Roon’s Acquisition By HARMAN Could Be An Excellent Development For Android Users

Roon was acquired over the holidays by HARMAN and whilst this development might shock some, it makes perfect sense to us.

For those who are not aware, HARMAN is owned by Samsung Electronics; the Korean electronics giant acquired HARMAN in 2017 and all of its brands have benefitted enormously from the acquisition.

Samsung also owns a sizeable chunk of the global smartphone market and sells millions of laptops every single year.

Samsung and HARMAN also engineer and manufacture car audio systems for some of the largest automakers in the world which creates even greater opportunities for Roon to expand its reach on the streaming front.

Roon joins Arcam, JBL, Mark Levinson, AKG, Lexicon, Harman Kardon, Infinity, and Revel under the HARMAN umbrella, giving the manufacturer greater financial resources and marketing power on a global scale.

Can we expect to see Roon integration into Samsung’s lineup of smartphones and HARMAN’s car audio systems? We don’t envision a scenario where that does not occur; which will also be rather beneficial to TIDAL and Qobuz.

We suspect that Samsung will also have the financial clout to push Spotify, Amazon Music, and other music streaming platforms onto Roon as well.

Roon ARC (their mobile platform) was part of the Roon 2.0 update and imagine the impact if users turned on their smartphones or laptops for the first time and Roon was already integrated into the device? Huge.

“At HARMAN we take great pride in our ability to create exceptional audio experiences for our partners and consumers around the world,” said Dave Rogers, President, Lifestyle Division, HARMAN. “The team at Roon shares our passion in bringing exceptional sound and connectivity to music lovers as they browse, discover, and listen at home and on the go. We are looking forward to welcoming Roon, whose impressive talent will join the HARMAN family and bolster our already robust engineering capabilities.”

Roon will operate as a standalone Harman business with its existing team. All Roon operations will stay in place and continue to be dedicated to serving and growing Roon’s community of device partners and customers, under a joint mission to deliver engaging and personalized audio experiences across a universe of products and platforms. 

Aligned with its ‘work with all’ strategy, HARMAN is committed to growing Roon’s open device ecosystem which includes collaborating with more than 160 other audio brands, delivering audio to more than 1000 high-performance devices.  Roon’s dedication to its loyal community and its exceptional UI/UX design expertise will continue to expand and flourish with the acquisition.

“Our team is ecstatic to join HARMAN, a visionary company that has been leading the audio industry forward for decades,” said Enno Vandermeer, CEO of Roon. “By combining forces with HARMAN, Roon gains the incredible scale, resources, and reach of a global technology leader, while maintaining our independence to invest in the business’s growth and future. We look forward to continuing to bring our advanced data management, SaaS expertise, and consumer engagement capabilities to our broad ecosystem of partners, as we join forces with HARMAN to deliver even greater audio experiences to our customers.”

What is Roon?

The Roon team has been in the digital music space for many years. Back in 2006, the team launched a product called Sooloos, which was a high-end audio digital audio management and playback platform. 

Sooloos was not inexpensive; the earliest versions of the platform ran into the thousands of dollars and the company was eventually sold to Meridian Audio who were the leading force behind the adoption of MQA by the the streaming services and hardware vendors such as LG who adopted it for their smart phones. That support was lost when LG got out of the smartphone market.

The original Roon team moved onto Hewlett Packard to create HP Connected Music. From there, the team decided to create their own music player software launching Roon in 2015. The goal was to create a music player that gave you more than just the track and album name, but actual context to your favorite artist and albums. 

Roon uses metadata to display bios, album reviews, credits, concert dates, and lyrics. The entire experience was designed around your own musical tastes, but it also helps you discover new music much more easily.

Roon’s GUI is second-to-none; on a computer screen, tablet, or smart phone. If your music server/laptop has an HDMI output, you can transmit the image to your HDTV and see your entire music library on a larger screen.

Roon updated to Roon 2.0 and I have a more detailed review of the updated platform on the Nucleus Music Server that you can read here. 

Roon is a unifying library that combines music you own as well as TIDAL, Internet Radio, and Qobuz. Roon will then analyze all of the music and categorize the albums into genres and subgenres. Because the service is always connected, the software continuously updates album information, concert dates, new music, and biographical information about artists.

Roon also works with many streaming protocols including AirPlay, Sonos, Chromecast, iOS, Android, Mac, PC, and Roon Ready. You are no longer limited to a single streaming eco-system. The platform also allows for an unlimited number of remotes and profiles. You can have multiple remotes in your home and each family member can have their own profile to add music to the library, and custom playlists.

None of this would be very useful unless there was an app to control your Roon Core; either a computer, or dedicated music server like the Roon Nucleus. The Roon app is a music player that utilizes metadata to organize your music and analyze each album and track automatically providing hi-res album art, hi-res artist art, artist bios, album reviews, album credits, lyrics, concert dates, and much more. 

The integration of TIDAL and Qobuz allows you to control both streaming services via the app giving you access to millions of CD quality or high-res digital albums. 

Hi-res music fans should be thrilled for Roon that took the long-term view that hi-res music playback could be integrated into the mainstream; the concept that hundreds of millions of smartphone users could one day be using it is a win-win.

For more information: roon.app