Seven years ago, it sort of felt like it was…
Now, less so. And much less fun.
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I guess I fall into that always growing group of 70+ folks. You’ll get there too if your lucky.
Started with Roon in my 60s with a small collection of 300 cd’s that I somehow managed to rip, even though I’d never heard of ripping cd’s, and now into my 70s with over 1200 albums in my library. Still a small number compared to others but all the additional albums were discovered with Roon and it is still growing thanks to Roon.
I’ve always wanted music in every room in my home from a central location but in my time that was accomplished with long runs of speaker cable with each room having the same music. Now its long runs of Ethernet cable and Ron Ready endpoints. The difference is I can play the same thing or something different in every room with my Android phone or IPAD as the remote control devices and Roon software.
I purchased the lifetime subscription straight from the free trial for something I’d always wanted. The ability to listen to any music I want in any room in my house. The value is still there for me.
I don’t have any interest in ARC or Nugs but I’m happy that others do and I hope that Roon continues to add value to others to keep the brand going. That is not taking anything away from us or what I though had value originally. It’s all gravy now.
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It’s possible 70+ demographic for Roon is the fastest growing demographic. Not because tons of new 70+ year olds are signing up, but because Roon’s user base isn’t growing much and, over time, its users are hitting 70. That makes sense. I’m not sure it’s Roon’s business plan, but it makes sense.
Well, the younger generation is definitely showing signs of getting into physical media. The vinyl explosion, the return of cassettes. The price of used CDs have now started to rise as people snatch them up.
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Absolutely, my thirty-something son and his peers are regular concert goers and buy physical media all the time. Steaming (Spotify) is a source of discovery and background music.
Contrary to what’s being said, they are interested in our generations’ music tastes (as we are in current artists), and enjoy live performances. nugs may not appeal to the grumpy old men, but I suspect other demographics are interested and see the benefit.
Music has gotten cheap. A CD in the eighties cost the equivalent of £37 today. Streaming has set unrealistic expectations, and has killed income for many independent artists. Before streaming, the average household had just thirty albums! They are the streamers of today.
In contrast, music lovers of all generations continue to buy. Some don’t sweat about hi-fi gear, and may not be interested in what Roon has to offer. However, there is interest in nugs, as seen in other threads, and this is likely to attract new users to Roon.
What’s more, Roon will know the size of the nugs userbase, the likely prospects following integration, and the expected conversion rate. Such metrics would have informed their decisions, including the scope of the initial development.
Anyway, my beer is half full now, so I’m going to get another while I finish listening to Goose.
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Nice post. But expectations gets me thinking. FWIW nobody I know (including myself) would spend £37 on an album, unless they are whales for a particular artist. My take on Roon is influenced by this: I’m not happy with spending $15 a month for a host of features that are available to the benefit of gearheads. Maybe most don’t care for discovery, as they buy on their terms, and that of course is cool and balances the subscription out. But if Roon are looking for growth, I’d think they’d have to be compelling for the other kind of music fan, and I’d argue they aren’t, and won’t.
Off topic, but I’d be interested as to whether most physical media buyers even spend £3.70 on an album?
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Evidently, people do. Very little vinyl is under £30 these days, and a double, gatefold sleeve or 180 g pressing will cost that amount of cash.
The world looks very different depending on our perspective. My daughter–another thirtysomething–has two streaming subscriptions in addition to my Prime account. That’s not uncommon. Different people have different priorities and value is a relative term.
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I was not long ago in a record store for my young son (who along with his sister I routinely drop $AUD40+ for album/s) and the 20-something in front, having checked her bank app, paid $AUD265 for maybe 5 LPs. I wonder what (she) had to sacrifice to make the transaction. Vinyl is special.
Perhaps I should distinguish that from digital, which my grumpy self has landed with, having had the younger-man’s perspective be scuppered by other bills.
Not really. It’s the music and the artist in the grooves. What makes the experience special is the tangible nature of vinyl and CDs. It’s collectable.
Younger generations are rediscovering the album in it’s entirety.
The thirty-CD household will stick to streaming and Spotify playlists.
Look at the commentary around Nugs when they were a little premature in announcing the coming of a “great feature” there is a whole thread of slagging in one form or another.
That is why they don’t broadcast what is coming !!
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If they prioritsed work on features customers were more likely to want the reaction would possibly be better.
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It’s a fact that Roon took heat for how they handled the nugs release. That doesn’t constitute a case against community engagement and transparency.
