Can't download from Qobuz

Absolutely serious, small outfit that nearly went bust until bailed out by Xandrie.

I like supporting the ‘little guy’, always have, though appreciate Bandcamp may get more money to the artist.

1 Like

Will be the case, but as far as streaming choices go, one can apparently do worse than using Qobuz. Per stream they pay ~13 times what Spotify pays and still ~3 times Tidal’s payout.

2 Likes

Windows 10 does natively support tar files but it’s command line only. There might be an opportunity here to write an application to untar the files and tidy up the metadata for you and save the new files somewhere appropriate but it would take a bit of work to complete it. And the user base is likely quite small.

Yes,seriously. It ain’t exactly rocket science. Anyone that can tie shoelaces can download a simple tar file and extract it with the instructions given by Qobuz. Even this 65 yo fart. Come on.Get serious.

2 Likes

Totally missing the point that it’s so badly set up it actually doesn’t work for everybody.

Forgive me for not being a fan of responses which rush to blame and demean users in the face of detailed comments as to why these things are issues.

@Alley_Cat I presume you’re not aware that numerous other sites offer the same functionality around repeat downloads and different formats. It’s far from a USP for Qobuz.

Obviously none are perfect but having been in this game for 3 months and with a keen eye for UI and accessibility issues Qobuz I’d say is destined to be a small player at best and very unlikely to make any great leaps forward.

Fine. Whatever. Did not mean to offend somebody,if I did I am sorry.
Just found it strange that you find BandCamp vastly superior over Qobuz when their downloads are also in zip format. The format of which you say,and I quote, “Personally I don’t touch anything zipped simply because it’s dead technology.”
There is obviously some reason why you dislike Qobuz. No problem,to each his own. Last thing I’ll say about this.

An issue for me with Bandcamp is there is no indication of the resolution being downloaded so you always have to assume 16/44 or be disappointed.

Why would you need to assume it when they’re clear that 16/44 is their minimum?

https://get.bandcamp.help/hc/en-us/articles/360057504674-I-m-unhappy-with-the-audio-quality-of-my-download-What-should-I-do-

I know the minimum is 16/44. Some of Bandcamp’s downloads are 24bit but it doesn’t (or didn’t) say so on the website.
I’ve previously purchased from Bandcamp and got 16/44 even though a higher resolution was available elsewhere so I ended up buying twice to get the resolution I wanted.

There are lots of different options out there these days.

I’ve purchased music downloads for probably getting close to two decades so have tried a fair few by now.

I’ve even forgotten the name of that P2P file sharing app that caused such consternation to the industry.

The biggest annoyances are when the rights holders remove a title/track from a vendor’s catalogue. You may have had options to redownload but this can lead to titles disappearing hence the danger of streaming purchases only - uncommon but happens, particularly annoying for single songs on an album which disappear.

Unlimited downloads, potentially, but sometimes only if the title is still in the ‘catalogue’ or hasn’t changed in a subtle manner replacing the one you ‘purchased’.

If the company goes belly up then little chance of getting a repeat download.

Firstly iTunes - the early m4p AAC files were 128 kbps lossy and protected. These were replaced by m4a files with 256 kbps lossy AAC encoding but protection removed. Some of the older protected titles could be upgraded for a nominal fee, not all. Several music purchases from iTunes are no longer available to download.

Anyone remember Wippit? It may have resurfaced at some point.

Linn music downloads - it was generally a single shot at downloading only in the psst, several items I have been unable to redownload. Linn used to offer a peculiar downloader app.

Bandcamp - used them at least as far back as 2011 (not 2001), but the account is now inaccessible for some reason, maybe a GDPR thing, but several items I purchased cannot be accessed - they’re on an external drive somewhere providing I can find it.

Amazon music - I like their AutoRip service (free MP3 downloads of eligible CD purchases) when it’s available but lossy. Amazon used to offer a downloader app for these AutoRip titles too. Many of my legacy CD purchases got AutoRip files retrosepctively, but I think 50-60% are missing - have used Amazon since at least 2001. I have purchased a few MP3 albums from Amazon, AFAIK I can still download them.

