Quboz...all is not well?

I have just finished my trial period with Qubuz . I agree with other posts that it is not as polished as Spotify nor the catalogue as extensive , however it has the trump card of higher quality streaming and downloads which is great to see when other services call 320k high quality .

So , I have decided to pay £199 to carry on with Qubuz , if they go under it's very sad but on the other hand if my little bit of support plus others allows them to carry on and improve then we all benefit and will hopefully show that there is a market for quality rather than convenience .

I'm 17 hrs in and it hasnt even started on all 9 beethoven symphonies yet. (i managed to get within 73p of my discount limit - a fact of which I'm illogically proud)

Live in Lulea is already loosening the dust on the Titans (and merely in CD quality to boot - still sounds especially good at half-price)

Providing they are still in business, I probably will not be renewing my subscription when it comes up in December. I'll will continue to use them for downloads. My broad impressions thus far:

+ streaming quality
+ classical selection
+ Mac app

- discovery is limited
- catalog doesn't seem to have grown much in the last 6 months
- search is about as good as Alta Vista before Google came along
- Mac and iOS apps are unreliable, and clunky

In fairness to Qobuz I now have a much clearer idea about how subscription services fit in to my listening. I still have a desire to own music, so for me subscription music is more about discovery and try before you buy.

70% of what I listen to is Blues/Rock/Folk/Country etc. The remaining 30% classical and opera. If I was happy to stream rather than buy and reversed my listening ratio's I'd pay for another Qobuz subscription.

In the meantime I've been trying Beats Music. I was a little hesitant, but after I realised the headphones aren't compulsory, I decided to give it a go;-) Co-founder Jimmy Iovine produced some of my favourite albums including; Making Movies by Dire Straits, so I'll admit to some residual admiration. I have a US iTunes account for TV and certain apps, which removes one of the hurdles. It's a US only service at this point.

Quality is on a par with the Radio Paradise Naim Exclusive stream. Noticeably, not as good as Qobuz, but not at all bad. It's a little too early to make a firm judgement, but after 10 days I'd say that if you reversed my Qobuz pros and cons you would be pretty close to my feelings at this point. At USD 99 or about GBP 60 I think it's worth a punt.

I'm particularly enjoying the discovery features. I've always liked Fairport Convention but never really explored Sandy Denny's other work. Despite not listening to Fairport Convention on Beats, yesterday morning it presented me with an 'An Introduction to Sandy Denny' playlist with 18 songs. Having listened to it, I'm now digging in to the albums, deciding which ones to buy, probably from Qobuz; using my 50% voucher, if they have them!

The biggest drawback at this point is that it's a US only service. For anyone interested, and if it's within the forums rules I can post a basic how-to. It takes about 10 minutes to sign-up to Beats and setup a US iTunes account

Just bought 6 x 24bit albums with 50% discount. Their downloader installed fine and all 6 albums took about 4 hours to download, not too bad. So good there.

The things I found frustrating where :

Do not like their metadata and the style adopted for the track and file listings for the downloads.

The lack of knowing what was is new, it is handy to know what is the new stuff as I just don't know what new 24bit releases are out in my flavour of music, Metal & Rock (except the major releases like Led Zep etc) need a latest list. I can't track all Artists via their sites, and even the Artists sites don't advertise all the 24bit releases, their labels do it for them.

Found their navigation frustrating, sorry. ZZ Top. Search direct to Artist page and no HiRes options, go another route suddenly found 4 x 24bit albums? Thats is pretty frustrating that one way works different in the same UI?

The downloader for Mac is fine but all text is in French, can't get it to display English.

I got initially confused by the downloader and the desktop, had to stop my downloads three times to re-do as the folder options it pre-selects are just badly done, and if you download via the desktop all the folders will be in French. These are two separate download options and only the downloader appears to do what is wanted. Just a bit confusing this.

Little of my style of music, HD Tracks has a much better selection (such as Pearl Jam Hi-Res, none on Qubuz, or RHCP titles missing in HiRes)

Some Artists HiRes options seem missing, Van Halen 1984 for example isn't there, the rest are?

I am sure if I keep with it and figure more out it will come my way but I am just not a fan of its UI style, navigation, search options and general look and feel. Entirely personal and apologies but it is not for me and I don't want to keep trying it until working/looking/searching until I figure it out, my bad.

Got the 50% albums and really only 2 of the 6 I would have bought outside this deal (I already had most of their options) and I spent a lot of time searching all their 24bit options to see if a gem was hidden.

Bit of a disappointment I am afraid, just my own personal thoughts not sure I will be using again, HD Tracks works for me seems to just have more options for me music wise.

Originally posted by Dan43

"Bit of a disappointment I am afraid, just my own personal thoughts not sure I will be using again, HD Tracks works for me seems to just have more options for me music wise".

I have also used HD Tracks in the past, when I was able to download from their US Site using a Paypal account. However, I have been put off by the initial push to block UK (or non US) buyers - OK., possibly not their fault, but I tend to be a little cynical about these things, and I can't help but suspect that their intention was always to introduce a more expensive alternative service in the UK..

UK downloads appear to be quite a bit more expensive than their Qobuz equivalents. An example of this Is the hi-res studio masters of the Led Zeppelin albums:

HD Tracks (UK) - £17.00

HD Tracks US - $19.98 = £12.01 (at todays exchange rates)

Qobuz - £13.66 

I dislike being ripped off, and I can't help but feel that those of us in the UK are being ripped off by HD tracks.

