At Roon Labs, our mission is to connect people with music. To do that, we make software and provide information services used by that software. Unlike many other music players, Roon doesn’t just display your music and let you play it, but instead creates rich context about your music using information about the music.
This metadata includes editorial information (like genre, rating, and review) as well as factual information (like which label released a recording, who performed on it, and who composed, produced, and conducted the performance). Roon uses all that information to make it easy to access the music you want to listen to, to display the most relevant possible music in a given context, to provide insight into relationships between pieces of music, and to give you a healthy dose of serendipity.
What that means in practice is that Roon has to identify the music you have so it can be cross-referenced by our metadata service, and to achieve this we send information about your music collection to our servers. We also have mechanisms for authenticating our members, collecting payments, and communicating with them.
Each of these systems has been designed with our members’ privacy in mind. We understand that by allowing Roon to do what we designed it to do, you place a great deal of trust in us. It’s our aim to continue to earn that trust every day.
We take your privacy very seriously. We’re nerds and privacy freaks ourselves, and no part of our business model depends on disclosing any personal information about our members to anyone, ever, for any reason. You can read in detail about all the information we gather and what we do (and don’t do) with it below, but here’s the short version:
Your personal information (name, email address, password) is stored securely in our account database and is never shared with our partners or other third parties.
Your payment information (credit card details) is transmitted securely to our payment processor when you enter it and isn’t stored in our systems.
Your location information is used to determine which content (for example, lyrics and streaming music) we’re allowed to display to you.
Information about your music collection is used to provide you with rich metadata, and is stored in Roon’s database on your computer or Roon Core appliance. This information is processed and cross-referenced on Roon’s servers, but isn’t stored there.
Information about how our members use Roon is not transferred or stored with any member’s personal data.
If you have questions or concerns about this policy, please contact us.
The information we gather falls into three categories, each of which serves a specific purpose: personal information, profile information, and analytics data.
Personal information you must provide
In order to create your Roon account and accept payment for your membership, we must collect certain personal information about you. None of this information is ever shared with any third party. All the personal information we gather is stored on our servers located in the United States.
Your name. We think it’s nice to address our members accurately and appropriately, so we ask for your first and last name. We use it when we create your default in-app user profile and when we send you email messages, but that’s it.
Your email address. Roon is a service, so we need to be able to contact you. Your email address is used to send you messages about your membership and about Roon, but that’s it. See Communication with our members below for more details.
Your Roon password. Your password is stored in an encrypted form on your computer or Roon Core appliance as well as on our servers. It is used to authenticate you when you use Roon software, so we can be sure that people using the service are real members and not baddies. We can’t decrypt your password, so if you forget it, you’ll have to reset it by using the Roon or Roon Remote app. Passwords are reset by sending an email to your email address for verification.
Your credit card information. Roon isn’t free, and for now, we only accept payment by credit card. This information (which includes cardholder name, card number, expiration date, and CVV code) is transmitted directly to our payment processor using secure socket layer (SSL) technology. We keep a record of the cardholder name, expiration date, zip code and the last four digits of the card number so we can display that information to you on your account page. Your credit card number is not stored anywhere on our systems.
Profile information you may optionally give us
We introduced user profiles to make Roon more useful in multi-user households, so different users can have their own favorites, play history, and playlists. Having access to profile information enhances Roon’s functionality, but isn’t required for it to operate properly.
Your birth date (but most importantly, your birth year). We use this information to look for insights into your music taste. It’s stored on your computer or Roon Core appliance as well as on our servers, and it’s never shared with any third party.
Your Last.fm credentials. If you want to scrobble your plays, we need your Last.fm login credentials. These are stored in Roon’s database on your computer or Roon Core appliance and never shared with any third party.
Your credentials for streaming services. To access the streaming content you’ve favorited and to authorize Roon to playback streams, we need your login credentials. These are stored in Roon’s database on your computer or Roon Core appliance and never shared with any third party.
Analytics data gathered by Roon Labs software
Roon captures information about how and where you use the software, and statistical reports about this information are stored on our servers for analysis. The data is transmitted and stored without any reference to your personal information. The purpose of the analytics data is to help us understand our members and how they use Roon.
Your geographic location. We’re contractually obligated by some of our data providers and service partners to filter the content you see based on where you’re located. Yes, this feels very “20th century” to us, too, but draconian laws are draconian laws.
Information about your music collection. As discussed in the Overview section above, Roon transmits some summary information about the files in your music collection to our servers.
Information about what music you play. For the development of radio and other features, Roon builds musical taste profiles based on your play history.
Information about how you use Roon. In order to understand our members and their needs better, we capture data about how you use Roon, including, but not limited to: the features you use, how often you use Roon, statistics about your music library, geographic location, and the audio devices you stream to.
Support
When engaged, the support team at Roon Labs may have access to all of the information above. This information is never shared with any third party and will be used to support Roon members in a diagnostic capacity.
We send email messages to our members when specific actions or feedback are required of them (password reset, credit card expiration, renewal notification). Receiving these messages is not optional since the actions or feedback being solicited are necessary for the software to work properly.
We also send messages of an informational or promotional nature to our members. Members have the option to opt-out of receiving such messages in the Roon and Roon Remote apps, or by clicking the Unsubscribe link in the email message itself.
Our software contains links to other web sites, including Wikipedia, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Songkick, and various artists’ web sites. Please be aware that our privacy policy does not apply to these other web sites. Although we use great care when selecting content for our software (including links to web sites of third parties) we disclaim any responsibility for the content that is found on those other web sites. We encourage you to review the privacy statements of the other web sites to understand their information practices.
We send email messages to our members when specific actions or feedback are required of them (password reset, credit card expiration, renewal notification). Receiving these messages is not optional since the actions or feedback being solicited are necessary for the software to work properly.
Members can correct or update their personal and payment information by signing in to your account page on our web site.