It’s already been announced KKBox , a Taiwanese service
Not having Apple Music has zero to do with non apple users, it’s down to Apples closed nature that would limit it to only Apple users. Which is not what Roon is about. Feature parity is a must regardless of Platform.
Out of interest have you compared Apple Classical coverage with Tidal
Comparing albums in my interest range , Beethoven, Back, Mozart etc my VERY unscientific survey came out for Tidal having a much better classical library, getting to it is the issue - Enter Roon
I think Tidal is OK and the presentation in Roon is also fine.
I looked at Apple Classical and it was OK…definitely better than before the acquisition.
Before I joined Tidal - I joined most of the streaming services’ trial periods and searched for the same music. It was a good test of the user interface and library for lossless classical.
I can’t find the results now, but I remember some of the streamers were horrible with classical and kept the symphony movements as separate “songs.”
I thought I reported all that here, I’ll have to dig around and see if I can find it.
Anyway, that’s how I ended up with Tidal, and at the time, Qobuz.
I am having another look at IDAGIO , I have binned Apple Classical , TBH it looks like classical for beginners (ok musical snobbery
) . Both suffer from the ability to stream to hi fi without USB . IDAGIO has some. booklets which is good.
South Africa doesn’t have. Qobuz (yet ???) so Tidal it is , I listen mostly local anyway
Have you had a look at Presto Classical?
It doesn’t exist in South Africa ,like many things (Qobuz) , US/UK/EU , the equator is stuff of Columbus ![]()
Sad to hear! I also live south of the equator and, fortunately, am able to access all the streaming services. Personally, I use Qobuz, but recently did a free trial with Presto. I might consider Presto, instead of Qobuz, if it were integrated with Roon. It has a lot of the features of Qobuz, including the booklets and lots of classical music articles and reviews.
Spotify plans a more expensive subscription, include high-fidelity audio.
The only thing Spotify has right now to save them is Spotify Connect , which is terrific.
If Apple goes this route , which they sorta have done with their home mini but not audio equipment in general , they will have problems sustaining any big price increase.
I’ve basically gave up on Spotify lossless but we’ll see. Roon has improved with adding ARC for on the go and Tidal is supposed to get true high-res later this year, so that would help with larger catalog than Qobuz. I did like the Connect feature when I was giving Spotify a try when they first announced lossless was coming a few years ago.
Don’t forget roon said more than one new streaming service was coming out this year. But after seeing the first one, could end up being something else to expand their global reach.
I think they will find a way to get Apple Music some way especially with classical app.
I posted this before. This is the last I’ve heard about Apple integration.
There is much detail about the problems here:
Thanks for posting that. So seems like Apple Music is a lost cause at this point.
My other hope was that Apple would make changes to Airplay and their app to allow wireless lossless or some kind of handoff. I do see there are some changes being made to Airplay in ios17 but don’t see any mention of these improvements. I have a family account and I’ll use on the go and sometimes when album not found in Qobuz. I could directly hook up to my system for hires but too inconvenient.
My next hope is Tidal adds their true lossless albums soon and I switch to them over Qobuz for larger catalog. Qobuz keeps improving but still find gaps.
True, but I have both and I also find gaps in Tidal that Qobuz has. It largely depends on specific artists/albums one needs, and luck I guess
Apple has to realize they are not an audio company and don’t really do a great job of it other than lossless streaming. Their app is kind of messy and not organized well. It would benefit tremendously having Roon integration. Especially for something like the classical app.
I highly suggest Apple get out of their own head and integrate.
They don’t really care about Music or peoples
Non Apple products it’s not a service setup for this. . It’s purely a means of getting people in to their own eco system for selling on their hardware nothing more. Roon undermines this as it’s completely outside of their ecosystem and controls, hence why they enforce the mac, iOS rule. It’s only on Android and Windows as they are in control as it’s their own app and there are many more users they can help swing to their side. and pull people over to their hardware.
How many times do we have to repeat Roon managements position . They have tried and been refused
Unless it sells Apple hardware it simply isn’t going to happen.
The music app and the new Classical app are a mess ,in my opinion. Coverage on Tidal is still very comprehensive unless you have really obscure tastes, in man cases better than Apple so why bother
All they are doing is driving the monthly sub down and “forcing” other services to keep up !!
The interesting thing here is that Apple was actually willing to work with roon up to a point. I don’t think Amazon and Spotify were even up for discussion or willing to give a data dump. Deezer may have at one point been in talks but it’s been mentioned they closed themselves off to working with others.
Apple has cared about music since the iPod and iTunes. You can argue whether they cared about quality but sort of claimed they had mastered quality a while back and now have have hires and a classical app. I’d imagine they’d upgrade the HomePod with digital out to hook to home system and maybe add handoff feature to third party hardware instead of continuing to work with roon.