One big complaint I have about Roon is it’s total lack of any “social” features. And, I’m not looking for something revolutionary here I’m just after some basic feature likes sharing links to playlists, posting “now playing” directly from Roon into the forums. Things like that… but it got me thinking…
Samsung is no stranger to social. In fact, they were ahead of Apple with front cameras specifically designed to take “selfies” on their phones. They own social platforms. They own messaging clients, etc. It will be interesting to see how they might integrate some of this tech into Roon.
But, what I really wanted to focus on by starting a new thread is Bixby. Bixby is Samsung’s Alexa or Siri. It’s integrated into their phones, apps, TVs, etc. I’ve never used it. If Roon integrated Bixby what would you want it to do? Roon smart speakers? Voice handoff (hey Roon, transfer to the kitchen OR hey, Roon group to the kitchen). Or, something bigger integrated with a social touch? Like… hey Roon, what is my friend Enno playing? Play that next. hey Roon, post this song to what’s moving and grooving on the forums.
This is valid. The constant listening is concerning to a lot of people. The underlying functionality in the Roon app may still be useful. Maybe just make it a chatbot in the corner you can type at it.
Well, the next iteration of Bixby will be AI powered. The current use for Bixby actually relates to accessing menu functions. This is especially helpful on phones so you don’t have to go digging to get to a specific system setting.
This is not as basic a feature as it sounds on paper with a platform where users host their own music. It’s a lot easier to do on something like Spotify because every user has access to the same music in most cases (I imagine there are probably some exceptions due to licensing in different countries).
For me Samsung is a hardware company and is doing pretty lousy in the field of software. Bixby was a disaster when it came out. Not sure how much it improved but in general I don’t trust Samsung. I hate even their TVs: so much bloatware and proprietary junk. Yikes. I am fine with them developing some nice hardware stuff for Roon but otherwise I hope they stay far away.
I consider Last.fm somewhat of a social type app and roon supports it. It lists what I’m currently listening to and I even got an end of year wrap up like Spotify does outlining my most popular plays, artists, etc.
