My answer to the original question, which is simple: none of my friends / co-workers have a music library.
I just turned 53 (yikes!) and everyone I know from my age on down to my 15 year-old daughter (and her friends) uses a streaming service (mostly Spotify) and nothing else. I don’t know a soul, anymore, that has an iTunes library. The twenty-something in my office has never even used iTunes (I asked her).
The magic of Roon is merging your local library with TIDAL (today, anyway). So, if you aren’t curating your own music library, it’s kind of hard to see the value in Roon.
Hardware vs. software is a distinction that’s hard to draw.
In the modern world, with digital everything, everything is software — not just that it contains software, but software is the main differentiator.
Hence, the pricing distinction looks funny to me.
And sure enough, the Audioquest Dragonfly can now be rented for $5 per month.
(No, it can’t. Just wanted to trigger reflection.)
Cars cost a lot of money and can carry complex financing arrangements and overhead. You can buy it outright; buy it with financing; lease it, open or closed end; and you can rent it. The cost goes up dramatically with less commitment.
But the financing overhead becomes difficult to carry as the product value goes down to the Dragonfly range.
This site is just one good reason why Roon monthly doesn’t make sense. The Roon team pays a lot of attention to its customers. But if they let in anyone who pony’s up for a single month subscription and those newbies then clog these pages with their questions, complaints, etc., the rest of us lose. Roon is a highly capable piece of software, but its power also means it takes longer to learn than less powerful alternatives. I’m pretty sure that those who have invested in a year’s subscription AND spent the time to learn how much Roon is capable of, are 99% very happy customers.
If you want this kind of customer experience and this powerful a piece of software, pay for it by buying a year’s subscription (or a lifetime one). If you don’t, buy something else.
I prefer that the Roon team takes care of those of us willing to make an investment in them and their software.
I would agree with the OP on the 1st point especially.
On the 2nd, I’m think Roon has probably analysed the business model in this regard and what they have chosen is optimum. I am sure the mechanics of implementing payment plans pales into insignificance against the hard work they are doing for the application development, so in this regard if it made sense to them to have a monthly plan, they would engineer it
Regarding the mobile implementation, in the short term, an Roon , OTG app could be implemented to allow streaming of Tidal only and be synced with our core playlists and favourite albums/tracks from Tidal, even when we are not on the same network.
I would agree that, to move forward and future proof the product to a certain extent, a good mobile app will be needed, and piggy backing off Tidal to kickstart this direction would be logical.
There are many mobile devices which are now of audiophile quality which are restricted to remaining lowly Remotes in the Roon hierarchy, or at best endpoints for the Roon (pc/mac) core. The LG V20/30 springs to mind on the phone front and I have the Fiio X7ii Android based DAP, which is no slouch.
“Roon should not be made more financially accesible because then all sorts of riff-raff would be swarming our community”. <- That’s the essense of the post.
Pretty sure you are the only person referring to anyone as ‘riff raff’ or ‘filthy casuals’ here. It is not difficult to obtain a 3 month free trial of Roon, via various different manufacturers. If after that trial you want to use it then pay up for a year or life! If you love the way it does it’s job why wouldn’t you?
Pony up and try Roon for a year. You will like the program. You can then tell your friends what a great value Roon is. You can be famous with your friends.
Nobody here is being an eliteist. You have commented. You have received several responses directly on point which answered your OP factually. No need to insult users whose opinions may differ with yours.
I completely disagree with you and completely agree with @sdolezalek. On social media and online forums, often, those who yell the loudest get all the attention. You made your point and expressed you wishes. It appears as if you’re one of those who just wants it NOW!
I’m a complete technological idiot and don’t get 1% of the technical posts here. Nevertheless, I feel completely accepted on this forum and if I need help or advice, the members are always happy to help me out. So nothing elitist, it’s about music.
As has been said, you can try a free Roon trial. If it’s not (yet) for you, choose something else and don’t turn into a troll. I’ve tried Roon two years ago and at that point, it was not for me. Six months later, it was and I immediately became a lifetimer. I’ve tried Audirvana twice before and on both my Macs it was a complete drama. Never got it to work fluidly, contrary to Roon. Rather than keep on demanding Damien (Aurdivana developer) online to attune Roon to my own specific personal needs, I moved on.
This isn’t a zero-sum game. Roon’s long term success is in all of our interests. Folks coming here and making suggestions - be they commercial or technical - can be them expressing their desire to see roon succeed.
This isn’t a members club - if these forums are unapproachable to new users we all lose. It isn’t a case of the club becoming crowded - our “membership” fees don’t fund the long term sustainability of roon.
As for social media - there is some irony in calling this site a “community”. If you have a dissenting opinion then we round up the posse and try run you out of town. That’s just bullying (while accusing folks of trolling).
You’re absolutely right with your first two points, @anon73739233. The only thing is, should Roon really want new users who start a topic with all sorts of negative assumptions about both Roon and its current users (“elitist”, “filthy casuals”, etcetera)?
Starting on that tone at least gives the impression Roon can never do good in their eyes, and if Roon would try, this would be at the expense of the other users.
The OP could have chosen a more constructive way of communicating. Instead, he keeps on stigmatizing an entire community as elitist, without 1% self-criticism. Who’s accusing who, and who’s the real elitist here?
I got that, @anon73739233. But that doesn’t make it less of an assumption / accusation, does it? I just fail to see in what way this would be either a relevant or a constructive argument when addressing Roon’s pricing strategy.
Really, if Roon wanted to keep “filthy casuals” (I myself would fall into that category more than into the “audiophile” category) outside, I think they wouldn’t even advertise, but instead form a small, sectarian (and indeed elitist) community from audiophiles meeting at hifi events or so.
I don’t think it is roon’s intention to form an elitist club. It isn’t in their interests.
However the feeling that I get on this site is there are a group of users who will attack folks who have different opinions under the banner of “I’m a subscriber / lifer”.
It isn’t in roon’s interests to chase these folks away. And it isn’t in our interests either. We may feel we are “fighting the good fight” by protecting roon - but if this site fails, and the community fails, roon fails. THAT is my concern here.
Indeed, instead of getting completely bent out of shape by the semantics of the OP, we should take a moment to understand the sentiment of the post - which is to explore ways, through different payment methods, by which Roon can grow its base.
Thank you for explaining what I meant. Like I said earlier, I’ll wager that offering more flexible subscription models will attract enough new users to result in a net gain for Roon. Either that, or get that white whale known as wan/mobile support…
As others have pointed out, this is a duplicate of many previous discussions. Personally, I’d appreciate it if posters would add to those discussions rather than starting a new topic every time. Nevertheless:
This would definitely be a nice addition to Roon, but the lack of it is not a dealbreaker. Roon brings so much to the table that it already represents good value to me.
Buy a lifetime subscription. I did that a couple of years ago and never looked back. Yes, it’s not cheap, but it makes economic sense.
