At your age, I lived through stagflation in the United States. This was high inflation combined with stagnant economy, no jobs, or bad jobs, and it was a struggle. But looking back I can see that I did what I needed to do and everything worked out much better than I could’ve ever imagined. Not just for me but for virtually all of my peers. Yes those bad old days of having an 18% mortgage on my first home, yes you read that correctly 18%, were not that much fun but somehow it all worked out. Enjoy the music!
Note to self - buy popcorn.
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I had a 14 percent mortgage.
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For sure will, and the future is bright.
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Reminds me of a great Timbuk3 song. The future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades.
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I understand that many people are reluctant to spend so much money on an invisible thing – a software license is not tangible, you don’t get a thing you can touch, unlike hardware.
Especially when you wonder how the market will develop, how the music industry will change, how successful Roonlabs will still be in a few years, if e.g. the investment of a lifetime license is worth it at all…
I worked in the graphic design industry for a long time and earned my money with (expensive) software: Aldus Pagemaker, great DTP software → development was discontinued. I continued to work with QuarkXPress for a lot of money.
Macromedia Freehand → bought by Adobe, development stopped. Eventually switched back to Adobe Creative Suite for a lot of money – until the license was subscription only. Another switch to Affinity…
What I’m saying is: there’s never a guarantee that something will still work in a few years. It’s a matter of trust and optimism: I think Roon is such a good software that it will still be on the market and maintained in a few years.
On the other hand, people spend a lot of money, e.g. on cinemas, theaters, ice cream, iPhones. The same with vacations: When the two or three weeks are up and the vacation is over, the money is gone – no one asks what you’ll still have of it in a few years.
I don’t go on vacation and use a very old iPhone – I’ll probably treat myself to Roon for that, that would be my personal luxury.
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At this point in time, there is nothing that comes close to Roon. What we’re paying for is the metadata and the analytics behind that that enable the organization, suggestions and curation that no other platform has. This takes a lot of skilled man hours to develop and is absolutely worth the license fee.
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Will the price increase see a better level of customer service?
For example, Roon ARC was down for almost 24 hours last week and there was almost ZERO communication from Roon. I wasted most of my day off pulling my network apart when it turns out it wasn’t necessary as the problem wasn’t at my end.
Specialist software is not cheap. As a retired developer I was a “tools Junkie” , little add-ins to help the day along 
One I couldn’t live without SQLPrompt currently runs at $179 per annum subscription, another Resharper is $349 first year dropping for subsequent years again subscription. There are NO permanent licenses !!
Roon is a specialized software product , in this sort or price range , I am not surprised at the pricing. Development requires experience (read expensive) staff .
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I am one of the (I hope) many users that has been quite happy since I joined years ago. I purchased a lifetime subscription a week after starting the trial. I follow all the trials and tribulations on this forum, and identify with a number of them. I rarely post since Roon seems to work so well for me. I have 7 endpoints, a different setup on each, and have just purchased a 2nd lifetime sub for another location, before the price goes up.
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Where did you get this confirmed?
ARC was indeed not working a week ago due to Roon issues:
Oh that was the reason! They really should have a pinned note on the forum for users to stay updated rather than spending hours like you and many others with try & error.
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Yes, agreed 
We should compare the whole monthly-annual vs lifetime subscription to renting vs owning a house with the pros and cons that both options give (I know it’s a bit of an overstatement). Personally I’d rather own, so as I am now in the 2nd week of my first annual subscription I’m trying to figure out whether to become a lifetimer or not, I am enjoying the Roon experience but I have had a few issues like the volume magically increasing as if a ghostly entity was in charge of my phone, some random disconnections whilst listening to music, and I don’t like the lack of metadata on several albums I own, maybe because the artists are too obscure. I don’t subscribe to any streaming service, I have all of my music on a NAS and I like what Roon does, it’s extremely clever and works better than using a UPnP server with my Naim app.
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Same here. I generally prefer to own instead of paying a rent or a subscription fee when it comes to housing and some services. I will prefer to ‘rent’ when I will face unavoidably obsolescence at some point and/or a relatively fast value depreciation because of the nature of the product or competitive upfront costs (let’s think about an alarm system at home, a car, IT investment…,)
Obviously, that is a bit caricatural.
As I have right this day the chance to be able to allocate this budget, I just signed for the lifetime and will never think about it starting from now.
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The funny thing is that every so often when this conversation comes up, I promise (unless you truly swear off these forums) you’ll think about it. You’ll be philosophical, and you’ll be forced to consider your choices in life, and you might feel a little smug (tho I’ll never tell), but you’ll think about it.
Congrats! And welcome to the dark side.
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I’ve noticed a few people saying they’re hesitating buying lifetime because they’re older and they might not live for X more years to make it worthwhile.
That is amazing thinking.
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Pretty much everyone has this problem regardless of age 
If I die before I break even, I’m going to request a prorated refund. That would only be fair, I think. With the price increase, I only have 11.2 months to go to reach break even.
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