I rearranged this topic from other threads that went off-topic. Please see below.
Canot I ask what streaming services will be integrated?
I am findng myself listening to streamed music these days, in fact I would say 95% of my listening is now streamed, mainly Tidal but also have calm radio playing in the background all day and all my dance stuff is from soundcloud, of which many sets are no downloaable.
I have not bought into Sooloos because the music I listen to most has not been available on it, so hoping your system will allow integration of many streaming services?
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We plan to ship with Tidal, and nothing else to start.
We have 3 others implemented, but we have a relationship with Tidal that exceeds the relationship of the others. The experience you get with Tidal+Roon will be unparalleled. It makes all the other services look archaic. Even the integrations weâve done of other streaming services into Roon feels like a bolt-on feature when you see what weâve done with Tidal.
I donât want to name the others, because Iâd like to grow those business relationships with them, so we can also provide awesome elsewhere, but history has taught us that they just donât care. For example, we had a working Spotify implementation that they gave us the run around for over 2 years, and then in the end, refused to let us ship it.
Working with Tidal has been great. Those guys really get it. The result of their willingness to work with us has resulted in a product you will love.
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Cheers Danny.
To be honest, I donât mind the others being a bit of a bolt on, Calm Radio would be an easy integration as they are just radio channels, so a simple link.
Soundcloud is, I admit, rather more complicated, however, even if you could just link to our account and see just the âLikedâ music that would be enough.
Please consider it, Soundcloud has 40 million registered users (July 2013), 175 million unique monthly listeners (Dec. 2014), so is definitely a popular service, include that in your software and you definitely get a few fans.
I should just add though, that I will buy your software for Tidal alone, it will allow me to add an MS200 to feed my DSP speakers.
Really? Why would you care to use SoundCloud inside our app for a poorer experience than you can get on their website?
Itâs not difficult to list your Soundcloud music, and let you do nothing with it other than play/queue it â I just thought it a worthless product, and that people would rather use SoundCloudâs website for the best experience.
Turns out radio is not simple, but we do support TuneIn. Calmâs license model wouldnât make sense for us unless they were a critical and central part of our business.
The reason being is my DSP speakers are in my living room, in there I donât have a pc, I do have an airport express, but it sounded crap, and there is no remote app for Soundcloud, orTidal, so I have to go into the office to search for new music and then stream it to the speakers.
Sonos added Soundcloud and Calm Radio last year and being able to search and browse on my phone, ipad etc. is great, however, a Sonos Connect doesnât sound anywhere near as good as an MS200, for Soundcloud it is fine, but not ideal for Tidal.
I know Tidal going going through a Meridian MC200 sounds better than Tidal going through the Sonos connect, both into my DSP5200 speakers.
But I donât want Sonos and Roon running into them, I have my TV into one input and then I have to choose either Sonos or an MS200 (running from your software) into the other input.
So it is a convenience thing for soundcloud/calm radio etc., and sound quality and user experience for when listening to âproperâ music. 
Regarding adding radio, that is fair enough, to be honest, the more I use Tidal the less I use Calm Radio.
Doesnât Soundcloud only provide streaming 128k MP3? If you upload a FLAC, they will transcode to 128kps MP3⌠sorry, but thatâs going to sound pretty bad through anything.
https://developers.soundcloud.com/blog/stream-and-download seems to state exactly the above.
Now, they do provide that the artist can provide a âdownloadâ link that gives you the original, but a user must explicitly allows this. Right away, this limits you to 128k MP3 (ugh), except for music that others have uploaded in high quality, and then explicitly allowed for the download.
Additionally, Iâve not tried it yet, but there is always risk that they could make it difficult to stream the âdownloadsâ in real-time, such as not supporting HTTP Range requests are those download URLs.
I listen to DJ mixes on Soundcloud once in a while, but I have zero quality expectations there. Soundcloud is worse than that of Youtubeâs ~128k AAC. Blah.
Tidal, we will release with, and it will be great.
To solve your issue with DSP5200s, Iâve always felt that Meridian just needs to release a virtual sound device driver for OSX/Windows, similar to how Devialet has done so for their Expert Line. I failed to get this to be a priority when I used to work there.
Agreed, but nice to have it under one umbrella.
Oh, if only!!
Thrilled to hear youâre focusing on Tidal - Iâve been very impressed with the audio quality from them, but have become a little frustrated with their UI. Having seen Sooloos from the early days, Iâm looking forward to seeing what Roon brings!
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I agree! Support for Soundcloud would be a great feature!
@gmt, are your reasons the same? clearly quality can not be a real concern, so its purely a matter of having a single UI/control point?
Yes that is correct. Quality is good, but music is my first love! Then quality, followed by convenience.
Cheers
Tom
- how do you use soundcloud now? web interface?
- do you download or just stream?
- what is your general soundcloud workflow? do you read/add those little comments they have? do you search a lot? do you track people?
- what type of music are you listening to on soundcloud?
(Iâm asking all these questions to get a better feel for what I need to do to support SoundCloud).
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I tend to use the web interface to go through new music. I then add it to my Likes so I can find it easily and listen on my phone later, either with headphones or through airport express or Sonos.
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I tend to download if I like the sound of something. Streaming is fine for having a quick listen but transcoded to 128kbps. Urgh!! as you say!
Problem is for copyright reasons a lot of sets canât be âdownload enabledâ so streaming is the only option.
Because many sets are live sets with the crowd added into a channel it is not too bad, almost adds to the live/club feel. (I tell myself that anyway!). -
All of those yeah, but only on the web interface, which is why as long my âLikesâ show up in Roon that would be enough.
Being able to sit with a remote app and scan through the stuff I have âlikedâ is the most important bit, if I then listen and like the set I will download it anyway and it it to my main music library in 320 or wav if available. -
Mainly dance stuff. Some new bands and acoustic stuff, but 99% is dance stuff.
If it could show the âNew Streamâ which is the page that shows everything uploaded from every person or group you are following that would be good too. But just being able to play it through Roon and a decent endpoint would be good enough and you could browse on the ipad app and then Like something and play it through your system anyway, so anything really.
Mixcloud is also very popular with DJs and fans alike, I do have an account and have uploaded there, but never use it cause I canât listen on my main system easily, so it gets left unused.
Being able to play the music you want on your system is so important, add everything that people want to play and they will come flocking in.
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I agree with Gizze, if Roon were going to consider adding Soundcloud support, notifications of new uploads by users you follow would be a good thing. Iâm intrigued as to the combination of Soundcloud and better metadata, helping the process of finding new and lesser known music.
Soundcloud is a great music discovery tool and agree that support, however basic would be a good thing.
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