That’s exactly my point. I’m not sure ISRC (or other unique ID) are shared by streaming services to allow real strong interoperability and portability. Interested in Roon’s insights on this question.
There is services like https://soundiiz.com/ but, from my knowledge, not very accurate for collectors, jazz, or classical music.
If Tidal goes under, you lose that portion of your library as you don’t have the digital rights to that particular physical media.
Roon might not replace Tidal at all if they cease to exist. Tidal is a very nice to have feature of Roon nothing more.
Make your subscription decisions on those 2 facts.
Thanks for this question, and for the record I don’t think it’s unreasonable to be concerned about the long term prospects of your music collection! Everyone in our company is a collector to some degree, and most of us border on obsessive. Obviously we’re all careful to backup our local media and Roon databases, but you’re not wrong to ask how you might secure a collection of streams, and it’s absolutely something we’ve thought about.
As a few people have mentioned, streaming content is available because of decisions made by rights holders. We can give you the ability to export a list of titles that are currently available (and we do), but ultimately when a decision is to no longer make an album available, there’s nothing Roon, or TIDAL, or any other steaming service can do. That’s just how streaming works.
That said, we have a clear track record of supporting our products long term, and doing what’s needed to protect the investments people make in those products. Even today, our team works to provide the metadata cloud service that powers Sooloos, a product we announced in 2006. Our work ensures regularly updated metadata for customers going back 2 companies.
Even with TIDAL content, the metadata you are seeing in Roon is powered by our metadata service. While we don’t have any indication that our relationship with TIDAL is going to change, the architecture of our system works to our advantage, should we ever need to migrate your collection. Again, we don’t see that happening anytime soon, but there’s no question we feel a responsibility to have a contingency plan in place.
The volatility of streaming services aside, our goal is absolutely as you describe – we want Roon to be where music fans, collectors, and audiophiles build their music libraries long term. We’re in this for the long haul, and we take that responsibility seriously.
To answer some of your other questions, right now a Roon license is based on a single Core, which you might also think of as a single library or location. The other devices in your home (remotes or audio zones) need to be on the same local network for now, but our goal is to be your music player wherever you are.
Using your phone as a remote in your living room, and then having it work equally well in the car is where we’re heading, although I should be clear that I don’t have a timeline I can commit to right now. I will say that it’s a major priority for us, as is easy syncing of your library for people who want the “full” Roon experience at multiple homes (meaning unlimited remotes, unlimited zones).
Can I promise Roon in the car before Christmas? No. Can I promise that every album currently available on TIDAL will be available to stream in Roon forever? Nope. But I can tell you we take these questions very, very seriously, and anyone who’s become familiar with our products, our business, or our passion for music over the past decade can confirm that.
And Adam, if you have any other questions, please let us know. Thanks!
Thanks Mike,
Great answer.
I certainly don’t need guarantees or timelines for these things. What I wanted to know is that you are thinking about them and concerned about them.
We all have experience investing our time and energy in a library of digital music, metadata, etc… only to find out a few years later we “did it wrong” and have to start all over.
Broadly my question relates to an ability to have my context for my library travel with me, where I go and hopefully as technology changes. A “smart library” if you will, that is mobile and mine.
Imagine if this had been all available in the WinAmp/MusicMatch days and we’d all been able to rerip to FLAC and simply replace the 128kps songs in our library with newer versions, without losing all of the personal metadata we’d associated with the original file.
Where I’m hoping this goes is that where now:
Roon cloud says: here are all the wonderful things to know about Miles Davis, Kind of Blue
And Roon Adam on my PC says: Adam has this copy of Miles Davis, Kind of Blue [HERE], and it is in playlists X and Y and Z. And has been played 1501 times… and his favorite song is A… etc
In the future we might have:
Roon cloud says: same
Roon Adam in the Cloud says: same, but now the file is [HERE2]
So the “Here” can change with the times, allowing that the library doesn’t need to be rebuilt each time a new higher res version comes out, or a streaming service changes, or the physical location of a file changes (perhaps to a personal cloud?)
