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JimH:
I'm putting this here because I'm not ready for it to be public. 

I'd like to find a group of companies in our space to work more closely with or even to merge with.  I'm interested in whether you find the idea worthwhile, and if so, who?

Here are a few I think of.

DBPowerAmp
Foobar
Radio Paradise
Silicondust
Plex
Bubble
madVR
Soundspectrum
Sound United (Denon, Marantz, Polk, etc.)

Thanks.

jmone:
My 2cents:
- Existing Partners:  I personally like how MC works with both madVR and Silicondust and I'm sure closer ties could help but I'm not sure what you would get that you don't already have.
- 3rd Party Tools used to fill gaps: This is the one I think has the most promise.  There are a range of 3rd Party apps used by the community to fill gaps but the lack of integration makes them pretty user unfriendly.  You mention Bubble (gives us Chomecast Support), and others like Rogue Amoeba's Airfoil gives us Airplay, Chromecast, Sonos support.  Integration of these as core, or add ins would be great as you open up just about all traditional networked speakers.  At present these act as bridges so you have to control both MC, and the Bridge to get to the speaker. 
- Assistants?:  Everywhere you look there is an Google, Alexa, etc enable thingo ...  Don't know if it will last but it does seem to have more legs that
- JRiver Inside:  Looking at the speaker / AVR etc market, they all run some Media Renderer but I have no idea who makes it.  Is there a market to put JRiver on these devices?

jmone:
Content Provision:  The other end of the chain is the Content Provision.  I know this is not easy but as the years have gone on, the ability to interact with Content Providers from within MC has shrunk, yet there has been an explosion of devices including cheap "TV Boxs (aka Roku)" where you can add apps for all the Audio and Video apps from the online providers all in one UI.  How do the likes of these HW providers get access to all of these and could JRiver not do the same thing?

This to me is the biggest area to think about.  I've seen over the decade+ that I've used MC, the consumption content via MC is now down to mostly accessing our ripped BD's/UHD and some TV, or to push some stream to a speaker as background music.  The Kids (now adults I guess!) consume vast amounts of content but it is on-line stuff.  Even the TV Viewing is shifting from Cable/TV to IP delivered streams via Apps in the TV/AVR/Roku style boxes rather than from HTPC/MC.

fitbrit:
Wow, this was unexpected, but could be promising.
dBpoweramp is a good one - the metadata resources are better than MC's, I think.

Radio Paradise - I know that many customers like this streaming service.
Soundspectrum - Might be nice to have their visualisations as an integrated part of MC.
MadVR - working even more closely with Madshi would be most welcome.
Plex -  I think some of its GUI could be good, but there's not much that MC doesn't do that Plex does, I think

The others on your list are ones that I do not know too well. I do have the same questions as jmone - what do you get out of a merge rather than a stronger partnership, for example?
Additional ones to consider:

MakeMKV (decryption, ripping)
MusicBrainz Picard (identifying untagged audio files)

I've also been meaning to talk to you about making high-end JRiver hardware for customers - since MC is our default playback and organisational software, we are already doing that essentially. It would be like the Nucleus is to Roon, but with MC instead.

SamuriHL:
madvr is in an interesting space right now because madshi just created an LLC to launch the Envy.  Might be an interesting partnership potentially?

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