Where Is Roon Going?

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This is conjecture on my part but I think Roon is in trouble and the nugs project, end to end, is one of multiple indicators.

The business equation is simple. nugs is an investment. It has actual up-front cost in terms of R&D, marketing. It has recurring operational cost just to keep the service healthy and running. It also has opportunity cost, which is the cost of not doing what Roon might have otherwise done if they had not built nugs.

It’s easier to quantify the R&D and operational costs than it is to quantify the opportunity cost, but you can’t ignore it.

For nugs to make sense fiscally, it has to contribute more than it costs. For actual costs, it has to result in some combination of user retention, increased per-user revenue, user growth. To me, that’s not happening. nugs is not going to bring a massive influx of users into Roon. We’re not seeing any evidence of that. Why? Well…their user base is small, niche, and already has nugs apps for their mobile phones and their TVs. What’s the Roon value proposition for these folks? It’s something like go buy and set up a new server, deal with the fact that your wireless network won’t be up to the task and, if you pull all this off, then. you’ve managed to put a service and an app in between you and nugs to replace the nugs apps you already had so you can do less with it.

The uptake on this will be small at best. The impact to Roon’s bottom line won’t be significant.

I’ve been in the industry a long time. This nugs integration has the hallmarks of a business-development initiative, not a real product initiative. Somebody somewhere knew someone at the other company. Somebody somewhere is confused about the difference between “activity” in a product and “progress’“ in a product.

To me, though, the real issue is the opportunity cost. It’s what Roon didn’t do because they spent months on nugs. They didn’t:

  • Do a deep dive into the network issues that lead to setup and reliability issues for users
  • Make it unnecessary to have an advanced degree in TailScale and networking to use ARC where other products just proxy
  • Invest in “delighting” existing users with something special around music discovery and either curated content or real, exciting generated stuff like all of the other apps/services manage to do
  • Fix the long-standing issues with metadata, box sets, the rest of it
  • Invest in Search, New Releases, fixing auto downloads on ARC or anything else many of us know are lingering issues

Job #1 for Roon isn’t rolling out niche stuff like this. It’s getting crystal clear about who and what they are and where they’re going. Re-recruiting existing users and getting them excited. Turning the existing community into brand advocates. Getting the sales folks in HiFi shops to actually recommend Roon instead of steering users away from it like the guys in my local HiFi shops do because they don’t want to be trying to help users install it and keep it running.

The future of Roon can’t be a small and not growing group of 70+ year old men who mostly listen to their CD collection that they managed to rip. This thing needs to come alive, with some real energy and leadership and vision. Get the product rock solid and then be clear about what new scenarios are going to drive real retention growth. It’s not nugs.

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Nugs - am I missing something - where is the value?
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I have zero interest in Nugs, but if Roon could integrate with Discogs, that would be something I could get excited about.

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Great post. Just yesterday I was wanting to do a deep dive into garage rock in my collection (local and Qobuz). Honestly, the ‘discovery’ in Roon was almost next to helpless, both ins finding what’s in my library and suggestions for what’s not. If it wasn’t for the fact that I’m an early lifer (1.5) and my audio ecosystem is set up around Roon, it’s not something I would even consider now, especially with all of the other subscriptions in my life from photo software to newspapers to television streaming. Roon has not lived up to its initial promise in regards to utilizing our (often too vast) music libraries, but the ‘big announcement’ was about watching some poorly curated live music on TV for $25/month. Big yawn.

And let’s face it, even by the name alone, ‘nugs’ is primarily for stoners into jam bands (a nug is a small chunk of weed). How many of them are going to buy into Roon? Very few would be my guess. But I guess Roon gets another bit of marketing fluff out of it, which may impress some but not this long time user.

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Think you nailed it. I think this was a bad misstep by Roon which must have limited development bandwidth. Many better things could have been done. To build trust with the community I think Roon should be more open on it’s roadmap and, where appropriate, seek feedback.

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There is already a feedback mechanism, and this is it. They should NOT share their roadmap. Roon is not a collaborative project.

I really like Roon. There are lots of features I use and lots I don’t use. I use Roon ARC all the time, but will never use Nugs. That’s fine with me. Some people will use Nugs and I’m happy for them. I doubt the implementation of Nugs took anything away from the implementation of other features or resolving issues.

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I very much doubt it didn’t. Unless there was some specific expansion (and funding) of the team to do specifically this how could it not impact on other work ? It wouldn’t seem to be a trivial implementation.

