Roon is toast. Posting as a lifetime subscriber.
If they donāt add other music services I suspect you are correct
I just cannot understand why anyone would argue in favour of dumbing down Roon. Stick to Tiny Tot Toons if thatās what you want. Leave Roon to those who appreciate fidelity.
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Agreed! 
Toast is a good analogy. The Maillard reaction makes the humble slice of bread into the wonderful food that is ātoastā. Out of potential comes culinary wonderment.
Roon takes your local library, Qobuz and Tidal and makes auditory wonderment.
If you want a slice of bread then enjoy Spotify, Apple Music etc. via Connect, Airplay etc.
If you want toast, with butter and jam, Roon hits the spot!
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With Apple Music and Amazon offering the high res tier at no additional cost, I wonder how much longer Quboz and Tidal can stay in the high res game? Roon is such a small fish that thereās no way Roon can keep either afloat. Tidal is still offering high res at $20 per month including their bogus MQA while Apple is at $9.99 for high res including some actual 24 bit with no MQA. Amazon Prime high res is at $7.99 per month. And Spotifyās HiFi service lands soon. Thatās a whole heap of pressure on Quboz and Tidal, and tangentially, Roon.
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I have Tidal for $10 per month, Qobuz for $12.50 per month, and Roon is paid for life. There is no reason I would switch to any of those other options. I did just subscribe to a year of Audirvana Studio, but thatās for use when away from my Roon Nucleus. I have free Apple Music (paid by Verizon) that I rarely use. I might get more use out of it when walking my dog, etc.
I would love Roon to be my āone stop shopā for all things streaming. While Roon with Qobuz as well as local files with the full āRoonā experience will always be our preferred way to play music, it would be marvellous to be able to leverage Roonās music processing capabilities to play from more sources.
In our household we are lucky that the Auralic Aries can act as an endpoint for Spotify when the album or track isnāt available on Qobuz. An alternative for us would be to have something such as a Bluesound Node 2 which, I understand accepts streams from a number of different apps. But, another box and more limited than Roon.
If Roon could provide similar functionality and be an endpoint for all services by creating a āvirtualā Bluesound Node 2, we would be in streaming heaven.
Brilliant! Roon will survive as long as there are people with taste in the world!
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I believe Roon is perfect.
There is nothing they should do to make them deviate from their perfectness. Accepting compromise will only make them weaker not stronger.
If there are people who will leave for those streaming solutions, just increase the Roon subscription price to reflect there premium status.
After V1.99, Roon should make a Roon2 that will either forgone the previous lifetime or make it a Roon1 lifetime + a discounted Roon2 subscription. Life goes on as usual.
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Your suggestion s would be the kiss of death for Roon.
I think that is the path ahead. If you look at the feature request forum, you will also come to the conclusion that Roon is perfect, there are very few things they need to do.
Just keep the cash flow coming in, nothing else will matter.
Perhaps Roon should increase lifetime again, say from $699 to $999? That certainly looks premium.
Perhaps Roon needs play āmodesā, instead of āfull integrationā (which companies are reluctant to give). A built-in Spotify connect, Amazon connect, Apple connect, etc, āmodeā for those times when you want to explore other services, but still listen on your main system. Otherwise, its all about box collecting.
Another way forward is that Roon2.0 is a hardware + subscription model.
A Roon Nucleus 2 streamer with all Airplay Spotify that provide high quality digital output but also require a subscription to function.
If I read it correctly the suggestion is to run Roon as is and allow access from within Roon to other services that whatever (licensing) reasons Roon cannot fully integrate . Am I right.
There are a number of Remote Apps , not to mention the Native apps of the services concerned that allow this.
For Example Cambridge Audio StreamMagic allows access to Tidal, Qobuz, Spotify Deezer and Apple , I have not tried Amazon. This is effectively by launching the native app (or the like) within its own app.
The UI Experience is UGHHHHH , swapping between apps etc the discovery side is fine āby appā but not across apps. The StreamMagic app for navigating a local UPnP library if pretty good as these apps go . The Tidal bit is a (Cut Down) mirror of Native Tidal and I prefer to use the Tidal App as Tidal Connect to the CXN , its simply better. There is no integration to lose, there is no integration. I donāt have Qobuz.
If Roon were to a similar āApp Launchā approach it would turn into a dogs breakfast as @danny has explained repeatedly its āall or nothingā to maintain the vision of Roon as we know and love it
Just my 2p ā¦
The suggestion is to leave Roon as it is and let Roon charge whatever amounts to keep it the same. Everyone will be happy.
I didnāt really say otherwise, I just commented on my experience with āless integratedā options.
None of the recent streaming announcements bodes well for minority players like Roon, Tidal, Qobuz et al , letās hope as fleas the big dogs just scratch and ignore.
In a perfect world tiered access might be technically possible. I wonder however how long it would be before the chorus of users would emerge complaining about how poor the integration with Roon is ie no album artā¦no metadataā¦poorer SQ between one service and another. I tend to agree with many of the comments here. Leave Roon do what Roon does best. Iāve been an Apple user from before they offered a music service. Over the years Iāve seen Apple change tack on how they deliver and itās not always a pleasant experience. Airplay is okay as a mobile service but far too buggy a platform as a reliable source of consistent high quality audio. Roon while not perfect does a really good job focusing on what it does in managing user music sources to get that music to good quality audio players. Yes itās a niche player in global terms but I like it for what it does and I hope it continues to do what it does for a long time to come.