Yah, the price is not released yet, but it'll be around the cost of a sandwich and a coffee a month, charged annually. Something very affordable, but it won't be "app" pricing. Our product will be best-of-class for data and sound quality. Our value is in the fact that we are premium at every stage. Think Photoshop, not MS Paint.

We are going after customers that range from college students to you guys with insane hardware budgets. We are shooting for something around $100/yr or so.

For that price you will get an extremely flexible media server solution that works in various topologies, streams directly to top audio hardware without quality compromise, and gives you depth and breadth of metadata like you've never seen before. Your carefully groomed collections will still be useful, but will be utterly transformed by the additional data[1][2]. We have that much metadata. At the same time, it wont feel like an encyclopedia, like allmusic.com does. Instead, it's a fun and educational experience all the way. It'll be usable by your kids, your spouses, and it'll keep you engaged too. On the sound quality side, we are working with the best of the best. You know his name, but I can't say it just yet. ;-)

If you haven't already, check out the sneak peaks at http://roonlabs.com/ and the conversation at http://community.roonlabs.com/


So still, why not 99 cents?

Well, first, we license the best and unfortunately, the most expensive data out there, to build the best metadata service in the world. We are also adding to this service all the time, with more and more sources. Some data we build, some we buy, some we hire to build.

And with Roon, your metadata is updated constantly. As we add new sources users will see the benefits live in their collection. Any grooming that's done is stored in the database seperately, so we're able to continually update the underlying data without interfering with your edits[1][2]. This is unlike anything else out there. Composers who die will show death dates, and artists will have updated photos as they age. Reviews will rewrite themselves to stay relevant over the years, as will the relationships between artists and their collaborative efforts.

We are also starting a user-generated metadata service as well, so you guys can contribute your experitise back to each other.

Our cloud services will also sync and save your edits, playlists, play history, and more... and I'm sure this will someday turn into the basis of a fully cloud based Roon offering.

Then you look at services we integrate with, like Tidal. Our Tidal integration takes their music, and does something awesome with it. We love their audio quality and the span of their library, but using their service still feels likes everything else. We've basically had to rebuild their backend databases on our side, so that our Tidal integration feels like Roon, and not a bolt-on. If you used the Rhapsody + Sooloos stuff my team did in the past, you know what I mean.

When we were doing hardware years ago, bundling these prices weren't a problem. Not just because we used fewer (and cheaper) data sources, but because the price of the hardware was more than high enough to give us wiggle room in our margin structure. This is obviously not the case any more, as we arent selling $8,000 boxes.

So, given all the above, plus much more I didn't talk about, we came up with a annual price that allows us to cover our costs, grow the offering, and make some amount of profit so we can continue to reinvest into our business.

That said, many people have asked for a single shot lifetime membership, so we are looking at that as well. Sorry, but I dont have a ballpark price for that yet.

Hopefully all this can be resolved in the next few weeks since we have to launch next month!

1: https://community.roonlabs.com/t/importing-content-from-Meridian-Sooloos-systems/205
2: https://community.roonlabs.com/t/leveraging-existing-metadata-in-audio-files/210

Last edited by Danny; 2015-04-17 23:52.
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