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That’s one aspect of my post that’s almost certainly objectively non-debatable. In it’s simplest form, it’s about resource allocation - resources are quantitative (and finite). It’s more than just that, though. Sometimes in large software projects, it’s helpful to think about “feature matrix” in combinatorial terms. Features interact with features. If a product has n features, the complexity of the product isn’t n. It’s (worst case) n^2. When you add something like nugs, you’re not just increasing the complexity by 1. You’re increasing it from n*n to (n+1)*(n+1). That’s why a feature like nugs has a potential non-linear opportunity cost.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that you’ve never been accountable for “growth” of a subscription based business. Whether or not you have, if you have concrete ideas about how Roon can improve retention, lifetime value of users, or create hockey-stick subscriber growth, please share them. Yelling, with capital letters, that a company shouldn’t share a roadmap is a strange assertion when we live in the today’s world of data-driven understanding about brands, brand sentiment, growth metrics, and the means to measure and drive growth.

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It might be easier than we think in that:

Roon has already integrated 3 streaming platforms.

They already have an established pipeline of what needs to happen, it’s not a new thing to them.

The stuff they are integrating largely slots into an existing UI / developed set of features.

From that point of view, I’d say it could be easier than some of the more difficult and tricky areas people have asked for.

For instance, solving the library and non library issue may require massive changes to fundamental aspects of Roon. Bandcamp would require metadata and database changes on both sides (a while back someone from Roon commented on the fact that bandcamp doesn’t have the same level of detail stored as metadata against albums etc). Integrating family plans would require Roon to build that into every aspect of the platform, A LOT of UI stuff let alone all the data handling.

I personally get absolutely zero value from Nugs and I think their pricing is offensive but I also don’t believe this was a major undertaking for Roon based on the above. Still not saying it was easy or that it required zero effort to do, just a lot less than maybe it seems at first.

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I honestly haven’t touched Roon in ages. Even if ARC had gotten more reliable I need to see some innovation on the remote access front for the main client before I’d use it again.

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My 34 years professional experience with a Fortune 100 company has nothing to do with how Roon is organized or funded but it does influence my opinions. I would not attempt to tell Roon how they should run their business. I’m just a customer like everyone else here. I doubt the incorporation of Nugs was that huge of a project and I doubt they are significantly resource limited with Harman behind them. I suspect the Nugs opportunity came along and they jumped on it.

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But what if you, and only you, @Jim_F, know the secret to Roon’s success? What if your overwhelming conviction about not telling Roon what to do (which, for whatever reason, doesn’t hold you back from telling Roon users what to do), is the one thing standing between where Roon is now and absolutely overwhelming success for them, their employees, and their customers!

It’s really ok to share your opinions about what Roon should do, @Jim_F! They might help! It’s also ok if other people have critical things to say - especially when they’re meant constructively! Roon can take and you’ll be ok.

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I see the logic in them adding additional sources of music… Nugs, no so much. Meanwhile where are the Linux clients (with GUI, not just endpoint)? Web interface? Improved reliability of Arc? User profiles that are actually useful?

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I like Roon, but really it’s the same thing it was three years ago (when I was debating whether it was worth a subscription). The handling of local files is better since they made the internet connection optional, but it still has some weird dropouts from time to time. I never seem to relax with Roon as a music source, but I’ll keep trying.

The learning curve is steep for an average dude. Audirvana was even worse. I’m not interested in tinkering quite as much as discovering new music. (If qobuz or Tidal can’t sustain themselves, that would be a big problem for Roon unless they somehow diversified).

I’m not sure the rusted on lifers are all ageing physical collectors, but then there are very few murmurings from those that would be termed “digital natives”: I can’t see this setup offering any alternative to youtube or tiktok.

It seems those that could be boosters for the Roon brand can focus on one killer application, and then be forced to walk back from the feature (not always benefit) bloat. I’m actually confused as to what Roon actually is: I’m told it’s just the way for digital music, but a lot of the stuff it does seems bolted on rather than integrated.

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Please stop violating forum rules and addressing me personally. Thanks. I have only expressed my opinions here.

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I’m not sure that addressing someone personally is a forum violation. Attacking someone, yes. Addressing someone, not so much.

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It depends on what you say.

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It depends on whether or not you attack somebody personally. Greg didn’t do this.

To give an example of the difference, I can say that your expressed opinion is absolute rubbish. What I can’t say is that you are absolute rubbish. That would be an ad hominem attack.

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One enforcing their opinion can be seen as………
image

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That’s a very thin line. It would have been better to say, I strongly disagree with your point of view because…

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Just a touch of exaggeration to illustrate a difference. To call a person’s opinion rubbish isn’t a particularly nice thing to do, but it’s not an ad hominem attack. I, of course, would advocate for a much gentler form of discussion :innocent:

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