One of the things that I think the music industry is still learning from the software world is that highly specialized, best-in-class apps that partner well with others tend to win big. Even companies the scale of Apple and Microsoft have had to admit that they can no longer dominate a user's hardware/software landscape. We are choosing one manufacturer's desktop, another's laptop, another's ipad, another's phone and yet another's watch. Of course we are then demanding that the software we use works across all of those hardware platforms. It's a delicate dance because you'd like to maximize the number of products you sell, but if you force people onto your platform and then fail not only to have a best-in-class device but a "not-good-enough" one, you can run the risk that they drop you altogether. So you have to work with the software platforms, even when they both take away sales revenue, market share and ability to lock others out.
Most of us aren't replacing our audio hardware anywhere as quickly as our handheld computing devices, but the world of software, as it migrates from ownership of LPs and CDs, to downloads and increasingly to streaming, is forcing hardware manufacturers to move ever more quickly to keep up. Doing that AND staying best of class in software is a tall order for even the biggest hardware manufacturers. That makes the right software partnerships that much more important.
What Roon has done in that partnership arena, not only in partnering with Tidal and HQPlayer, but in working with hardware manufacturers to make devices "Roon Ready" is exemplary. You might have preferred a Roon/Qobuz or roon/Spotify partnership over the Roon/Tidal one, but what Roon is learning through that partnership will make the next one that much easier (if Tidal turns out to have been a poor choice). Similarly, rather than turn out its own inferior PCM-to-DSD and vice versa, upsampling, filtering and room correction software, Roon decided it was better to work closely with products like HQPlayer and Dirac.
Those are smart choices by a sophisticated team that also goes out of its way to communicate closely with its customers and listen to their needs. So even if you prefer this or that aspect of an Audirvana, JRiver, or other player, the likelihood is that Roon will continue to pull in both users and partners and dominate this segment, but not by forcing us to go "all Roon" but, instead by partnering closely with others who together want to deliver the best overall user experience.
