I am an audiophile as I suspect many of your customers are. Many audiophiles have a MAC mini/MAC laptop they use to stream/play music off of(many Stereophile reviewers included). I have heard MAC usage as a music server is it a much higher percentage(than the general populateion) because MACs, as a whole, have better hardware and are quieter. I have been a Windows user my entire life and continue to be, but use MAC for music server duties after a few tries with custom fan-less PCs.
I have spent a lot on my stereo and can hear drastic differences in sound quality based on how I route my music to the stereo system. I currently have an expensive DAC that I stream to over my home network via JRiver works great for music I have bought. BUT - with services like Tidal starting up, I want to be able to stream Tidal to this DAC and use JRiver as the output on my MAC. I would also like to do with with services like Pandora, etc..... I understand you can do this with Windows with the right configuration.
One could say - just do your Airplay thing with MAC, but that does not give the best quality and also I don't have any Airplay devices on my network anyway.
With Tidal and other services offering higher quality streaming, I have really stopped buying music and going the subscription route. I hope JRiver keeps up with the changes out there and adapts further the ability to be part of music networking setups. We will always have our songs on music servers we own and JRiver plays those well, but has a lot of work to do on the integration of music streaming services that appear to be taking over. I have been migrating over to streaming and the only reason I have not made a complete jumps is because of the lack of hi-res content(CD and above) streaming. Tidal and other services have now largely fixed that, I can't see myself buying too many more songs. I would rather just maintain a playlist at Tidal or Spotify vs buying, storing, and then organizing music that is largely stuck at home.
I would be great if you could somehow "browse" your Tidal or Spotify library from JRiver and play it. Or at the minimum be able to stream these services through JRiver on both Windows and MAC.
Thank you.