Roli Has Fallen Apart—and Left Customers Holding the Bag

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Roli, the company behind expressive, touch-sensitive music devices like the Seaboard and Roli Blocks, has collapsed. Although it hasn’t been officially announced, Roli reportedly ousted its CEO and founder, Roland Lamb, earlier this year. Since then, Roli has all but dissolved. (In August, a new company called Instrumental Intelligence was registered with the UK government under Lamb’s name, a potential move by the founder to acquire Roli’s assets).

Roli 是一家以 Seaboard 和 Roli Blocks 等富有表现力的触控音乐设备而闻名的公司，目前已经倒闭。尽管尚未正式宣布，但据报道，Roli 已于今年早些时候罢免了其首席执行官兼创始人 Roland Lamb。自那以后，Roli 几乎已经解体。（今年 8 月，一家名为 Instrumental Intelligence 的新公司以 Lamb 的名义在英国政府注册，这可能是该创始人收购 Roli 资产的举动。）

On Monday, Roli emailed users that two licensed insolvency practitioners were appointed joint administrators of Roli on October 20. The company went into administration, the UK process that manages corporate insolvency. This is the second time Roli has gone bankrupt. That has left a small but bereft community of customers with no word on getting the products they paid for.

周一，Roli 向用户发送电子邮件称，两名持牌破产从业者已于 10 月 20 日被任命为 Roli 的联合管理人。该公司进入了行政接管程序，这是英国处理企业破产的流程。这是 Roli 第二次破产。这留下了一个规模虽小但感到被遗弃的客户群体，他们对于如何获得已付款的产品毫无头绪。

The Roli community has expressed sadness, anger, or outright confusion. In Facebook groups, the r/Roli subreddit, and other forums, dismayed users have struggled to find recourse for Roli equipment purchases ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars. The Roli subreddit has been awash with posts from customers who say they paid for orders months or years ago and have received no response or refund since then.

Roli 社区表达了悲伤、愤怒或彻底的困惑。在 Facebook 群组、r/Roli 子版块和其他论坛上，沮丧的用户一直在努力为价值数百至数千美元的 Roli 设备购买寻求补救措施。Roli 子版块充斥着客户的帖子，他们表示自己在几个月甚至几年前就支付了订单，但此后没有收到任何回复或退款。

Existing owners also worry about the long-term impact. Roli instruments rely heavily on proprietary software launchers and companion apps to connect, map sounds, and configure settings. While the hardware still functions, users fear that lack of software support will eventually leave their gear bricked.

现有用户也担心长期影响。Roli 乐器严重依赖专有的软件启动器和配套应用程序来连接、映射声音和配置设置。虽然硬件仍然可以工作，但用户担心缺乏软件支持最终会让他们的设备变成“砖头”。

Roli has not publicly communicated about its future strategy with customers. The company did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment; Lamb did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Roli’s primary financial backers, investment firms TriplePoint Capital and Hoxton Ventures, also did not respond.

Roli 尚未就其未来战略与客户进行公开沟通。该公司没有回应《连线》（WIRED）的置评请求；Lamb 也没有回应多次置评请求。Roli 的主要财务支持者、投资公司 TriplePoint Capital 和 Hoxton Ventures 也未作回应。

Roli has faced financial struggles before. The company started in 2009 but really took off after musician Pharrell Williams invested in 2017 and Sony’s Innovation Fund in 2018. Musicians like Dream Theater keyboardist Jordan Rudess supported and touted Roli’s gadgets. Ryan Gosling’s character played a Seaboard Grand in the 2016 movie La La Land. In the late 2010s, the tech and the company were hailed as a hit.

Roli 以前也曾面临财务困境。该公司成立于 2009 年，但在音乐家 Pharrell Williams 于 2017 年投资以及索尼创新基金于 2018 年投资后才真正起飞。梦剧院（Dream Theater）键盘手 Jordan Rudess 等音乐家支持并推崇 Roli 的小工具。瑞恩·高斯林（Ryan Gosling）在 2016 年的电影《爱乐之城》（La La Land）中饰演的角色曾演奏过 Seaboard Grand。在 2010 年代末，这项技术和该公司被誉为热门产品。

That tune changed in 2020. The British government’s Future Fund—a taxpayer-funded relief package issued to help businesses during the pandemic—partially bailed out Roli from a Covid-19-induced financial crisis. Even then, Roli went into administration for the first time in 2021. It survived by relaunching as Luminary Roli and focusing on music-learning devices like the light-up Lumi keyboard and the Airwave, a digital theremin that doubled as an AI piano teacher.

2020 年情况发生了变化。英国政府的“未来基金”（Future Fund）——一项旨在帮助企业度过疫情的纳税人资助的救济计划——部分帮助 Roli 摆脱了新冠疫情引发的财务危机。即便如此，Roli 还是在 2021 年首次进入行政接管程序。它通过以 Luminary Roli 的名义重新启动并专注于音乐学习设备（如发光的 Lumi 键盘和兼作 AI 钢琴老师的数字特雷门琴 Airwave）而幸存下来。

Through all of that, customers have had issues with how the company communicates. Users who ordered the Lumi keyboard found orders unexpectedly delayed, with no indication from the company on what was happening.

