To ROON or not to ROON ?

I have Aurender and am trying out Roon right now on an old Mac with Qobuz and some of my own CD rips. I love the interface of Roon and it has helped me discover new music easily. The SQ of Aurender as slightly better in my system—better clarity. 
 

Until Spotify has an HD tier, I may run both Aurender and Roon. I could imagine in the future selling my Aurender, buying a dedicated Roon server, and canceling my Spotify. We will see.

I'm sure some of you had seen the price increases below. I've tried Roon out a few times and currently debating whether I should spring for the lifetime subscription before the 1st of January. Music discovery is extremely high on the priority list for me. Roon's algorithms in identifying similar artists to your musical tastes, as well as the metadata that it provides the listener, seem to be better than Spotify, Tidal, Deezer, Quboz, and BluOS platforms IMHO.

Question(s): this is the second Roon price increase on all levels, correct? Anyone know the previous lifetime subscription price? 

When we launched Roon, we had a simple mission: build the ultimate music player for music fanatics.

And what a journey it’s been. Every day, hundreds of thousands of customers use Roon 2.0 and Roon ARC to power their listening experiences, both at home and on the road. But we’re not standing still. We’ve got big plans for the future.

To continue supporting this mission, we’re changing our prices.

On January 1st, 2023, the price of a monthly subscription will change to $14.99/mo.

We're also changing the prices of our yearly and lifetime subscriptions on January 1st, 2023. The yearly subscription will change to $12.49/month, billed annually, and the lifetime subscription will change to $829.99.

If you'd like to switch to a yearly subscription at the lower price or a lifetime subscription at the lower price, visit your account page and change your billing before your next charge.

We want to continue to build a better, more inspiring music player for everyone. This change ensures that we continue to give you a best-in-class listening experience.

If you have questions, contact us at roonlabs.com/contact.

Thank you for choosing Roon — we hope you stay with us for years to come. We look forward to showing you what we have in store.

The Roon team

@toro3 I disagree. I believe Spotify’s music discovery is significantly better than Roon’s. (But I’d say Roon does have better metadata.) For that reason, if/when Spotify launches a HiFi tier, I’m planning to let go of my Roon, Qobuz, and Tidal subscriptions.

@classdstreamer definitely debatable - yet I agree that out of all the streaming platforms (Tidal, Quboz, Deezer, Amazon), Spotify's music discovery is above and beyond without question.

Stopping subscriptions for multiple providers and only having one subscription is definitely appealing - I currently have Quboz and Spotify. In respect to Spotify, I also appreciate their deep catalogue and ability to search other members' playlists which are often better than mine, and much better than any of the platforms' playlists. I know Tidal is trialing this functionality as we speak. 

@toro3 Fingers crossed:

Hopes were high that it would launch several months ago when a Reddit user spotted a HiFi icon in their Spotify iOS app. Then there was a leaked video, posted online by another Reddit user, that seemed to offer a brief tour of the streaming giant’s much-anticipated lossless audio tier.

After months of dormancy in the Spotify camp, it has just been awoken by a Reddit user who, upon cancelling his Spotify Premium account to switch to Apple Music, claims to have been sent a survey by Spotify mentioning a hypothetical premium tier called... Spotify Platinum. Oh. The survey supposedly asked user u/nearlymind if they would consider switching to Spotify Platinum in the "next 30 days" for features that include ’HiFi’ and various others including ’Studio Sound’, ’Headphone Tuner’, ’Library Pro’ and ’Playlist Pro’, for a rather steep monthly fee of $19.99. So Spotify could be rerouting down this Platinum path now.

Like you, I also love Spotify’s playlists. Roon’s playlists don’t measure up, even when I populate Roon with both Qobuz and Tidal libraries. Other benefits to Spotify include the social elements like users being able to build a playlist together, and being able to share links to a playable song on the app. Roon ARC is a step in the right direction, but is just a baby step from a consumer’s perspective. I want to be able to share song or album links with people, but with Roon I’m limited to sharing a picture. With Spotify, a link is included that takes the recipient to that song or album in their own app.

When I allow Roon to play similar songs after the requested song, Roon Radio sometimes doesn’t even stay within the genre. Spotify, on the other hand, seems to have a much better handle on sub genres and sticks to them. Spotify’s understanding of sub genre’s is seen in the variety of playlists. And, being able to leverage user data is an importance piece in music discovery, and Spotify can rely on input from its giant user base to feed its discovery algorithm. This "network effect" allows big businesses to pull even further ahead vs smaller competitors. 

I admire what Roon continues to accomplish, but it’s hard for boutique software companies to compete with software giants. Still, I’ll continue to run Roon on my nicer listening systems until a Spotify HiFi tier comes out, or until I decide to dabble in Amazon or Apple Music again.