They already worked for Meridian before setting up Roon as they built Sooloos for them. I don’t think they have any intention to have outside investment in a hurry.
As for adding big services this isnt a case of Roon not wanting to for lack of investment it’s a case of the big players not allowing Roon to do what they want to make it fit in their product. The big ones have their own agenda and as of yet have not been convinced to move away from this side. Amazon team up with a few platforms only, Playfi, Heos and Bluesound all of which are backed by big companies. Apple don’t really integrate at all, they have one partner in Sonos and dont seem to care, their web API is simple and not suitable for integration in another product. Same goes for Spotify they only have partnered with Sonos for integration the rest all have to use connect. They don’t care for 3rd party control they want your data to sell on and use. So that leaves Deezer which may or may not be on the cards. One service I would like then to work with would be Bandcamp.
How is Roon to support other services if they won’t allow the level of integration Roon requires to work the way it does. Just become like other platforms that are a jumbled mess with no unifying database, UI or operations? If they do Roons SP is undermined and it ceases to be what it is and looses what people bought in for.
Apple seem to be doing lots of bundles with UK cellular companies at the moment and they are all pushing the advertising a lot. Looks like Apple are going for more market penetration here as Spotify has been being given away for quite some time and clearly shows what the market for AM is and it’s not hifi.
As an EE customer it has been hard to avoid Apple music as a free giveaway for 6 months (for about 3 year’s).
I know a few people who fell for it and stayed subscribed, but they are not real music lovers, they seem to be the unaffiliated who want to have some music available to them.
I have free Spotify with my company Vodafone SIM, which I took up as it doesn’t switch to a charging service, but I think I have used it once as I have lossless Tidal and YouTube music (free with premium) that I also don’t use. We might be outliers but I feel like it’s hard to avoid the services at this point.
I don’t see many people switching services as they don’t know about the services you can use and there can’t be that many people left who are prepared to pay or so it seems. Though if anyone is good at rent extraction from their customer base it is Apple.
Oops maybe I should have said value extraction from their customers
Oh I don’t watch TV
I just get them on the Internet and on their websites and general marketing text’s etc.
That’s an interesting push, and suggests high cost to gain new users. Maybe falling further behind Spotify. Apple will never say how many people are on extended free trial, but interesting if the Apple One service has slowed down.
And yet Spotify is taking forever to offer lossless streaming. I have to say Im not too impressed with Spotify’s ability to react quickly to market changes. Apple ate their lunch it seems to me and stole their lunch money.
Nah. They’re probably just sitting back waiting to see how and what the others are doing.
Apple lossless and hi res at no price hike. Check
Amazon lossless at his res at no price hike. Check
Qobuz lossless and hi res price drop. Check
Tidal…
Spotify has a long history of taking forever to implement improvements to their music service. Just go to the Spotify Community to see what I’m talking about .
If Apple comes up with a Spotify Connect home solution they will lose millions of customers .
I doubt that millions really care for lossless at all. And most users won’t have a scooby doo as to what it is in the first place. I know all my family thet use iOs don’t have a clue and they are all well educated and intelligent people. They all just have more important things to worry about and all use Spotify.
I think there is a consensus here in the forum that there are better formats than MP3, AAC and OGG. The basic FLAC is probably accepted as better here in the forum and in science and many see this format as a new long-term and free format for archiving audio material and there are other candidates at the door who want to get in.
In other forums and studies (also in Apple management) it is assessed differently (priced as inconsequential in terms of value) and therefore Spotify can wait until customer migration in the direction of HiRes actually becomes visible.
Nobody is protected from takeovers, but you can protect yourself better as a private owner. Incidentally, the strategy of not only relying on a Meridan brand is visibly more successful in the market, of course it also creates additional technical challenges, but Roon is already more today than it was under Sooloos.
When you airplay you aren’t streaming from your device. The content location is sent to the the playing device and it streams directly. This means that the the player has to support lossless steaming. IOS 15.1 will support lossless on HomePods. Availability elsewhere will likely be rolling out. Apple wants to grow services, such as Apple Music, so they will be agressively pursuing other platforms. On their timetable of course.
Not sure if “doomed” is the word I would use. Niche product is how I would describe it - for those who are heavily into audio. ~$10 a month with no content other than your own. $10 is what people expect for a full fledged streaming service.
Spotify’s interface and discovery may be better, but not sure why so many people like it as I thought that they haven’t yet implemented a lossless tier.
Apple has lost 90 to 95% of all iTunes users, is making sales record after record with iPhones. Billions of devices run mobile, subscriptions are given away for 6 months with every device purchase, HiFi is given away for free, Primephonic is bought (and immediately discontinued), a new bundle with TV, Games… created…
Nothing helps against the realization that attacking niche is really not a strategy and if almost every iPhone and iPad buyer also installs Roon, Spotify, Amazon, Google, Qobuz, Tidal, Deezer…and also pays for it, Apple can not do everything right.
The technical niche, the best price or the greatest performance (e.g. recommendation system, metadata enrichment…) and not the almost identical catalog decide in the competition.
It seems so unstructured when Apple managers say you can’t hear the difference, but we are introducing HiFi. It seems so arrogant when Primephonic is first bought and then immediately discontinued. The annual promise of new products will soon no longer pull so strongly and already fails violently in the services (Music, TV).
