I am glad to see this however it is also of concern to me for Roon with regard to Tidal.
If anyone can hurt Tidal, it is Spotify. Their format is superior. If Tidal falls this would not be good for the Roon community.
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We are forgetting that Tidal can, and if they want to compete, will improve.
People talk as if things are static and they are not. Donât underestimate the potential of a smaller flexible business.
I expect this is a scenario that has been anticipated.
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This is great news! Spotify is on its own level when it comes to usability and discovery features. Also their own software is much better than Tidalâs. I really hope that Roon will look into the Spotify Hi-Fi and add a support if possible. Iâve been Spotify customer for years and just donât feel at home with Tidal.
Spotify are lazy. They are being forced into doing what they have just announced by the seemingly much maligned Tidal who want to deliver the best possible sound quality and have the vision to actually want to work alongside Roon. Please go and put pressure on Spotify if you want them to work with Roon. There is no resistance from Roon, it is Spotify you need to convince.
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Yes, in a normal industry. But this area is in part dictated by legal agreements, exclusive arrangements, etc. There may not be more Tidal can do to acquire rights to the content it currently does not have. (as one of the main Spotify postitives is that it has a larger library than Tidal). Now on the software front, sure, Tidal can and probably will create better apps.
Would be a lot more interested in Spotify as opposed to Tidal. Not just because I really donât like the Tidal apps and the way they try and ram their agenda down your throat, but also because Spotify is more prolific so is easier for sharing with friends etc. I hear their curated content /playlists are great too, which Roon could also do independently but would take some serious resources. Apps are much better (only used the free service).
Shame theyâre not playing ball. This is going to be a much harder decision than Qobuz. I really liked Qobuz and swapping to Tidal was a tough call but the Roon integration made it a no brainier even though Tidal were also relatively unheard of in all my circles of friends. If Spotify highres turns out a good service Iâd really want it, but wouldnât be able to justify paying for two services.
At which point Iâd probably seriously consider going back to separate ecosystems for local files (using Roon) and streamed (Spotify). It would make for a nicer experience using Spotify apps out of the house.
Be interesting to see how this year unfoldsâŚ
Just my opinion, but the only chance of Spotify or Apple Music integration in Roon is if Apple or Spotify buy Roon (I think).
The reason is that both Spotify and Apple are software companies, so partnering with Roon to them would almost be like admitting somebody else has a better UI than them, which as we Roon user knows, of course Roon is better ! But Spotify is king of streaming with 50 million users and Apple is the largest company on the planet by market cap - so neither would admit this. They pride themselves on software and UI.
I have to re-iterate, we know Roon has the best UI but both Spotify and Apple (being software companies) believe they both have the best UI so theyâre not interested in partnerships with other software companies. If they have used Roon and really love it, they will either try to replicate itâs features or buy Roon if they canât do it themselves. But I canât see a partnership.
Tidal is such a much smaller player with smaller budget for software development, so the partnership with Roon made a lot more sense.
I only see Apple and Spotify partnering with more hardware companies and buying software companies, not partnering with them.
Of course I hope Iâm wrong ! A partnership with Spotify for the Roon team would be great for Roon as a company, so i hope Iâm very wrong and hope theyâre discussions with Spotify are much more productive than in the past !
I hope Tidal can grow itâs subscriber numbers too because as our only streaming option integrated with Roon, we need it to stick around and futher improve !
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Why are people posting in this thread as if Spotify implementing HiFi means they are more open to implementation with Roon ? Nothing has changed that I am aware of since Danny noted that Spotify have actively shut down integration discussions with Roon.
We even added a note to the title of the thread to make the position clear. If you want Spotify to integrate with Roon then go and change Spotifyâs mind.
Posting here that you wonât buy/continue with Roon unless/until there is integration with Spotify achieves nothing. You are pushing against an open door on the Roon side.
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If you are a Spotify paid subscriber, you can always install desktop Spotify app on your Roon Server PC or MAC, and use Spotify Connect to stream to your hifi.
How would that work ?
My 2 pennethâŚ
Problem is, as I see it, is that Spotify is all about the interface and branding; they would prefer to swamp the world with their corporate image than dilute it by working with relatively small companies offering a niche product.
I think itâs really great that Roon has the Tidal bridge sorted out very well, but I really donât think they will get anywhere with Spotify.
