Soooo ... I'm intrigued by the idea of what Roon does, but I have reservations. Specifically, I have a severe allergy to business models that include behavioral data collection.
I realize, and could potentially accept, that Roon would need to, at least once and when new material is added, transmit knowledge of my entire collection to [ insert god-only-knows-what-parties here ]. However, I will not accept transmission of real time listening habits or usage. Does anyone know whether Roon does a one-time (or periodic) download of metadata for an entire collection, or does it have to phone home to the mother ship every time I interact with it, to retrieve metadata (and thus record what I'm listening to and when)?
And don't bother asking me why I care who knows what music I listen to and when. It's a fundamental philosophical question and a matter of principle to me. This is of particular importance given the shadowy nature of Roon's ownership. (I have learned, from skulking about, that they are sort-of kind-of NY-based, but that's a little thin for a level-of-trust evaluation for a new piece of software.)
I'm perfectly happy with MPD, but the richer feature set of Roon would be worth paying for, if it doesn't include looping in a realtime spy network.
To clarify: I'm interested in capabilities, not necessarily default behavior. Obviously, for integration with streaming services, always-on connectivity is required. I won't be doing that. For me to be interested in it, it would need to operate usefully without being able to "dial out" (I can, and do, enforce that with border network egress controls). I'm just wondering whether anyone already knows whether its architecture allows for fully isolated (from the internet) operation while still providing its most useful features.