User paying the Premium subscription are entitled to dedicated support via ticket
Thanks @Dariusz_Biskup for sharing your experience.
To reply to some of your remarks:
- Stability, we’ve worked hard to ensure that we don’t introduce bugs with any release, focusing more on QA and slowing down the release time. From what you say, we should do it even more.
- While just using TC might be too much for a subscription, consider that with that you get possibly the most advanced audio system (example: you can use Supersearch to create a tailored playlist on TIDAL, equalize it with FusionDSP and cast it to many enpoints into your house, just to mention an example).
- We have great plans when it comes to the app .
- Volumio is optimized to almost entirely eliminate SD Card wear (so if SD Card corrupts, it’s likely that you have to use a better power supply)
Coming to the main issue you raised: What is the thing you would love to see the most to stick with Volumio? What is your favourite thing that you can do with Volumio? Is there something that you currently miss?
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With all due respect sir, it is not ok to ask for a subscription in order to provide a working plugin. That plugin is not any kind of service which needs to be continually maintained and will not produce any expenses to those who made it except what they invested at the beginning to develop it. It is a kind of a product which should be paid only once but the author wants to sit and live by doing nothing else in his life ever again. Volumio should just ask tidal to give a share for every user who uses this plugin.
So lets conclude:
To have Tidal with Volumio, You need to pay almost the same monthly amount like for Tidal.
No, it is not worth. It would be much better to buy some hi res player like SMSL. It is paid only ONCE and it works with Tidal, Spotify and all others.
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Absolutely agree.
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Hello friend.
Everything what You said is true but also there are a lot of people who just need tidal connect plugin. Paying subscription for a plugin is a nonsense. If it is to be paid, make it available for one time payment.
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Hi @spaxton now I understand which posts you were mentioning in the other thread.
IMHO you should not consider any of the features in Volumio Premium as “separate plugins”, but actually as a “whole”. The Volumio Premium concept is to offer the best Volumio experience and this means that all the premium features are somehow interconnected.
An example: you use TIDAL Connect to play your tracks, then we provide extended metadatas and discovery (another premium feature) and you then decide to cast the whole thing in your whole house with multiroom. So, we treat all these features as a coherent set of functionalities and develop, test and maintain them together.
Then, even if we would consider them as separate plugins, each one of them needs constant maintenance and updates (third party APIs keep on changing… just for TIDAL we had to rewrite the whole thing 2 times, and update some internal breaking changes several times… and this trying not to interrupt the service for any of our users).
A simple example of this is the new FLAC streaming for TIDAL connect that we are talking about here:
That being said, we hear you. We know that many people would prefer a one time purchase and then forget about any subscription.
Well, then stay tuned. On October 27th something special (and limited…) will happen…
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Thank You. The subscription is painful for everybody, trust me… Find a better way to protect Your idea, intellectual property and to make profit. In the end, everyone must be happy (seller and buyer). 
Depending on your perspective and budget, there are two primary approaches:
One-Time Purchase:
- A single “expensive” investment, which can cause companies less eager to improve, as they already have been paid.
- When incorporating new technology, the licensing costs can rapidly increase, as demonstrated by Roon’s rise from $499 to $829 in just a few years.
- With a substantial initial investment, end-users may find it challenging to switch to a different vendor, even if a superior option becomes available.
Subscription Model:
- A subscription-based model allows users to cancel at any time if a better alternative emerges.
- It compels vendors to maintain competitiveness since customers can easily switch to alternatives.
- Subscriptions provide companies with a more predictable cash flow that can be allocated to necessary resources.
In summary, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer to this question. These observations are made from a personal perspective and do not represent Volumio’s official stance (I’m just a forum moderator).
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Everybody? I prefer the subscription model as it supports continuous development, which Volumio has excelled at in the years I’ve experienced it. I spend a decent chunk of my disposable income on buying music and watching bands and in comparison, the Volumio subscription is excellent value.
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I respect Your opinion but You should know that this kind of thinking will lead us to have subscription for everything. You will pay it for TV, speakers, AC, dishwasher… You already have BMW cars with seat heating implemented but in order to use it You need to pay subscription. Luckily, this was not successful to BMW as it is a complete nonsense.
One time payment with a certain time of upgrades after which will continue working what worked before… Just like a TV or any other device.
You maybe never heard about company named MikroTik but I can tell You that their products are paid once and receive lifetime upgrades.