Moreover, by rolling out Spotify Hifi it could cause a big problem to us as Roon/Tidal lovers as it puts pressure on Tidal to compete with the elephant on the block directly and lose market share and revenue as a result. Itâs no good thing, IMHO. I really hope Tidal isnât muscled out of the market 
One of the major draws of Roon (certainly for me) is the interface with Tidal. Being able to seamlessly integrate album from Tidal into Roon, is a wonderful thing
Conversly of course we get a minor benefit, with reduced Tidal subs if Spotify roll out Hifi to the mainstream, undercutting Tidal as they do so, which is likely. But Iâd rather pay a bit more and be assured Tidal is there for the long haul.
ps⌠briefly reading some of the comments in this thread, regarding the fact that people love Spotify and donât like Tidal for aesthetic, ergonomic or other platform-specific reasons, it all seems to be a non-sequitur.
What should count in the context of this thread and community should be the availability of desired content, the reliability of the streaming and the sound quality. All else is moot, as Roonâs excellent system buffers us from the rest of it, no?
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Only when at home sadly, and of course it does a fantastic job there.
True⌠Ive got round that to a small extent by making a lightweight laptop my core and using some dual lock to âboltâ on a 4tb HDD to the back - Doesnât work for true portability, but it works for a lot of situations away from home. Anyway, digressing, youâre right⌠some kind of Roon, Tidal-only, app would be very cool , for those real âon-the-goâ moments.
Something that is knownâŚbut not well known about Spotifyâs service offering
As recently as 15 months ago, they were still maintaining on Investor calls that they have been able to maintain their previous claim that only 15% of Spotifyâs traffic passes thru their own infrastructureâŚdue to the Proxies that their Desktop player set up, which essentially use Free and Premium users setups to provide Spotify track data to other Spotify users relatively nearby [not that dissimilar to how bit-torrenting works if youâre familiar with technology behind that]
So itâs entirely possible that Premium users expecting 320kbps data are getting track data from the proxies of Free users, who are obviously limited to 160kbpsâŚthat along with other âtraffic shapingâ measures that Spotify are known to employ may well explain the variable sound quality that many users report
The reason why Spotify focus on this with Investors is that it allows them to grow the Free and Premium subscriber baseâŚbut WITHOUT the major infrastructure that would be required to service all those users in a âdirectâ fashionâŚit also gives them a reason for both Investors and Labels as to why they maintain their Free user levels, in spite of resistance from the labels
This philosophy is what enables them to grow their subscriber base by 10 million users in the last 6 months of last year [22% growth]âŚbut without a correspondingly large investment in infrastructure
Now consider what compromises they will need to make in order to satisfy a 1Mbps Lossless tierâŚwill those Premium users continue to be fed by data from the Free users proxy data??
It may also explain their reluctance to partner with companies like RoonâŚas it removes their ability to âtailorâ where the music data is pulled from
All very pertinent questions IMHO as to what Spotify will REALLY deliver in the potential Lossless service they may offer in the future
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OMG! Thatâs a bit of a shocker. I did not have any idea about that.
Thanks for sharing that (see what I did there? 
) with me.
Well I never⌠makes sense though, like you say, such rapid growth and yet not needing to put the hardware in to deal with it. Canny swines!
Spotify employee response to a user complaining about all his Upload bandwidth being used up by Spotify
If itâs any consolation, the traffic thru Spotifyâs servers was at 8.8% only a few years agoâŚbut that has increased now due to more mobile useâŚwhich is direct to Spotifyâs serversâŚbut at usually lower bandwidth, as Users donât want to use up their monthly data allowanceâŚor worse, pay for data overages
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This article is three years old. Donât know if itâs still applicable. https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/17/spotify-removes-peer-to-peer-technology-from-its-desktop-client/
Which is why I used the term Proxy above, rather than P2P traffic, which appears to have been quietly deprecated
If you look closely, there are still many users who complain of large upload activity on their connections when using SpotifyâŚas well as users who complain of variable sound quality
But the key question is how Spotify manage to boast of only 15% traffic going thru their ServersâŚwhen most Users would think it should be far closer to 100%âŚsure Desktop caches help to explain some of thatâŚbut not all
Up to each user to satisfy themselves that they are really getting what they are paying for
How could this be linked to proxying?
I think Ronnie is suggesting that the âfull creamâ users of spotify may be receiving 160kbps data streams from users of the free service; hence complaints of SQ issues.