The cost to convert from an annual license to a lifetime license just went up 40%. By any mathematical measure, that is an increase.
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It was a Roon business decision to up the lifetime subscription price. Personally, I’m surprised they just didn’t do away with it. Roon has been discussing dropping the lifetime subscription option for a couple of years now. Effectively, the lifetime subscription was a kickstarter to collect funds upfront to get a Roon revenue stream started. Roon is not in that position now.
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How is a person who was deterred from lifetime by the $499 cost and preferred annual now worse off because lifetime has increased ? Presumably they would be even more deterred by the $699 cost. If lifetime were increased to $5,000 would their decision to prefer annual be somehow even more expensive ?
The choice between lifetime and annual always involved a calculation as to how long a person thought they might use Roon. Have people who made a decision to prefer annual now somehow decided they will use Roon for longer because the lifetime price increased ?
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I think Danny has clearly described the history of Roon Labs, released an sw update and there was a price increase.
I’ve been in audio long enough to collect 3000 albums. Equipment changes and improves. I was caught by surprise, as most people were. Does not change my direction, Roon works for me, however I saved my money on building my own Roon server. Thanks you Danny and TEAM for a great product.
It there was one comment I would make is why before Christmas? It caused a hit on the money I spend during the holidays on my family. They are getting a little less, I bought myself a present.
My glass is half full. Holiday Wishes to Roon Labs!
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Speaking only for myself, I bought an annual license in September. I was going to buy a $499 lifetime license for Christmas next month. The $699 is way too high, especially for software that is an album sorting wizard, but has poor sound quality. Remember, in this particular market, the next closest priced item is HQPlayer at $250 and it goes down from there.
So for me, it took several months to wrap my head around the $499 price tag. I’ve never felt great about it, but do like Roon quite a bit and was going to stretch to get it. $699 is too much for album sorting software, in my opinion.
Not everyone in the audiophile community is a high rolling cost no object type.
And as I stated many times, Roon should’ve given folks a brief window to update at the old price. And if they are going to allow a warning window for some, it should be for all. The way Danny has gone about this is slippery to me. Jacking up the price at Christmas is bizarre and tone deaf.
It’s ok to appreciate Roon and not always appreciate everything the company does. It’s ok to question things. It’s ok to have different opinions. It’s ok for many of you to be Roon apologists. It’s all ok!
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Seriously - if I thought Roon was a low quality music player (in your words “poor sound quality”), I wouldn’t even pay for an annual subscription, lest complain about a price increase of the lifetime subscription.
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I took me just few days of trial to decide to buy lifetime membership for 499. 699 is worth it too.
I’m not sure if I’d pay 120 per year. I hate and avoid subscriptions like plague. If Roon was endless subscription model only I would spend much more time looking for other options. I pay once or not at all. I prefer to buy few NAS servers instead cloud. That’s just me. Well I still use MS Office 2003 and Photoshop CS. 
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Same like me. One time payment or no buy.
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My annual stops at december 20 th. I just upgraded to lifetime and am really angry that I missed this price increase in just a few days. This is not the Way to do business roon. I want my money back and leave Roon behind me. $200 increase is unbelieveble. How do I Get my money back? Like to hear From you.
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499 was an absolute steal once you get your head around Roon being like a music streamer with BYO hardware. from all in 1 core+control if you’re a beginner, scalable to nuc / nucleus etc. you untangle yourself from 1 ecosystem and integrate airplay, network upnp, sonus (and devialet air for me) with ONE software. the hardware might be obsolete 5 yrs down the road but the brains will continue to evolve.
699 still presents a good deal. i gotta admit i was starting to wonder how Roon survives on one time payment subscriptions. and why not 699 for a 10yr subscription and 119 for annual instead of promises of lifetime? and 15 monthly options? once people get affordable avenues to try your product on a longer period, im sure more will hear the difference and see the benefits.
There is a lot in this thread – but I am speaking as an existing customer who is pretty unhappy with not having any warning of the price increase or an opportunity to purchase at the old lifetime price. Especially as I live in Australia, where the cost increase seems much more substantial that it might be for people living in the US or Europe.
Like many others, I have had a subscription for a little while and feel that Roon has treated existing subscribers pretty poorly. It may make sense from an internal Roon perspective, but it is a poor way to treat existing customers. I’m in IT and purchase software from many suppliers across a range of platforms, and not one – I’ll repeat that, not one – would raise the price like Roon has without giving warning and / or giving existing customers a chance to purchase at the old price.
It has left a very unpleasant taste. It has severely dented my loyalty to Roon. I have been building a Roon library, but will now make sure that I do so in a way that I can migrate it to a different supplier.
At the moment Roon is the leading solution provider in their space. But it will not be true always; it never is.
I hope that Roon discovers that treating existing customers better is the best way to grow a business. Treating us poorly is a good way to damage one.
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While I understand the reasons for this increase. I believe that annual pricing should go down.
The software business model is to divide the development costs between many customers.
I would assume Roon has many more customers now than in the past. But annual price is still high compared to other services like Netflix and Tidal. Big difference is those services provide content from other sources that has to be paid. With Roon you still need to pay Tidal and Qobuz subscriptions to get that content.
Annual Roon subscription should be around 50-60 USD and probably you will have a much bigger customer base. Specially from customers of small countries like me. Tidal and Netflix (also Deezer and Spotify) subscriptions are half the price on those countries because people here simply can’t pay first world prices.
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I’m an annual subber so unaffected by this, but here’s my take:
By making the purchase price $700 you’re going to lose picking up new subscribers (yes, annuals).
People will see the headline price, think “that looks especially egregious” and walk away.
You should have just removed the outright purchase option completely.
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Mark, the annual price has not changed, so I’m not sure many potential annual subscribers will be put off the change in the lifetime price.
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Subscription-based software is still relatively new to home consumers, outside of O365 and Adobe.
Roon’s main demographic is a slightly older one looking to move on from free software like iTunes or direct-use apps like Spotify. They are used to looking at the outright purchase price first. When they see $700 that’s going to kick off an emotional trigger. If it were me approaching it for the first time, I don’t think it projects a image of the product being for for the home-user. That’s semi-pro/pro pricing.
If the only option was to sub @ $10/m or $120/y, I don’t think I’d have that negative perception from the off.
Imagine a casual conversation in the pub when someone asks you how much Roon is to buy. Just don’t offer a purchase price that’s going to have someone snorting beer through their nostrils.
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Here’s another issue:
Yes, makes sense.
sorry, wut?
Include a 3-year subscription. How hard is that?
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it = eliminating the lifetime
disruptive = would alter in a considerable way
cash flow = the money that comes in and leaves, often used to run the company’s operations
We don’t want to take a giant hit on our cash flow as we are trying to grow, but at the same time, we want to move out of the lifetime. What we need is to decrease demand for the lifetime, but not all at once. Increasing the cost of the lifetime solves that problem.
That’s why we are going to kill the lifetime option soon enough.
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Danny,
Whilst I agree that elimination of the lifetime option is definitely the way to go for Roon now and in the future, I have a question about future Nucleus/+ owners.
I bought my Nucleus earlier this year, and going with lifetime was a ‘no brainer’. After all, who would buy a Nucleus/+ and not want to go lifetime.
If lifetime were to be eliminated in the future (which I agree with), would it make good business sense to give future Nucleus buyers only the option of a lifetime sub at $699?
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…about half of them…
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Interesting…
I would have thought it would be many more? After all, after dropping a couple of $k on a Nucleus, which is used for Roon exclusively, I would have thought the vast majority would want lifetime.
It just goes to show the variations in human behaviour!
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