I interpret this as transparency on the part of Roon management. This is both refreshing and rare in the case of businesses of any size.
Edit: see above for evidence of this.
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A little Roon love here. My trail ends any day now and I would have opted for the lifetime but my wife ātalkedā me out of it. I dropped Apple Music and added Qobuz. Roon and Qobuz yearly will keep me happy for some time.
I still need to learn how to take advantage of Roonās capabilities but I think the service offers an amazing capability. I want Roon to make money to support their continued improvement in the software.
The user manual or lack of is a weak point from a non-technical but the customer service folks have done a great job of replying to my community posts.
I do hope the annual remains the same price or is reduced however.
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In my case, the majority of my listening is from Qobuz - they even have most of the CDs I so tediously ripped years ago. I often find the search in Qobuz more productive than the search in Roon. So were Roon to get more expensive and still not deliver in the areas of search and organization then I would ask myself if it was really worth it. I would probably let my annual subscription lapse and see how I got on in the Qobuz only wilderness. JRiver would do me fine for my own rips. Who knows. But Iād much rather Roon fixed the things that are frustrating,
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Ask your fellow users questions, as many as you like. I learn new things constantly about roon and music in general hanging out here.
I think you may be underestimating the role of price. For a few, those who are accustomed to the way iTunes, JRiver, Foobar etc organize their library, Roonās way can be a significant adjustment. Coming from those lands, it took me a year to grasp Roonās brilliant way of organizing. I was accustomed to folders and once I figured out I could use Roonās tagging to essentially create folders, and do so much better, I became sold on Roon.
That aside, itās difficult to see why most would not use Roon except for the price. For itās only at the level of price that you have actual competition. I assumed your strategy was to eschew the masses and focus on the high spending audiophile crowd. Which may be wise. I have no grasp on how many people use paid 3rd party music software. Roon has 100K users, but I have no idea what paid 3rd party market share that represents.
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Iām not making a statement; Iām asking a question.
Also, your entire post is out of context. The context of my question was that they were willing to pay $119 for an annual, and if the price of the annual goes up (which Iām not saying it will), where would they go. Clearly the $119 did not stop them.
I think you missed that this is not the topic about lifetime price 
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Itās a good question actually. Where would you go? Thereās currently nothing else comparable. It you couldnāt afford a price increase then you would do without. I get that concept.
Yes, my response was in context of the annual. You have an industry leading product, thatās beyond question. Your competitors only compete with you on the level of price, except for those who prefer the old school way of library management due to familiarity, or the mobile capabilities of the Tidal or Quboz apps. Iām not arguing your annual price is too high, but rather answering the āwhere would they goā statement by saying they would go back to whatever less expensive, or free software they were using before. Not necessarily because itās better, but because itās less expensive.
Those factors donāt play as much a role in well heeled audiophile circles, but in the mass market where low cost or free reigns, I donāt see how nearly anyone would not choose Roon except for price, annual or otherwise. Please donāt take that as a criticism of your pricing, itās not intended that way.
Unfortunately youāve stated the obvious. If they are leaving because of a price increase, they arenāt going to go to something MORE expensive 
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You did ask āwhere would they go?ā Not sure how else to ask an obvious question except with the obvious answer 
oh, there are lots of places to goā¦
Iām curious if there are others and the exact reasons why those (and other) alternatives would be contenders.
There is nothing comparable at this price with respect to features and quality.
In another thread I discussed multi year subscriptions. If you are going to maintain the annual subscription price or even lower prices, multi-year subscriptions would be a way to reward longer term subscribers with a better price, or with free term (extra months) of the subscription.
That is very subjective based on need and/or specific use cases.
Also, if the price hypothetically went up, that changes the calculation.
I know it sounds like Iām arguing to leave Roon, but Iām really trying to understand the reasoning of those who are in the market to leave. If you have a lifetime, Iām not concerned
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I like this idea. Itās being used in other sectors like TV streaming - pay monthly for e.g. Crave/DAZN etc. or get a year for the price of 10 months, etc.
Iām extremely happy with Roon and donāt believe there is a credible alternative for my purposes, so will continue to pay for it, particularly as the product is continually developing (for the better IMHO). People complaining about being constantly beta-tested by Roon clearly donāt have an Apple product 
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I have a lifetime subscription, so you should have no concern with me. Almost four years. I do use Audirvana, and Bryston MPD at times. Choices are good, as are alternatives. When Catalina crashed Roon, options were available.
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NAD have being offering Dirac lite with a $100 upgrade to full fat on their AV amps, the new M10 has Dirac full fat included as does the new AV amp
When they offer this as an MDC module upgrade to the rest of us older users it will cost $400 and we will jump at it, you know how that happens.
Maybe you could upsell the software inside roon ?
James
I think a more interesting question is āWhat are you willing to give up for a lower cost?ā
It seems some/many users view Roon as just a music player, and I think to myself āYou must be crazy paying that much to just play your music!ā. But it impossible to know what they donāt put a value on. If you are playing your ripped āChicagoā CDs to a Bose soundbar, RAAT doesnāt matter, streaming integration doesnāt matter, music discovery doesnāt matter, etc. But still they were attracted to Roon, have become dismayed because they canāt scroll horizontally, and leave. That isnāt a price choice (?), but still there are things they donāt value, because really, horizontal scrolling isnāt a market differentiator.
So if somebody really likes Roon a lot and they arenāt leaving for hurt feelings, but a lower price, what is it in Roon that they willing to trade off?
Martin ā Yes I did see that and it seems extremely comprehensive. Thank you for checking and providing the link. I need to spend more time exploring it. Actually part of the fun for me is to figure out how to utilize Roon. When I have a question, how do I do this in Roon, I often can not find the answer (it is probably my brain). The community responsiveness has really exceeded my expectations so I will probably do some additional posts when I have questions (after checking the User Guide).
Happy Thanksgiving everyone by the wayā¦
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My financial life circulates around monthly payments, in some cases annual payments so whatās different.
Many software products went to annual subscription, take Resharper a dev tool, that was probably 8 years ago , people moaned but itās still there on that model
I firmly believe that to have an input into what a product does you must a part of it an this community. Moan as I will about stuff I try to be constructive
Roll on year 3 on 13 Dec, for me there is nothing even approaching Roon , even as. A dedicated JRiver user.
My only gripe really is that you only rent your metadata but ā¦