This is the only open question I have, that is keeping me from pulling the trigger to become a lifer.
What happens with the lifetime subscriptions, if Roon is out of business (what noone expects or hopes as Roon is ingenious) or Roon should be sold (like with Sooloos to Meridian back in the days)?
If Roon folds, will lifers be able to keep using Roon as it is at the moment then? Or when Roon is sold, will the new owner have to take over and fulfill the lifetime subscription?
If the answers to these two questions are a clear and firm YES, then I will instantly and gladly become a lifetime subscriber in a heartbeat.
I agree. I signed up for the yearly and now have one week to decide on whether to go with the lifetime subscription. So please sell me on the lifetime subscription. Other than this is all you will ever have to pay, are there any other benefits of the lifetime subscription over the yearly?
What is the cutoff date? Oct. 31st? I would like to get lifetime if I can raise the money. More notice would have been beneficial.
If Roon folds there won’t have integration with Tidal or I would think the access to the metadata that is one of the primary advantages of this program. Not sure what it would look like.
If Roon is sold to someone then the new owner, I think, would have to honor the subscriptions otherwise they will have very little new business when the word gets out.
The Roon team was formed out of the ashes of the Sooloos team, founded over 10 years ago. We still run infrastructure for the Sooloos users that we first signed up in 2006. We are in this for the long haul. We haven’t taken external funding, and we’ve turned down buy-out offers already. This company, this product, is our lives, our love, and we plan to be here for a very long time.
Obviously I can’t tell what will happen in the future, but it would leave a very poor taste in my mouth if our lifetimers were not taken care of… for life
I don’t doubt your best intentions for one second.
But I’d like to know - from a technical point-of-view - what happens for me as potential lifetime subscriber, when Roon, for whatever reason, ceases to exist? Will I be able to use Roon after the plug is pulled?
Can I carry on using Roon with the state that Roon has then, just without further development?
An authoritative YES from you and I subscribe for lifetime within the hour…
Yah, I get it. So right now, the application obviously logs in to our cloud services, for both metadata and membership checking.
In the unlikely event that we could not maintain those services, we would release one last build that would kill those dependencies, so you could continue to use the application without our infrastructure as a requirement. Obviously the functionality would be reduced, but it would work.
There’s still a $500 lifetime plan available, correct? One could either save $50 by getting it now, or pay the full $500 shortly before a current annual plan expires, right? Just want to make sure I’m interpreting this correctly.
When you consider the money we all lose buying cars the life subscription is a bargain.
What’s the worst that can happen? You lose the subscription money.
In three years time, that won’t have been much.
Just my take, you have to bet on some things in life and Roon looks good to me. Chris
Thanks Danny. Kevin pointed me to this discussion and I’m glad I read it. You put my fears to rest. I just got screwed by a similar “lifetime” license with a different product that works in a similar vein – they could have made it right by taking out the auth and cloud functionality and let users still get the functionality (albeit limited) that the product provided. I like your solution, it’s to the point and makes things right and I applaud your commitment.
Just to validate, I DID purchase a lifetime license – without this post demonstrating a great solution to the issue I wouldn’t have subscribed for even a year. Keep up the great work guys, you earned my business (for life)!
I think of my lifetime subscription as a Kickstarter contribution for a good product. If I get nothing from it, it was still worthwhile. (And I spent more on CDs this month than the cost of a lifetime subscription anyhow!)
It’s an expensive hobby to purchase CD’s and Vinyl, but when you want sound quality there’s not always an alternative. I also like having the physical media – buying digital isn’t the same is it? That said, $500 is a lot to most folks and I am comforted by the notion that I’ll actually be getting something for my money that I can use into the future (even if it will have limited functionality if something were to happen).
I miss the shops that used to sell and trade CD’s and records. CD Warehouse is one that comes to mind. I haven’t seen one since the early 90’s! It was so easy to take a box/bag of CD’s in and pick out new ones.
I used to walk by a used CD shop on the way back from lunch everyday. I always checked out their “new arrivals” and typically found a CD or two to purchase. After store eventually (sadly) closed, there was a time that my music purchases slowed considerably (no convenient stores). But then almost any CD became available via internet shopping and I started buying even more music. In recent years, all the box sets targeted to the baby boomers have been my downfall (damn you Bob Dylan bootleg series, Beatles in Mono and Stereo, Rolling Stones in Mono, Turtles complete albums, Grateful Dead archives, Jerry Garcia archives, remastered Bruce Springsteen albums, releases of rare Texas psychedelic garage bands from the 1960s, etc. etc. And add to this the new releases of interesting new bands or favorite artists still releasing new music. (and my Spotify account only spurs more purchasing)
For people that like recorded music, we’re living in amazing times, with more available than ever!
