Why aren't all your friends using Roon?

Well my 9 year old daughter loves roon…as do all her friends. It seems like all the neighbourhood kids come to her room to play with it.
Now that a good part of the interface is in Dutch it’s even better for them
An ipad mini with with iPeng and a Librarone Zipp… easy.

I truly hate their choice of music! So she’s already on track :crazy_face:

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The same people who were probably shelling out for each incremental release Word, Word 2.0, Word 2000, Word 2013, Word 2016.

“Lifetime”, haha.

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Well, as it happens, I was definitely experiencing a lower cost of ownership under the old Office pricing schemes. I would probably still be there, if Microsoft hadn’t made the subscription model practically the only game in town. It’s all water under the bridge now, of course. As Anders says, the subscription model is the future. I fully expect Windows and OSX to follow suit.

At the risk of going further off topic though, your model assumes that MS will provide you with security patches free of charge ad infinitum (or you’re happy to cross your fingers). Not so much of a problem in the days of limited connectivity. These days it’s almost inescapable and brings its own problems.

The thing is, it does bring up the thorny issue of continuous development and who pays for it.

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Not ad infinitum, just until it made sense to do the next package upgrade. Fortunately, Microsoft’s support horizon was longer than their package upgrade cycle…

Interesting that the main topic of discussion here is how to pay for the Stereophile “Budget” product of the year.

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Out of the given options I’m mostly C, but also:
e) good price for lifetime, now that it’s still available
f) availability of different price/quality endpoints for different use cases

So these three.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, but if I buy Roon lifetime + RaspberryPi3 with a fancy case, HifiBerry hat and power supply it’ll set me back ~525€

If I buy a Bluesound Node 2, I’m again paying for the software (which can’t compete with Roon, at least yet) and the hardware and it’ll set me back 599€

Already Roon is cheaper, but for some reason people can justify buying Bluesound Node 2 without feeling the need to complain in the forums about the pricing. Go figure.

Next identical endpoint for Roon is 100€, and for Bluesound it’s 599€ as I’m paying for the software again.

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I don’t know anyone who pays for a music service. If they use on then it is free spotify. My wife listens to the same 20 odd CDs. My kids pay for Netflix but not music.
Anyone on this forum is, by definition, an outlier.

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The majority of my friends tend to use Spotify on Sonos. Roon cannot compete with that as essentially it does everything they need.

I accept that I am perhaps an outlier in my group but they all like parties at my house !!!

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Interesting sequence of comments.

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So MacOS will be $0 per month instead of $0 for an up-front purchase? :wink:

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I thought the future was Google Chromebooks - minimal OS running locally?!

Basically we’ve gone full circle - back to dumb terminals. I’m waiting for the punchcard to become fashionable again :slight_smile:

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We aren’t ready to do monthly yet, but when we have a proper mobile offering (@Soren_Siim_Nielsen’s #1). We will surely offer #2. Both together make sense to us, separate, they don’t. The product still fits a small niche until #1 is done, and thus priced more like a tool or component of your audio system, and not as an “app”.

@anon55914447 has also been speaking about this for ages, and both he and @Soren_Siim_Nielsen have always been right. But not just yet.

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If you think that you’re not paying a fee for MacOS, then I have this bridge that you might be interested in… :grinning:

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Danny, I think you are all spot on regarding the future wan support. I was pondering about Roon (and user experience) these past few days and I think that an even wider mass market appeal can be achieved by vertical integration.

A niche customer (such as myself) will be happy with what currently offered by Roon as well as the tweaking for setting up high SQ end points.

My latest issues with Bluesound multiroom sync made me think of the wider market appeal if Roon ‘controlled’ the hardware endpoints. Any updates to RAAT are immediately rolled out with software Roon Bridge updates which ensures my system works perfectly. I have 3 zones like that and they are flawless. Roon ready end points do not necessarily update in line with the roon bridge because it is up to the manufacturer (e.g. Bluesound).

I am not suggesting Roon becomes something like sonos but if could become Sonos +++ with: scalability, open architecture as well as ease of setup (like Sonos) and multiroom sync reliability. All positive for the technophobe (wider market).

It all depends on the target segment I guess.

Sorry for rambling

I’m mostly pretty happy with Roon as it is. Of course I hope for some new features (such as Deezer, Bandcamp and Soundcloud support) and I’m not against features that I’m not gonna use. Even though I would probably use the WAN thingie every now and then, if there ever was one, I can’t see it really bringing in too many new users.

I might be wrong of course, but I can’t see why a regular Joe would go for Roon instead of for example Subsonic. It’s free with a premium subscription for $1 a month. Well, remains to be seen I guess.

If I’m paying a fee for MacOS, it’s an entirely different model from the subscription one we’re talking about here. I don’t see Apple moving to MacOS or iOS subscriptions any time soon.

(BTW, I really like that bridge. How much are you asking?)

You are paying but it’s more like the traditional streamer model. It’s tied to the hardware.

I doubt Apple will go for the subscription model either. They’re using the software to sell hardware.

iCloud.
Apple Music

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Obviously additional services cost extra, but MacOS or iOS will not go monthly paid.

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