I believe the price variations are affected by taxes more than anything else

US sales tax vs VAT etc .....

Well, HDT are a US company. Perhaps they thought £=€ 

What is not known here is what role the record labels may be having in regional pricing, and whether there are different prices to the suppliers such as HDT, etc. Their track record (!!) is not good.

Mike-B originally posted

"I believe the price variations are affected by taxes more than anything else

US sales tax vs VAT etc ....."

Yes, I agree that tax differences may result in a higher cost - but not to the extent of the mark-up by HD Tracks (see the Qobuz UK price I quoted as an indication of this).

I also don't trust the record labels - I would not be surprised if their role in the mark-up is substantial. Again, however, the Qobuz UK price is only slightly higher than the HD Tracks US price.  

Qobuz for me in the future unless there is a specific item I want that is only available from HD Tracks.

I agree Hmack,  maybe I should said don't forget the US v VAT affects some aspects of pricing

Then if the UK Qobuz & HDT got close to matching prices it would still be an issue,  we would then say its price ringing.

+1 on record labels

It could be Qobuz is the future, happy to wait for it to settle, at this stage HDT wins my vote for selection of music to my taste, and as a signed in member  of HDT I always seem to get a 10% off code every month pretty much, last time was a 20% store wide discount, which put all my purchases cheaper than Qobuz.

And again some gripes are valid for both sites as mentioned but still HDT just has more of the music I like, it does seem to have so much more 24bit choices than Qobuz.

As for say Classical I couldn't say but for Rock/Metal and similar it is way ahead, in choices for 24bit, than Qobuz, outside the UI/site issues both have.

BTW I am UK based and log into HDT via Proxy with no issues at all using PP. Like I say for me for now it is my go to for new 24bit downloads.

These two sites throw up the odd 24bit download that the others don't have, worth checking I have bought from both.

http://www.prostudiomasters.com

http://www.highresaudio.com

Never used those sites , thank you for the info .

Originally posted by Dan43:

"BTW I am UK based and log into HDT via Proxy with no issues at all using PP. Like I say for me for now it is my go to for new 24bit downloads"

I take it that you use Paypal for payments, otherwise your credit card details would tie you down to the UK?.

Yes using PayPal seems to work ok.

According to What Hi-Fi Qobuz has filed for protection procedings in France. Cashflow problems :-(

Keith

How did you manage to buy from prostudiomasters.com as they seem to require a credit card registered to a USA or Canada address?

I could register but never buy from them.

cheers

I wish them luck but I think it will be a struggle. About a year ago Yves Riesel; the founder, claimed more than half of the available streaming services would fail in two years. Every service is loosing money. They only differ in the rate at which they are burning through cash, and the patience of their investors.

With 20% Spotify is regarded to have the best conversion rate in the business with 10 million paying subscribers. Despite doing well it's sitting on total losses of USD 200 million. Analysts; for what they are worth, target the 10 million subscriber number for streaming business to break even.

If Google (Youtube Music Key) and Apple (Beats Music) choose to operate music streaming as loss leader in the way many mobile network operators do, things will only get tougher for everyone else.

I don't want to sound negative, but I feel that increasingly the music business is becoming a pawn on the chess board of the worlds biggest corporations, and less a business in it's own right.

Greg, your argument sounds unfortunately convincing. If it had to I would prefer then Qobuz to concentrate on it's lossless downloads as opposed to streaming on demand.

As I have said before streaming services not using multicast are inefficient and relatively expensive to operate at higher throughputs. However to do multicast effectively  on the internet currently you would need agreements with main ISPs, and only be able to offer a broadcast (like iradio)!and not an on demand service. Fingers crossed they get their additional funding, as they seem to be doing so well, and internet bandwidth and server capacity is getting cheaper all the time.

Simon

Qobuz streaming works fine for me on my circa 5mb rural connection and is now by far my preferred way of listening - I hope they make a go of it. I've downloaded some hi res (Doors studio albums) but although it's marginally better it's not enough to make me start buying music again. Cd quality via Qobuz is very enjoyable and the access to more artists trumps the gaps in their catalogue for me.

Just to keep the pot boiling on prices

I just downloaded   Eric Clapton & Friends: The Breeze

Prices are wildly variable so I checked against Post Office FEX rates posted this morning

GBP-EUR 1.231

GBP-USD 1.596

Qobuz Euro €19.23 = £15.62

Qobuz UK                   £17.31                    

HDT USA  $17.98 =  £11.27                                      

HDT UK    Not available   !!!!!

Guess who got my business               

Yes it definitely is worth while to compare. I also look at the different sites and get it from the cheapest one at that point in time. I have seen so far that very often Qobuz has the best price, but not always. And sometimes they also have not immediately visible good offers.

I got another money off voucher today.. 15% off an order of £40 or more.. Ok not as tasty as the 50% off but these discount vouchers appear to be coming quite regularly.

Simon

No 15% voucher for me here yet but I did manage to take healthy advantage of the 50% one last week.

I also received the 15% Qobuz offer. I don't know about others here but I seem to be getting an email a day from Qobuz. Perhaps they are trying to fatten up in the hope of making the business look more attractive to potential investors before bankruptcy protection is removed . Tidal's launch probably doesn't help.

From another perspective, it can't be easy for companies like Naim to know where to to invest with such a volatile streaming landscape.

Just downloaded this fine album FLAC 24/96 this morning for only £3.99.