates, which takes 10 seconds and never caused a problem.
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Agree that they have issues (currently have the B&W one and for a while it couldn’t get through an album without crashing) but the important thing to remember is that getting into software is extremely new for established HiFi companies like B&W and Linn. They will inevitably get much better quite quickly (the B&W one has) and the point is THEY DON’T CHARGE YOU FOR THEM. You effectively buy a lifetime sub when you buy the streamer.
Secondly, the sound benefits are ambiguous: sometimes I feel like I hear it and sometimes I don’t. My local HiFi shop recently did a demo with the £30k Linn Klimax streamer and the new B&W flagship speakers, and when I was chatting to them they said it sounded better using the Linn app than using Roon.