Audio giant Harman, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. on Tuesday announced the acquisition of Roon, a music management, discovery and streaming platform for music enthusiasts. Roon will operate as a standalone Harman business with its existing team. Roon is a music player platform for music enthusiasts, which features a rich interface for browsing and discovering music, compatibility with almost any audio device, and a playback engine designed to deliver the best possible sound. Roon is available for all popular operating systems and manufactures a line of hardware server appliances called Nucleus.
Roon's operations will stay in place, post the acquisition, and continue to be dedicated to growing its community of device partners and customers, under a joint programme to deliver engaging and personalized audio experiences across a universe of products and platforms.
“At Harman we take great pride in our ability to create exceptional audio experiences for our partners and consumers around the world,” Dave Rogers, President, Lifestyle Division, Harman, said in a statement.
“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.”
Aligned with its ‘work with all’ strategy, the audio major is committed to growing Roon’s open device ecosystem which includes collaborating with more than 160 other audio brands and delivering audio to more than 1000 high-performance devices.
“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.”