Article: Should You Rent or Buy Audio Software?

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2 hours ago, firedog said:

Was a JRiver user and went over to Roon - lifetime subscription.

 

The JRiver model is a good one in terms of the economics. You don't have to upgrade if you don't feel like the newer versions are providing a feature you want. Obviously if there are changes like security upgrades or  large  OS architecture  changes and the like, you probably need to upgrade.

 

I simply found Roon better fit my needs. I hesitated, but once I saw that it looked like it was catching on, I bought a lifetime (at a discount) subscription. I basically figured it like this: The lifetime subscription is the cost of 4 years (in my case 3) of a yearly subscription. So as long as Roon stays in business a few years, I break even. Every additional year they are in business, my average yearly cost goes down. If they stay in business 10 years or more, the yearly cost of the software is pretty small, and at the level of JRiver + upgrades. If we get to that point I'll really feel like I've gotten more than my money's worth. 
 

It's a bit difficult to compare the price of a program like Roon to some of the other programs, because it's sort  of comparing apples and oranges. Roon is web based, and they apparently pay quite substantial fees for features like Tidal integration and metadata updates. In the end, either you find it's features compelling and worth their price, or you don't. I'm guessing most people who try Roon and don't buy/rent it don't really find it's web based features that compelling, so it isn''t a good value for them. 

 

So far I'm pretty happy with my decision. Roon has regular upgrades which improve the user experience and the team there have added LOTS of features over the last few years. I'm sure that at least 2 of the updates are so significant that if Roon was on a model like JRiver I would already have paid at least a couple of times for an upgrade. 

IIRC, your software would have to last for nearly twenty years to equal JRiver's cost with upgrades being $25 annually. Does it really cost a lot to have Tidal integration? I honestly want to know. Perhaps I am in the minority, but I really do not care for Roon. I only use it because of the Tidal integration for HQPlayer. As good as Roon is for piecing together files cohesively, their search function sucks at any interpretations, and you cannot even copy/paste into or out of their program to get the exact spelling correctly as is required.