So far, the nugs release seems to have landed with a thud. Roon uses are expressing more skepticism than positivity and we haven’t seen any sort of influx of existing nugs users in any identifiable form. At least in its current form, Roon doesn’t seem to add much value over using nugs directly. Using nugs apps directly gets you video, offline downloads, immediate access to new content. Putting Roon in front of it is complicated and expensive. So Roon users don’t seem to be signing up (at least per what we see here) by the droves and nugs users don’t seem to be reacting as if putting Roon in front of nugs is the greatest thing ever.
So what, though. Roon can and should evolve and do things that work great and do things that don’t work great. Not everything needs to be a massive hit. I’m not suggesting it does.
My calculus suggests that the opportunity cost is greater than the return on investment. Particularly since this is a “service” feature that requires constant care and feeding and isn’t just a one-and-done investment that immediately becomes sunk cost. For reference, look at the recurring issues with Tidal and Qobuz with respect to playlists, recent content, library sync and changes, etc. When you add a service like nugs to Roon, it can certainly leverage large parts of the existing infrastructure. But I’ve done tons of things like this over many years and the reality is that a large part of each integration will be a unique “snowflake”. It’s the snowflake aspect that is costly over time. Is nugs worth it? I doubt it but only Roon will know and only over time.
I use Roon as much as I use any other app or service. I have a few apps/services that I really love and strongly recommend to people. 1Password, Fantastical, this little travel thing called Flighty, a clever parcel tracking app for iPhone called, literally enough, Parcel. I recommend these apps without reservation. They’re great. I use UniFi gear for my home network and security cameras - rack-mounted stuff. I strongly recommend it to the right audience, not to pure consumers. I recommend some of my audio gear - some KEF speakers as all-in-ones. I love my Logitech mouse. I recommend it. I recommend TrueNAS to the right audience for storage and app service. There’s an even longer list, if you want it. But come to my house, see me using Roon and ask about it, and the first thing I’ll say is “I don’t recommend it”. The reason is that I don’t want to be accountable for anyone using it. It’s too hard to get working and it’s too idiosyncratic to keep working. In-home networking, getting ARC working (and then realizing that you don’t get offline downloads as @mackid1993 justifiably points out), not seeing new releases when they show up in Tidal/Qobuz, issues with metadata on local libraries, etc., etc.
I’m just a party of one but I’m the kind of person that if you know me in the physical world, I’ve probably influenced some purchase decision or other of yours and, because I’m curious and tinkerer, you may have influenced a decision of mine. But when it comes to Roon, I’m anti advocate and that is a pretty strange thing considering how much I use it. If I were in charge of Roon, I’d be looking pretty closely at this. I wouldn’t shipping nugs, I’d be looking at this.
Part of this, for Roon, is just finding some way to connect better with the world. Other brands and companies do this so well. Blogs, AMAs, presence at conferences, YouTube channels, showing up on Podcasts, leadership showing up in their own forum.
Anyhow, I’m not here to slam Roon for no reason. It is, fundamentally, one of the most exceptional products ever created. I don’t want it to just limp along or die with a whimper. I want it to be the outstanding product it can and should be supported by an outstanding company that embraces and engages with the community at a level appropriate for a world-class brand.
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I think you largely have it right @gTunes . I don’t know about the effect of Nugs but I do agree with your 5 points. It seems to me that Roon has floundered for some time now and its largely because its not sure what its actually trying to do and for whom.
I sell high end music systems to very well healed individuals and can not typically recommend Roon to them as it simply isn’t easy enough to use. It IS a delight to use if you are a music enthusiast and technical enough to put up with its unreliability but only just.
I would love to be able to recommend it to my customers as a way of leading them towards a life filled with more and more music but despite Roon being close in so many ways it is let down so seriously in a few small ways as to make that impossible.
The main issue for me is ARC, it is impossible to use securely and reliably and it’s a separate app, why?!
People who love music and love playing music throughout their day are surely the key customers Roon needs. These people don’t want to change app and don’t care why, they just want to leave their home listening to something great, get in their car and go for a walk, listening all the while to the same stream as they go, same music, same UI. Yes, I know thats not easy but that is where the effort needs to go and where the big wins are.
In my humble opinion Roon is already very good at providing insights and offering up new music, information about musicians and how they link with others. That is why I put up with all its other issues. But if they could improve this more AND make it REALLY easy to use WHEREVER I am and improve the app we already have I would have already sold dozens of more lifetime subs directly let alone the millions of others out there who would also relish such a tool to help them find and play more music.
