Signed up to the new Qobuz Club and having fun exploring that.
In one of their videos, they announced that they now have over 100 Million tracks.
DG…
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Having trawled the Qobuz sale each year, I can tell you that most of those 100m tracks are a load of old rubbish.
But thank god for Qobuz where would I be without it, a sublime subscription with Hi Res at an amazing discount.
Long live rock n’ roll n’ Qobuz.
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Thanks Andy for helping to spend my money on Qobuz downloads😂
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If only their prices were more reasonable…
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What would you say is reasonable?
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I would say if you have the Qobuz sublime subscription then the Hi Res prices are amazingly cheap.
When you look at others in the Hi Res market say HighResAudio then Qobuz is pretty reasonable.
Bandcamp could be cheaper it’s just you never know what you’re downloading is 16bit or Hi Res - it’s a lottery.
Juno Download can be the cheapest around with some awesome prices for 16bit but you need to do your homework there.
7digital seem to price track Qobuz and were great once but I really don’t know what their game plan is nowadays.
Presto Jazz - for 16bit say on the ECM label do offer some marginally cheaper prices.
Boomkat - for indie 16bit stuff is a good place to go.
Bleep - are mainly indie electronic stuff - another 16bit platform that is worth a visit but not that competitive.
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I tend to use Bandcamp and HDTracks before Qobuz.
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Seems good value if you listened to all tracks.
You’d be paying £0.0000001083 per track at current monthly cost.
Of course you’d need 572 years of uninterrupted free time to do this, assuming an average 3 minute track length.
Qubuz/Tidal offer amazing value for money against purchase oldy worldly style where a CD could just as easily be mince as excellent.
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Good for Qobuz. I am a sublime subscriber since one year and I love them! I previously came from Spotify. The sound quality is X times better than Spotify even if you listen Qobuz on a regular speakers or headphones.
I’ve canceled my subscription to Spotify and transferred all my playlist to Qobuz. They offer free service to do that.
The real reason I like and support Qobuz is that I can buy the music. Of course I stream most of the time, but I also buy a lot of albums. Other streaming services such as Spotify, Tidal, Apple music do not allow you to buy DRM free music, which is a shame.
The harsh truth about streaming that almost no one speaks about is that the user does not own the content. If you listen to your favorite albums you can find one day that they are missing or there is a new remaster and you can no longer listen to the version you are used to.
I use Plex with Plexamp and Roon with Roon Arc to listen to my self hosted music together with Qobuz.
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Nice to see them evolving. Sound quality / material wise the most recommended is www.highresaudio.com
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Where is your source regarding ‘most recommended?’
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I had a Sublime subscription for a couple of years. I don’t stream music, as I find the choice confusing, so I used it for the discount. I’ve not subscribed for a year now. Yesterday I wanted to get the new recording of Turandot, conducted by an Antonio Pappano. These are the Qobuz prices:
The CD costs £20.01 on evil Amazon, which includes the discs and of course the booklet with the libretto etc. Qobuz is therefore £6 more for a lot less.
As I don’t like CDs I really wanted the download. Even with Sublime discount it costs over £20. I therefore looked around and found the 96k download, with the booklet in pdf, on Presto Music for £18.18. If they can do it for £18, why is it £30 on Qobuz? It’s certainly worth shopping around.
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And if you don’t pay the significant extra subscription for “sublime”…
Anyway, regarding the thread title, the number of tracks is meaningless - that figure smacks of the iPod boasting days… All that matters is whether they stock the particular music people want in the quality they want, affordable whether people’s preferred model is online streaming or buying to download, and without errors/faults, or at least with any fixed effectively and rapidly, and this latter seems to be Qobuz’s bugbear.
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Do not know what you are talking about.
Qobuz music streaming has been flawless for the past 3 years or so that I have been using it. Can you give some personal issues that you have experienced?
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My own experience was complaining to them about an album wrongly described on their website, with no response and no change to the displayed album over several months, despite a follow up. That was a couple of years ago now, comments on this form about Qobuz being unresponsive to problems people raise with them occur quite frequently, giving me the impression that when people do have problems unresponsiveness is the norm. In the absence of problems people seem to be happy with them both streaming online (which I don’t do) and purchasing downloads (which I do and with which I have been happy).
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From your description above I would say that Qobuz is doing an excellent job in delivering music to people world wide with miniscule problems. All this for the low price of $10.83 per month.
Perhaps if they doubled or tripled their monthly price they could hire more staff and offer a service which offered a more personal touch for customers. Like priority on answering questions or fixing an album cover.
For me I’m happy that when I select an artist/album and press play the music streams flawlessly. …at least so far but I may have just jinxed myself.
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I just cancelled my Sublime subscription. I get too many drop outs in their stream. When I eventually managed to get through to someone in support, this was a marathon, they admitted that there were quite a few subscribers currently experiencing similar issues. They took my IPv4 address and said they’d look into it. I’ve heard nothing since. I got the impression that the very helpful person on support was fighting a losing battle in terms of trying to deal with issues, but they were trying their best.
I have a family Spotify account, so I’ll use that in future to listen to new music and just buy what I like. I find the quality of locally stored file playback significantly better than even hi-res streams, so I’ll save the £180 and use it to download some music instead.
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Sorry to hear this. I have the Sublime subscription and use it via Roon(wifi). I can count on one hand the few times it’s dropped over the last 2+ years. I know it’s not what you want to hear but I’m happy you seem to have found success using Spotify. My guess would be some sort of networking issue fwiw.
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Thanks for that @marcusman
I suspect issues beyond my LAN as I can stream 192KHz files without problem from the NAS and can sync the ND555 with my first gen Mu-so QB on stored files without problem, so my internal network seems to work without issue. Only Qobuz has dropouts. The problem, as Qobuz outlined anyway, is that they don’t have control of how their data is delivered to my router and it’s probably something between them and me that’s causing the problem. They are looking into it, but they didn’t seem too hopeful about a solution.
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I think the Qobuz streaming service is a fantastic bargain, at least for listeners. I mainly use it as an adjunct to various threads in the Music Room. When I find an album discussed on one of them, most of the time it’s available on Qobuz which gives me a chance to listen and see if it appeals. I have discovered much new music that way, often in genres I’d normally ignore. That wouldn’t have happened without Qobuz.
I do have a concern about the revenue that goes to the artists, so if I find myself listening to an album a lot, I’ll buy a copy, usually as a download from Presto, Bandcamp or, where possible, the artists themselves.
Roger
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