I am not talking about “Support” as in answering questions. I was talking about no licensing fees for companies wishing to add Roon support to their product.
I have 3 Pi endpoints each with a different HAT but I’m a dedicated DIYer where IT kit is concerned. I also have a Pi buying addiction.
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Carl now that I can agree with, I have more Pi’s than needs but I now keep buying HATS for them so I can test even more 
Mike
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Not anecdotally. @danny has flat out said that Roon is going to discontinue lifetime memberships and given the reasons why.
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Roon wants as much hardware coverage as it can possibly get. Adding in a fee would deter some licensees so they give it away for free, makes sense to me.
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Ok - thanks speed!
Yup, apparently it’s been said for some years I believe now - thanks.
I’m all for Roon adding in more licensees…it’s hard to know what sort of deterrent a fee would create? Especially, as no pricing structure has been spoken about.
It’s often said that a ‘free’ service is not valued in the business world, that is to say it’s not given due kudos. It’s only when a fee is charged that the value of the service is recognised & valued.
Regardless, they don’t charge a fee & I’m not suggesting that now’s the time to start. I was merely a bit shocked that the stream of revue wholly came from the software/hardware consumers & nothing from corporate entities/businesses.
Who knows, perhaps to some businesses the cost of licencing would be tax deductible? I have no idea how tax structures work in numerous countries.
Cheers
The effort required by manufacturers to get Roon Ready certification is the same regardless of if the license was free or paid. In the bigger scheme of things unless the fee was very expensive (deterring or altering the ROI) most would probably absorb it I should say.
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There’s an excellent rundown of the rationale for keeping the manufacturer-side software free in the discussion with the RoonLabs team @computeraudiophile posted yesterday.
You’ll learn that it’s even worse than you think: they’re not only giving software away, it’s costing them money to do it. Fancy that !
Anyway, it’s around the 20 minute mark if memory serves.
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Not just that: it’d also change the relationship.
In RoonLabs’ case, it’s likely the more of the knife you hold, the better for your users. If the manufacturers became customers, then you could conceivably imagine that things like the recent end to shoddy implementations fracas would’ve been even more difficult to make happen.
Regardless, there’s absolutely no upside to it at all, because one of the things Roon sell is interoperability: as long as it’s Roon Ready, your experience will be the same no matter what your endpoint.
If you weren’t in desperate need for cash, which Roon isn’t, how extraordinarily stupid would you have to be to risk adding friction to your ability to deliver on a core feature ?
Having had a business that sold embedded tech to consumer electronics companies, I know from experience that in general, they have to have massive incentive to increase the material cost of their products by adding new licensed tech that cost $s - and for them to do this, it has to be a consumer “must have” and must provide value for all of their customers. But Roon is not a “must have” and many of their customers will never use it so paying to license tech for a subset of their customers is very unlikely. Even if free, it takes tech resources, time and effort to implement Roon’s code so that already represents a significant commitment that CE companies do not make lightly. But I think it highly unlikely that Roon could get CE companies to pay to integrate their tech or if they did, the number that did would be very very small and that would provide a massive hinderance to Roon adoption and license revenue from end consumers.
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I agree with you Craig, but it makes it all the more extraordinary that MQA was able to get consumer electronics companies to do exactly that - to pay MQA a licence fee to be able to integrate their technology, despite the fact that, at least initially, the consumer demand was limited at best.
I really wonder how many companies actualliy did pay for an MQA license.
Based on nothing, I think that often, if not always, the 1st year license has been offered for free, and that the following years have been waived due to the enormous success (sarcastic) of MQA.
Dirk
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You may be correct that it was not a lot in terms of a direct licence fee. Certainly the early financials of MQA Inc. show that it wasn’t a money-spinner by a long stretch. However, there is still the set-up and integration time required, based solely on the fact that one of the least relevant streaming companies was on-board.
I don’t want this to turn into a commentary of MQA, but I thought it was interesting given the topic being discussed.
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The typical way you do this is to find one or two marquis companies who want some unique differentiation and who will do it for free (or you even pay them if you have to) and then use them to try leverage others to move and you keep working your way down the food chain until you get to the run-of the-mill products and it takes years and years for this to happen with most new tech. Anyone who is a follower (after the marquis companies) pay… MQA, however, is still niche like Roon. Once you start seeing MQA in your run of the mill A/V receiver then it has widespread adoption. Roon is still also a long way from wide-scale adoption.
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When Tidal started offering MQA music at no additional cost (i.e. free) to HiFi subscription users, we received a lot of requests from users to have MQA supported.
We supported MQA because this is the Hi-Res format chosen by Tidal.
If you read the internet, it’s easy to get the impression that everybody hates MQA. The fact is a lot of users want to listen to freely accessible music and play [decode] them in [to] the best quality, no matter what.
We did not get MQA license for free or waived. I seriously doubt any manufacturer did.
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Marketing and easily accessible content plus a very healthy set of rags telling consumers this is the only way to listen to music.
Marketing - I mean Roon doesn’t have anyone on staff who has been awarded the Prince Philip Medal from the Royal Academy of Engineering as far as I know. Bob must know what he’s talking about.
Easily Accessible - It cannot be denied that Tidal is driving the interest in MQA. Heck I actually dislike, strongly, MQA but because of Tidal I plan on getting a MQA capable DAC at some point. Dogs and cats. Living in harmony. It’s crazy!
The “audiophile press” rags - These are the same people who told you that the only way your hifi achieves it’s ultimate fidelity is to use a green pen and color the edge of your CD. These same people now say you cannot do better than MQA. I never bought the green pen. I might end-up buying MQA as, because of Tidal, it seems like the green pen is going to be a requirement this time.
But, getting back on topic of the original thread. Not everything is, or should be, a money grab. Sometimes you make a heck of a lot more money by staying relevant and playing the long game. Roon stays relevant if it keeps adding Roon Ready devices. Keep the entry for that as easy as possible and we all benefit.
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Imagine the licencing Roon could charge if it had folder view 
I’d say Roon is a must have in the higher end of the niche.
I wonder if this is why we 're not seeing Roon integrated on the cheaper end of the spectrum. DiY options aside, what’s the cheapest endpoint ? The bluesound stuff ?