Harman acquires Roon music management platform

In a surprise move, Harman has announced the acquisition of Roon, the popular music discovery and streaming platform.

It’s reported that Roon will operate as a standalone Harman business with its existing team. All Roon operations will stay in place, charged with growing Roon’s community of device partners and customers. Harman is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Samsung Electronics.

Embraced by music enthusiasts, Roon is known for its rich interface which encourages browsing and discovering music. Roon is available for all popular operating systems and also manufactures a line of hardware server appliances called Nucleus.

The move follows hard on the heels of Harman’s Harman acquisition of Flux Software Engineering, a digital audio software specialist for the professional audio, broadcast, post production and mastering industries.

“At Harman we take great pride in our ability to create exceptional audio experiences for our partners and consumers around the world,” said Dave Rogers, President, Lifestyle Division, Harman. “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, Harman says it’s committed to growing Roon’s open device ecosystem which includes collaborating with more than 160 other audio brands, 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.”