7digital - liked their service as an alternative to the ‘big guys’ years ago, but am unable to redownload many older purchases which were limited to MP3 back then. Can’t recall if they zipped albums or if there was a downloader app. They’re on my NAS anyway.

Qobuz - have used them for 4-5 years - the catalogue suits or doesn’t. I really enjoy my Sublime discounts on hi-res. I have had no major issues downloading/redownloading in various formats - maybe just need a single format, but without comparing I think it’s difficult to be certain that different lossless formats will sound the same - either due to streamer architecture or provenance of the files. If Qobuz say get a ‘master FLAC’ and re-encode to other formats/quality on the fly for downloads then likely to be the same. If the different formats come from the record company they could potentially have been processed differently.

HDTRACKS, HIRESAUDIO, DEEZER etc I’ve not tried, but largely as until recently some did not have a UK site, or in other cases as redownloads were limited (probably adequate, but not unlimited).

Tidal - have a streaming subcription but never purchased a download (many people seem unaware you can buy from Tidal).

Anyhow, after all of that, whichever services you look at need to satisfy your tastes. Qobuz largely does so for me whether I download as a tar or track by track.

Napster, now legit.

Good post @Alley_Cat thank you and an interesting read.

I have to say I think the idea of simply relying on stuff to always be available via streaming has always seemed to me to be somewhere between naive and bonkers. I used my CD rips and will keep the CDs. Obviously there are no guarantees there as there’s always a chance of mould etc. but always more guarantees than just using a stream.

I then have my download purchases but have confined myself thus far to replacing those CDs which wouldn’t rip; a small number of things I’ve never seen on CD but can get as a download and a small number of new albums until such time as the backlog of the first two is done and dusted.

Having tried a bit of high res but can’t say I thought there was sufficient there to regularly fork out those amounts and have found a few which are audibly inferior.

Of the services I’ve tried I’d say BandCamp and 7Digital are the least painful and cheapest but none of them are perfect and, in common with Qobuz, BandCamp looks like it was a site purchased off the shelf from a domain name seller.

1 Like

It is one of the reasons I have more recently signed up to Amazon HD. I ‘trust’ that they will both be around for the long haul, and will have the greater capacity to keep ‘my’ library intact, without deletion.

It’s not really a route I’m planning on going down but I had a good look and to me they’re no better than the others. At least 300+ of my CDs simply don’t exist on Amazon and they’re unlikely to ever do so.

Early days, but I’ve started writing an application to manage Qobuz “tar” file downloads. So far it goes inside the tar file and reads all the file metadata. Ultimately you’ll be able to choose where to extract the files, and it will put them in the artist/album etc folder of your choosing. Only tested with flacs, but it’s able to show the embedded data and the cover art.

3 Likes

Updates:

tidied up the first tab, so you can see all the track metadata inside the Qobuz tar file without extracting any of it to your hard drive.
Added a 2nd tab that allows you to select 1 or more albums (if you have downloaded multiple in the same tar file), set your extract path, and then extract into path + artist + album folder.

extract tab:

written for Windows. At some point I need to work out how to make this available for download.

1 Like

:+1: Github maybe?

Yes, github possibly, I’ll look into alternatives. Ultimately it will be a single “exe” file with no install, it will just run.
It’s tested and working with MP3, FLAC, ALAC, WMA, AIFF and will extract and show the track metadata and cover art. It handles multiple albums within a single Tar, and you can extract 1 album or more at a time.
I cant get it to work nicely with WAV, so I’ve bypassed accessing the metadata.
Extracting the files works regardless of the file format, but as I cant get artist/album metadata from WAV I’m simply using the folder name within the Tar file.

2 Likes

Now available
Release Qobuz Untar · rob3rt-h/Qobuz_Untar · GitHub
Instructions here Qobuz_Untar/Qobuz Untar Downloads v0.1.pdf at v0.1 · rob3rt-h/Qobuz_Untar · GitHub

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.