Ladies and gentleman,
hope this is a good surprise for you all.
Volumio has now a Shop, and its purpose is just parallel to the player you already love. One of the most frequent questions that friends were asking, when speaking of Volumio was: “Nice, but how do I get it?”. I then realized how descouraging could be for a novice to get all the things needed to obtain a proper Volumio player. With the Volumio shop, we can offer a showcase of the best affordable ways to build such a thing, and allow a fast and easy way to gather all necessary components for a Volumio powered music player.
Also, it’s a great time to be an audiophile: with the rise of small computers like the Raspberry PI and Volumio everyone can build an Audiophile streamer without emptying his pockets. And the whole Audio scene sees new independent manufacturers bring exciting products to the market every day, both for DIYers and curious consumers. Some of those manufacturers have been constantly in touch with us since the beginning, and I like to think that this Audio revolution was made possible by this unique hardware and software combination.
So the idea here is to offer such brilliant manufacturers a way to showcase their products to a larger crowd, and offering a curated selection of the most well perfomining accessories and solutions.
Last but not least, Volumio Team is now committed full-time to the project and the shop will be a great way to sustain future developments of our faviourite Audiophile Music Player. For every purchase you will make on the shop, a small amount will go to funding this project. You will be able to see from the paypal checkout summary how much of the cost goes to the seller and how much goes to Volumio. You can find all details on The Shop Information page and on the Terms and Conditions
For those of you worrying that this place is going to end as a selling-focused website, no need to worry: our mission will always be developing a great Audiophile Music Player, and to keep it as Open Source and free as possible. We think that we can serve this goal better only if devoted full time, and finding sustainable monetization strategies like the shop and our OEM Program.
The whole point is to create a winning situation for everyone: Volumio users will benefit from a great and curated selection, independent manufacturers will gather precious resources and Volumio will get a solid base to fund improvements. I sincerely hope this strategy will make Volumio a better place for everybody, without loosing its core principles.
So, take some time to check our initial products offering and let us know what you think in the comments below, or feel free to suggest what would you like to see in this forum thread !
Evviva volumio!