在此过程中，客户一直对公司的沟通方式存在不满。订购了 Lumi 键盘的用户发现订单意外延迟，而公司对于发生了什么没有任何说明。

“One of the problems they have had ever since I started with the Kickstarter is communication and explaining things—telling people what’s going on,” Lluís Gerard, a YouTuber who has reviewed Roli products for years under the handle WasabiNoise, tells WIRED. “There’s always been too much secrecy about things, or then you’d realize, oh, there are these delays.”

“自从我开始参与 Kickstarter 项目以来，他们一直存在的问题就是沟通和解释——告诉人们发生了什么，”以 WasabiNoise 为名多年来一直评测 Roli 产品的 YouTuber Lluís Gerard 告诉《连线》。“事情总是太保密，或者当你意识到时，哦，原来有这些延迟。”

Former Roli employees—who spoke with WIRED but asked not to be named to avoid jeopardizing future employment opportunities—alleged a company culture that revolved around Lamb’s whims. Every person we spoke with who worked with Lamb compared him to a Steve Jobs-esque character. One person described the experience of being at Roli as being in a movie, where Lamb saw himself as the main character and everyone else as extras or set pieces.

前 Roli 员工——他们与《连线》进行了交谈，但要求不具名以避免危及未来的就业机会——声称公司文化围绕着 Lamb 的突发奇想。我们采访的每一位与 Lamb 共事过的人都将他比作史蒂夫·乔布斯式的人物。有人形容在 Roli 的经历就像在电影里一样，Lamb 把自己看作主角，而其他人则是临时演员或布景。

“I love the company, love the culture, love the people—I didn’t love working for him,” the employee said. “Everyone has their story with him. You’re buckled into his car—and he’s not going in the right direction.”

“我热爱这家公司，热爱这种文化，热爱这里的人——但我并不喜欢为他工作，”该员工说。“每个人都有关于他的故事。你被系在他的车里——但他并没有朝着正确的方向前进。”

In 2021, another former Roli employee, who also asked not to be identified, uploaded files on GitHub that include various notes chronicling Roli as a hostile workplace. One 16-page PDF is titled “Keeping Roland Happy” and includes multiple sections about how to handle interacting with a pathological narcissist. Several former employees independently described what they viewed as Lamb’s narcissistic behavior, describing him as an arrogant visionary.

2021 年，另一位同样要求不具名的前 Roli 员工在 GitHub 上上传了文件，其中包括记录 Roli 是一个敌对工作场所的各种笔记。一份 16 页的 PDF 文档标题为“让 Roland 保持快乐”，其中包含多个关于如何处理与病态自恋者互动的章节。几名前员工独立描述了他们所认为的 Lamb 的自恋行为，称他为傲慢的梦想家。

“Roland is the archetype of a pathological narcissist,” one employee told WIRED. “Unfortunately, that’s what he became. Incredibly brittle when challenged, absolutely shameless, quite reckless, incapable of learning or growth, would rather gamble than take any lessons from the previous experience. It was very disheartening to see.”

“Roland 是病态自恋者的典型，”一名员工告诉《连线》。“不幸的是，他变成了这样。受到挑战时极其脆弱，绝对无耻，相当鲁莽，无法学习或成长，宁愿赌博也不愿从之前的经验中吸取教训。看到这些非常令人沮丧。”

“The tragedy here is that it was always fundamentally a great company,” another former employee says. “A lot of what made it great was the sort of all-powerful vision of the founder. But that was so obviously the critical flaw.”

“这里的悲剧在于，它从根本上一直是一家伟大的公司，”另一位前员工说。“它之所以伟大，很大程度上是因为创始人那种全能的愿景。但这显然也是致命的缺陷。”

Along with other touch-sensitive devices like the Linnstrument and the Sensel Morph, Roli was a key company in the rise of MIDI polyphonic expression (MPE) devices. MPE technology lets players control a note’s pitch and timbre through touch-based movement. Pressing or sliding fingers over the device’s surface produces varying MIDI notes that capture more expressive playing.

与 Linnstrument 和 Sensel Morph 等其他触控设备一样，Roli 是 MIDI 复音表现（MPE）设备兴起过程中的关键公司。MPE 技术让演奏者可以通过基于触摸的动作来控制音符的音高和音色。在设备表面按压或滑动手指会产生不同的 MIDI 音符，从而捕捉到更具表现力的演奏。

While inventive, Roli’s instruments were altogether very niche—a hard product category to build an Apple-sized audience around. Roli certainly tried, partnering with Apple to sell its Roli Blocks in Apple Stores. Alas, the pandemic caused dire supply chain issues, and the company couldn’t keep up with.

虽然富有创意，但 Roli 的乐器总体上非常小众——这是一个很难建立起苹果规模受众的产品类别。Roli 当然尝试过，与苹果合作在 Apple Store 中销售其 Roli Blocks。唉，疫情导致了严重的供应链问题，而该公司无法跟上。