I very much see a high value and revenue potential for Roon in providing additional add-ons. As we know users are very serious about their commitment to high quality sound, room correction for example would be an ideal candidate. @danny Don’t know if you are in contact with Dirac etc about possible cooperation?
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How funny it may sound that is actually a very good question.
No one knows how long “life time” is. Ask the Roon team and you won’t get an answer (I did, twice, other did many times) Is it the life of Roon 1.x? Is it until Roon decides to change its name? I think it would be a good thing at this moment after all the fuzz over here to get a clear statement about this from the Roon team before anyone drops $699,- or even more.
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Just make sure you give ‘someone’ your log-in info and you can pass it down to the next generation.
A lifetime can be a looooooog time… 
( I accidentally deleted my previous response). I am the opposite. What I bought is what I bought and that’s it. I am strictly against so called ’in app purchases’.
It lives !
I can recommend the T-shirt and bumper sticker, but the hat logo fades very quickly.
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From and end user perspective, I found two or three of the releases around the time Roon Radio was introduced to be more like late stage beta releases than “ready for prime time” releases.
There is an appetite for a mobile Roon solution. One of the approaches is to shift the local library into the Cloud. One objection to Cloud storage of multiple libraries is the environmental footprint of storing numerous copies of Kind of Blue (or Celine Dion as per the recent AI expose …).
If Roon could arrange:
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a regular scan of existing libraries of users who have streaming licences to identify what material can be supplied using streaming;
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a “music depository” with a Cloud provider for non-streamed albums which treated bit perfect copies of the same album as requiring only one copy;
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cloud storage of the Roon database; and
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any necessary licence and payments to copyright owners
so that a mobile solution could emerge sooner than might otherwise be the case, then that is something that as a lifer I would regard as a substantially new service worthy of additional payment.
Since it would also require non-Cloud Roon to continue it may involve forking the product though.
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I wrote the answer above:
It’s for the product that currently exists and updates to it. If we decide that a new product is different than Roon, then it won’t be the covered. If we decide to hold back a feature from the annual, it won’t be in the lifetime.
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If Roon is perceived as doing an “end run” around lifetime memberships - by (for example) lowering the annual subscription price, and then tacking on new “features” via extra cost “add-on” subscriptions – IMHO oh my goodness there will be a backlash that will make this recent lifetime price increase seem like a non-event.
This is a very tricky/delicate subject. I hope that Roon’s business model can sustain a single subscription price – without the complexity and politics of add-ons, so that we can all avoid a backlash of what may well be perceived by many as a blatant money grab.
As long as the annual exists, the lifetimers will be all taken care of. There is no risk of people who buy a lifetime being left out.
Not that it matters, but this lifetime price increase is a non-event. We’ve had more controversy on the alpha testers groups!
This is all true. This is why it took us 4+ years to increase the lifetime. While the whole thing feels like a big deal on this topic, in reality across all subscribers it was a minor blip.
We won’t jump into any new models without planning.
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This is your first week on the internet, right? 
Seriously, people get heated about things they love. 
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Danny have you considered a plug-in for products like iTunes/Music (and whatever Windows uses) that would bring RAAT and zone functionality but not library management or metadata.
I used a plug-in for Aperture many years ago that brought HDR manipulation and editing, eventually I upgraded to the stand alone version of the program.
A plug-in like this could give people who are not willing to subscribe or don’t require the full version some of the functionality of Roon. It might also act as a stepping stone to the full version. It could be either paid outright or subscription.
As a lifetimer, I would not be phased in the slightest if you introduced Roon Mobile as an add-on service at an annual rate, rather than a feature of the base software. To me, that would represent a substantial and significant enhancement worth paying extra for. Those that want the feature could pay for it, and those that did not could opt out by not subscribing.
(Btw, I anticipate the challenge of providing seamless access to personal files remotely is the real difficulty here, so a good interim step would be access to the app remotely to browse the entire library but only provide access to streaming versions of library albums and streaming services.)
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I’m really not liking the idea of charging for features.
First, I’m not even sure we need to monetize lifetimes any further. We just need to keep growing to the point where the lifetimers are a super minority. That’s been true to date, but it was getting behind a threshold of concern. That’s why we raised the price.
If we do want to monetize, the non-offensive thing to do may be new products that bring value beyond Roon. I only brought this up for ideas… Not because we have a goal here.
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Thanks for the reply. Super-satisfied customer here. Will continue to evangelize whenever I can.
Hope you and yours have a good holiday. D
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Well we are nearly at 699 posts…will the deal and the thread end there?
If the warnings were not enough in this thread…then you have had your chance at Lifetime.
Lifetime seem to have served its purpose and days are ultimately numbered (as has always been the case)…why drag this out longer than need be.
I think all the $499 lifers feeling guilty about depriving Roon of revenue should purchase an additional subscription for their garden shed/holiday home.
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There is absolutely no guilt being suffered here. 
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Airplay already does multi-zone playback just fine. It’s limited to 24/96 (16/44.1 from iDevices, but presumably that’s not relevant here). But I expect that the customers who want to stream from iTunes, but for whom 24/96 is just not high-res enough is a rather niche market indeed.
The thing that differentiates Roon from the competition is the metadata (and the tight integration with streaming services). I don’t think RAAT, on its own, would have much traction in the marketplace.
Qobuz isn’t avialable in my country. I used Tidal only on trial or, like now, on Black Friday promotion for 0,5$ for three months HiFi. I don’t find it worth to pay normal price. Usually I listen to the same stuff over and over. I have more albums of my favourite artists on NAS than there is on Tidal or Spotify. For discovering new music the best I find for me is Youtube, then free Spotify or streaming radio stations. I like new 1.7 radio stations feature. It’s very convenient.