As a Roon owner (I bought a lifetime license), here in the USA, I must be missing something. From my viewpoint Roon is a great value with a combination of features that is not easily available anywhere else.
1. Seamlessly integrates music files I own on a hard drive with TIDAL and Qobuz, including MQA through TIDAL. It all looks like one library regardless of the source of the music. With a TIDAL or Qobuz subscription, I have access to more music than I could ever possibly listen to.
2. Outputs to any device with exceptional functionality with Roon testing hardware to ensure it works and certifying devices as Roon Ready if they have the required capabilities to integrate with Roon. Roon ready devices can sync audio throughout a home. You can have music playing throughout a house in near perfect sync as if they are hard wired together. You can move your music from one listening room to another so your playlist follows you where ever you go in your home. You can have different music playing throughout the hosue so each family member can listen to whatever they want. This all works super smooth and easy.
3. The operational paradigm is simple and efficient. You set up one core. This is the brains of your system and is always accessible within your home using wifi. Next, any computer, tablet, or smartphone acts as a remote giving access to all your music in a visually pleasing and intuitive interface that allows various people to have their own profiles and playlists. This is all accessed through your wifi. Last, your audio devices, wheather they are a smart speaker, a receiver with a Google Audio/Home puck attached, or a wifi enabled device like an Oppo UDP 205 or a NAD C368 DAC amplifier. You select the zone or device you wish to play music to using your remotes and you don't even need to be in the same room to start music playing somewhere else in your house. All of this just works.
4. Integration of external data. Concert dates, lyrics, summary information about the artist and albums is all pulled in from the Internet by Roon and integrated into the display. Do you like Jessie Ware's new album, What's Your Pleasure? I pull that up and see she is performing thee times in April 2021 in Glasgow, Newcastle, and Leeds. She was born in London in 1984 and earned a degree in English Literature from the University of Sussex. I can click on the credits which lists everyone involved in this album and can click on the names to see what other albums or projects each person has been involved with. I have gone down so many rabbit holes this way and found a ton of new good music by clicking on these links. Each track will list how many other versions of that same song are out there. I can click on that link and then listen to all the other performances of that song. Just another rabbit hole.
Last, I dispute there are issues with this software. I've been using Roon for over a year. Once in a great while there is a hiccup which more often than not is not a Roon issue. If TIDAL or Qobuz's servers are down you can't play that music. But I've found Roon to be rock solid.
In case you're wondering, I do not work for Roon or have any financial interest in Roon. If I have one beef with Roon, is they seem to be too busy to update the main page of their website. But that is really reaching for a straw to complain about. Roon is the one single purchase that has changed the way I listen to music and the level of enjoyment I get from my music. Nothing in my music system has impacted me more. Given what it has done for me. I believe it to be a solid value and is unequaled in the marketplace.