Also, I know Roon started as a way of storing and playing back music catalogues we already had, ripped CD’s etc. A local server made sense in that context and I am sure there are other reasons to have a server but surely there is now a way of doing everything or virtually everything from the cloud? Or at least a small puck type device that can be bought and added to your network without any configuration would be so so much better. No local storage, no mess, everything streamed from the cloud, just a local gateway that you can make and sell in serious quantities.
I so want Roon to succeed and be great, it’s so close. Please just focus on your customers, not the techy ones you already have, but the non techy ones who also want access to what you offer. Music lovers who want more music in their lives more easily without an in house tech to keep it going.
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I think the disappointment and puzzlement surrounding the implementation of Nugs’ niche offering stems from an announcement that was perhaps a bit too grandiose…
There’s not a major problem, as some may say … “Nugs” was certainly a kind of opportunity that could be seized without any grand strategic ulterior motives. Not a big thing.. and that’s fine too, even if the announcement and delay were anything but elegant and undoubtedly tied up resources that could certainly have been used for other improvements or new features.
I’m not unhappy with Roon as it is, nor do I find it too complicated, even though I really, really wish they would do more for the people who want to nurture, cherish and discover their collection.
And because @gTunes put it up so well… please, esteemed Roon Dev Team… next up, please:
Invest in “delighting” existing users with something special around music discovery and either curated content or real, exciting generated stuff like other apps/services manage to do
I am sure this is key … given the countless releases of new music and in the future all the AI tools flooding us with even more mediocre music, having your own limited, carefully curated and well-maintained collection makes just as much sense today – if not more – as it did in the past.
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I agree with @gTunes without reservation - I point I would like to add is that one of the benefits I have in owning/controlling my own music collection is that I have my own “cloud” at home and pay no subscription fees. Having Roon have my music in the cloud — and paying a fee for that — is something I never, ever want to see happen. But that makes me unusual…I get it.
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When Roon previously implemented the requirement to have an internet connection all the time, something that would be necessary if most/all functions were transferred to the cloud, there was quite a backlash from Roon users on the forum. In response, some time later Roon went back to only requiring an internet connection to confirm licenses status once a month.
I’m one of those who wasn’t a fan of requiring an internet connection all the time to play my local files.
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IIRC the response re internet connection requirement was forced upon Roon by the sale to Harman, nothing to do with forum user backlash. Similarly, ‘Folder browsing’ made an appearance due to this sale, nothing to do with continual user requests for it.
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I was trying to remember if the change back to not requiring internet all the time occurred before or after the sale to Harman. 
I do remember Folder Browsing coming not long after the sale to Harman. I think someone high up at Harman really wanted it, lol.
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Well if the users had not cared, nobody would have bothered, I guess. Same for folders.
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New user here. 37 years old. You can tie my finding Roon directly to the Nugs integration. I had no idea Roon existed until Nugs emailed me about the integration.
I love the idea of Roon. I previously relied on Plexamp for my local collection. I love Plexamp. But I struggled because either I had to buy/pirate all the music I wanted to listen to, or I had to use Spotify or Qobuz separately.
The promise of having everything in one place is an alluring one. And Roon does a pretty good job delivering on that promise.
But you’re right that some of the seemingly long-standing technical issues are real issues for adoption. Much of my listening is via AirPods Pro on my iPhone. Roon Remote handles this terribly, due to the way audio sessions are handled in Roon. (Can’t resume playback from Bluetooth headphones, iOS zone getting stuck on “enabling,” etc.) For many, ARC is the answer; but ARC has its own problems, from much worse scrobbling support to inability to share queues to/from other zones. It’s also an extreme battery hog.
So yes, I hope Roon finds the bandwidth to address some of these core issues. If they could merge Roon Remote and ARC and use the ARC model for iOS and out-of-home sessions, but still allow queue sharing and so forth, that would go a long way.
Roon has some killer features that I don’t see elsewhere. “Undo” on accidental queue override. Easy tagging and focus bookmarks. Star ratings! I can do a lot of this in Plexamp, but then I lose my streaming library.
I hope Roon thrives. I’m currently considering buying a lifetime license, to vote with my wallet. And maybe AI will allow the team to do more with the same resources — we’re still in the middle of that transition in my software engineering industry.
Anyway, figured the experience of a new member could be enlightening.
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