I’m not expecting Roon to replace the file. But I’m hoping that the necessity of replacing a file, doesn’t destroy the rich context I’ve built in my library and I’m able to re-associated with the new version of the file… and that maybe Roon will be equipped to help make that (finding the file, re-associating the file) easier so that I maintain the integrity of my personal library…
What’s the latest update on accessing my WD MyCloudEX2Ultra via Roon remotely? I would like to connect with my iPhone/iPad and listen via Bluetooth to music while in car, vacation etc…
Is it possible to access Roon music files from a remote location? Any update on this? I would love to be able to listen to my library while in the car, office or traveling using an IPhone?
System: WD MyCloudX2Ulta NAS - Senore microRendu - iFi DAC - Denon - Anthony Gallo DiveTi.
No update to share on timelines, but this class of functionality is absolutely still on our roadmap.
More information when we have it.
Very new to Roon here and really interested in this thread as considering diving straight into a lifetime subscription after my 2-week trial ends.
I hear what people are saying about content being our personal responsibility and to a certain extent we have a choice to take our chances with streaming services but as a long time Meridian fan and early adopter of MQA I fear we may lose the choice to own future file formats making the ability of a service like Roon to be able to switch our libraries from one service to another a huge competitive advantage and a necessity for those who want to keep up with the cutting edge - whatever the cutting edge turns out to be (if MQA fails there will be something else) and early signs point to it only being available to stream (despite the significant losses they all seem to make).
Even non-MQA high res files are tough to get hold of outside of streaming services - case in point Qobuz offering 70K tracks 24-bit tracks - try finding them on HD tracks!
How long before 16 / 44 Lossless is only available to stream… Q the rhy smiles on the faces of my analogue buddies - LPs will never die :)!
The lossless Qobuz streaming tiers gives you a discount on purchasing stuff in their library. No need to go to HDTracks to try and find it.
Thanks Dr, never did my homework there, but MQA is another matter… Even Tidal don’t sell it and I don’t hold much hope for Deezer either but I’d love to be wrong. Maybe if it really takes off they will and we won’t be left to the mercy of their precarious financial positions…
While remote access is in the works it would be great to download local copies of our libraries, with the option of a lossy format, similar to what the Tidal phone app offers but for all portable devices powerful enough. I could then use Roon for all my audio requirements, wherever I am, ditching iTunes and the nause of converting FLAC to AAC and keeping Sooloos around for remote access from my work desktop for that matter.
I also would love to have access remotely. So far, I’ve only manage to do it through Plex, but then you have a different media library, playlists, etc. Plus I don’t think you get MQA support. The other way is to deal with the issue using Mobile Players like Astell & keno and others.
I love how Roon’s interface and I ned to have that on my traveling MacBook Pro!
Hi @mike
I saw this thread was bumped due to the desire for mobile streaming. I support that desire!
But I also wanted to send a HUGE THANKS for the “Versions” feature that was introduced in 1.5.
Back to the conversation above, “Versions” is exactly what I am hoping Roon can move toward. It can be a very powerful, future-proofing feature for those of us building an integrated database of music:
Both of these features give me great comfort that a Roon database provide a huge value add and insurance against the unknown future pathway of digital music.
As we move from paying for permanent copyright licenses to physical media to transient, temporary copyrights of data streams, it is nice to know that Roon is adding features that can allow us to port our metadata (our library) to new legal ways to license that content (whatever that next version may be).
I see Versions as the first sign that you recognize this as a huge value in your service that (to my knowledge) only Roon is positioned to provide.
Hi @mike,
Any new info on remote access being provided by Roon?
I’m using Plex more and more because of this feature and fear you may be shooting yourself in the foot and losing some customers or would be new customers going forward if this feature is not available.
Back in the day i used a product called Simplify Media to do this. It was bought by Google and god only knows what happened to it. But boy, it was great. Would love to have that functionality again.
@support How about building functionality that will allow a user to at least build some playlists with metadata that can be downloaded and enjoyed while away from home. This could perhaps be smart enough to download local only content and stream the rest from subscribed services
Keep up the good work!
Any updates on this?
Hi,
For me it would be great if I could select a few albums to download on my phone. Personally, I do not need High-Res files on the go and would like to select some compression to save some storage on my iPhone.
I could imagine that there are some license-issues to include offline-versions from Tidal.
For now it would be great if I could browse my library while at home and select a few albums to listen to offline during the day.
The offline/to-go topic is already quite old in the feature-wishlist… I wonder if someone heard some news it this might be implemented one day?
