Digital Drive

Posted by AbeCollins (A) on November 29, 2023 at 07:32:56

In Reply to: RE: It will be interest to watch what happens posted by mlsstl on November 29, 2023 at 06:40:44

As a somewhat early adopter of Roon this bullet point in your post caught my eye:

- Make changes that leave prior lifetime subscribers behind (i.e., add features that require annual payment, etc.)

That could happen. We'll have to see.

In the very early days of Roon you could outright buy a lifetime license for a one-time price of $499. Instead, I chose to subscribe for almost two years thinking this new company could fold and disappear at any moment. Just the opposite happened. Roon continued to rapidly develop their product with bug fixes and new features gaining momentum in the audiophile community with end-users, manufacturers, and dealers. I then made the decision to outright buy a lifetime license. So I paid the one-time $499.

Fast forward a couple years and Roon announced a price hike to $699. They openly stated that their goal was to increase the number of subscription customers as the sale of lifetime Roon licenses would not be a sustainable business model to support ongoing rapid development and new features. That makes sense as nearly every viable software company on the planet has moved to a subscription based business model.

There was another more recent price hike announced in 2022 and implemented in 2023. You can still buy a lifetime Roon license for $829 or you can subscribe for:

• $12.49/month, billed annually
• $14.99/month, billed monthly
• Lifetime billing for $829.99, one-time.

• Roon pricing   (Open in New Window)

Edits: 11/29/23   11/29/23