Hello,
but who guarantees me as a customer that my one-time payment for a product with guaranteed lifelong upgrades will actually be fulfilled…how do I know what will happen to the producer in 10, 5 or a year? Who guarantees me that Volumio will still be active in 2 years, who guarantees me that Tidal will still be on the market in 1 year?
Who can guarantee me that everything will continue as before…
Honestly, no one can say that with 100 percent certainty.
Therefore, subscriptions are probably the safest solution looking into the future.
I also see it as if a one-off amount were paid, the producer’s interest in improving something or simply maintaining it would, or even should, diminish as the costs increase.
And I’m not all of them either…for me the subscription isn’t painful, it makes sense.
This also applies to Tidal…
When I think about what we used to spend on records and CD’s in the past…
Ok… that’s nonsense, since I started working with Volumio my expenses in this regard and including electronics etc. have increased enormously… I even bought a record player again after 30 years… That’s sick …
Thanks Volumio, it’s your fault…you’re the best. 
PS: If you buy an Integro you have everything in one package… problem solved.
It costs 100 euros more than my DIY player…now I have two more years…or ONLY two more years of Volumio subscription on top…next time I’ll think about it. 
Tidal is a service. They keep and maintain some servers somewhere, pay internet for them, pay music authors so You can have it all in a few clicks.
Volumio software is NOT a service.
Volumio is good but the payment model is not good (for Volumio probably is).
Why would we need constant updates? Can’t we just listen some music?
BTW, I will buy Rivo. I am just in consideration now of a few others. Cambridge Audio and Matrix Audio.
That’s true so far, but we all have to start somewhere. The entire development of Volumio costs a lot of money and of course that has to come back in somewhere. What matters is how Volumio does justice to its customers and I think they do that well.
That’s right about the updates… it’s annoying sometimes… but updating also means progress and knowledge and progress sometimes fails here and there… we all know that from everything that is offered to us.
Yes, seriously… the next time I plan to build a complete player again… I’ll let it go… I’ll get the Integro.
I’m sure I’m doing everything right.
Yeah, Integro may be a good choice (and it is a one time payment ). At least by judging what can be seen in the description. However, these devices miss some design (strange if they were designed in Italy). They would look far away better with some display (like matrix audio for example).
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To be honest I think the Primo/Rivo/Integro are a perfect design. Clean, slim and subtitle.
But taste is a very personal thing.
Clean is what I think every time I see the player. I like that.
You are right. Minimalistic design can always fit. Anyway, I like when it shines.
The Integro will shine in the dark, it has an OLED display 
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Thanks for you response, I really appreciate this.
It’s getting better and it’s good that you focus more on QA during the release process. From what I would say, it’s not only making sure that release is stable but constantly also investing in fixing smaller, annoying bugs that are not critical for the overall operation of volumio but make the experience better and reduce the time needed for small workarounds. Just from memory I could give a list of examples that are small quirks I experienced and fixed by reading forum:
- Tidal disappearing from Sources after update, “Start Free Trial” button. Workaround - you need to log out/ log in
- “Play here” not working after upgrade to Premium (spinning icon forever). Workaround: Disable/enable multi room
- Listen to the radio, then pause/ stop, then run Tidal Connect song, disconnect Tidal Connect. You have radio station on your playlist but it can’t be played by Play button (it doesn’t react), you need to go to Sources → Radio etc. to play it. You can live with it but it’s irritating.
- When using Tidal Connect, international characters are not displayed in song/album titles on Volumio UI, it works ok with using Tidal from sources
Probably I would be able to list a few more bugs like these from memory. They are not critical, user could live with them but sometimes they could consume precious time to workaround. I’d really like Volumio to focus on these relatively small things so that it becomes bloody robust.
Good to hear this
For now, I’m giving Volumio a chance. If you ask about things I miss I’d tell - UX, stability, focus on small bugs and eventually I’d like to have a synchronized lyrics feature displayed on Volumio UI. It might be a niche requirement though and other people might have other desires I built my own now playing screen with synced/not synced lyrics downloaded from Spotify and Genius in a hacky way.
Regards,
Dariusz
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Thank you very much @Dariusz_Biskup , it’s always great to receive such detailed and informative feedback. This gives us good actionables for improvement.
Some of the point you mentioned are being worked on as we speak (since we are rewriting the TIDAL implementation)