What happens with the lifetime subscribers if the company folds or is sold?

[Matthias_Brennwald]

Assuming Roon would indeed close its doors at some point (every company will come to its end at some day), what would happen to those Roon installations that run on a lifetime membership? Would they continue to work?

[Jim_F]

Not if they shut down their servers. It might work to play your local content without any metadata, etc. IDK. However, if you used Roon for 4 years before that happened, you got your money’s worth. I wouldn’t worry about it.

[Edward12 (Banned: Toxic behavior)]

@Matthias_Brennwald

Assuming Roon would indeed close its doors at some point (every company will come to its end at some day), what would happen to those Roon installations that run on a lifetime membership? Would they continue to work?

Unlike ‘open source’ products, when/if Roon goes belly-up all related content will likely stop working.

For-profit = all work needs to be budgeted so something as small as correcting a typo would have a cost associated with it and if it’s not in the budget then it just won’t get fixed. It also means the product will likely lag behind improvements depending on how much the company wants to ‘gamble’ on the value-added benefit of the improvement. This is to say…improving X will only be worth it if it attracts new customers. So all these folks who own Roon begging and pleading for something mean very little if it does not attract new customers who see the value.

Open-source projects, on the other hand, churn out updates and improvements at a head-spinning rate and can live on no matter what happens. However, they have their downside too, like being unstable and devs who are stuck on a new-feature tread mill.

[mikeb]

What happens with the lifetime subscribers if the company folds or is sold?

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 lif…

What happens with the lifetime subscribers if the company folds or is sold?

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.

[Steven_Zore]

Roon for Life or Die!

[grossmsj (Scott G)]

Actually, it isn’t that much of a choice. The latter is an unavoidable given.
I like the attitude though!

[Aidan_Gaule]

@danny,

Thank you for your detailed explanation [about the price increase of lifetime]. May I ask you a question on a tangentially related point?

I’m a lifetime subscriber already and am very happy with the product in general. However I recently became very much aware of the software’s dependence on ‘Roon central’ when ‘something happened’ over the weekend that broke Roon’s connection to Tidal and Qobuz. This in turn raised the question of what I would be left with in the (I hope very unlikely) event that Roon were to fold. Would it just be the library management component of the software?

Aidan

[Carl]

I’ve @Aidan_Gaule,

I merged your post into the existing topic, see Danny’s post higher up …

What happens with the lifetime subscribers if the company folds or is sold?

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 lif…

What happens with the lifetime subscribers if the company folds or is sold?

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.

[Aidan_Gaule]

Understood. Thanks again.

[Philip_KOCH]

Hi, I was wondering how and by who the metadata is managed. I am considering buying a Nucleus + as the interface, functionalitites and sound of ROON are just unbeatable. Now what if ROON dissapears, goes bankrupt… What happens with all the nice Metadat we get? What servers is it coming from? Is it open source? I would be seriously uoset spending over 2k for a asystem that stops working in 1,3 or 10 years… Same questions for the LIFETIME subscribtion who’s life? Roon or mine? or the device?

[ged_hickman1]

Search is available to all

What happens with the lifetime subscribers if the company folds or is sold?

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…

[Mike_O_Neill]

Bottom line is no matter how good the metadata is you only rent it ! Its stored on your PC as far as i know but not in a way you can acccess or reuse. Many Collectors maintain their own metadata , which can often help Roon id stuff

You must make your choice on its percieved quality

If you stop paying, woosh it goes , the article above deals with a potential fold of Roon

[mikeb]

Please just scroll up to the @Danny posts above (October 2015) where he clearly lays out plan B should anything untoward happen to Roon.

[Carl]

Helpful links to save people from scrolling …

What happens with the lifetime subscribers if the company folds or is sold?

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 lif…

What happens with the lifetime subscribers if the company folds or is sold?

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.

[bill_perkins (birdland_bill)]

Thank you BlackJack and Jim. The Roon Labs LLC notes are helpful. I am a Lifetime subscriber and love this amazing software. Roon 1.8 is amazing. I can’t help but wonder how Spotify going lossless will impact music listening/curating. Temporarily stable with Roon/Qobuz, which play amazingly well together, but concerned about Spotify’s impact in this space should they also go lossless. The Roon/Qobuz combination has helped my listening and music appreciation reach previously unimagined heights.

[Michael_Wyden (wydi)]

well, an huge part of the Qobuz library is not only lossless but high res. So I am not concerned

[bill_perkins (birdland_bill)]

Don’t know Qobuz (or Spotify, Tidal) fiscal health. Amazon and Apple are in strongest position, but don’t provide high resolution (possibly precluded by significant cost increment with minimal end-user interest). Maybe this musical ecosystem is quasi-stable. I hope so. My initial question re: Roon being snapped up is that their incredible leap forward in music curation may attract interest from the broader market (Apple/Amazon). Who wouldn’t want brilliant pointers to new music/artists?

[grossmsj (Scott G)]

@bill_perkins

I can’t help but wonder how Spotify going lossless will impact music listening/curating.

It’s natural to see the threats. We train ourselves to see threats. But as we focus on threats (or what could go wrong), we tend to miss the opportunities. Its a fundamental basis for why our species loses creativity with age.
Lots of changes mean lots of opportunities too. I don’t know what they are, but I’m sure they are out there. I’d be surprised if several of these unseen opportunities aren’t on Roon’s radar.

[bill_perkins (birdland_bill)]

Not seeing as a threat. Just wondering about wisdom of lifetime subscriptions in an unstable market. Agree re: wonderful opportunities. Never imagined I’d have it so good. I know the folks at Roon are a unique blend of music lovers/makers and software creators. Amazingly good times. If I had to do it again, I’d still go with the lifetime subscription. It has already paid for itself in my musical growth.