Quobuz Receivership

They seem to be consistently on the brink but keep going - although this does loom somewhat terminal if investment can't be found.

It's a great shame - and not just because I'm only 2 months into my sublime membership. It's a great service and great prices on hi res downloads.

I really hope they manage to pull something out of the bag.

Qobuz is just great. I get lots of downloads from them and live in hope of the day when Naim integrates Qobuz streaming into its products. It would be a terrible shame if they were to close down, but if people won't pay, the service cannot be viable. Perhaps Focal, with its investment backers, can rescue them at the last minute - Focal and Qobuz are both French after all. 

While I share your views, Fishy One, it's surely much more likely that any solution will involve integration into one of the other streaming services. I note you can still subscribe for a year to Qobuz Sublime, but you'd have to be pretty brave...

I bought some stuff from them this morning - maybe my £24 will help! Let's hope for a last minute rescue.

Every little helps.  If everyone did the same.....maybe.  I took up the hifi subscription as soon as it became available here in the UK, and paid every month since.  At the weekend I received an email offering me a further 10% on top of the standard discount for sublime users' purchases.  I was really tempted, but knowing already of their financial difficulties, I managed to talk myself out of it.  

I am really hoping that a deal can be struck, even it is integrated with another streaming service, perhaps it could still hold on to its identity and values.

Being in such a panic about all this, I started a Tidal subscription this afternoon, to reevaluate the situation there.  The PC app is still goes through the Windows mixer, rather than offering the option to bypass it for bit-perfect output, which is really annoying for me, and contradicts what was claimed by Tidal in an interview featured in a well known HiFi Magazine a couple of months ago.

Deezer Elite is only available on the Sonos gear at the moment, so that's not an option.  Which means, without new hardware, I can no longer achieve true unmolested CD quality internet streaming on my main system if Qobuz goes.

I am not paying £20 per month for CD quality unless I am getting exactly that, so the likely outcome here is that I will return to Spotify for a time, and evaluate the options for the longer term, i.e decide whether to give in and buy and NDX.  Crazy that one decent option on a piece of windows software means the difference between me feeling the need to buy a Naim streamer and not. 

I have the three month free subscription to Tidal, which I get via my 272. Quality-wise, it's ok, but nothing more, but the choice of music is pretty woeful. If you like classical and jazz, it's not a patch on Qobuz. 

Perhaps all those free trials luring us to Tidal were to be the final nail in the Qobuz coffin! Let's hope not.

They seemed to hold promise of greatness, however they weren't yet user friendly as far as my browsing needs go, so I haven't bought or subscribed - however I had hoped they might improve, so in that I'm disappointed if they found, as I havent found Tiadal or Spotify as potentially interesting.

As an aside, for anyone who hasn't come across them,  highresaudio.com seems good for downloading - but you need to be picky about currency you pay in to  the best value.

Funny I kept getting the Sublime emails but not seen a download discount code email for months!! They must have been looking to get a 'fat' membership to tout to potential buyers rather than generating 'now' sales. A real shame if they disappear.

It would be interesting to know the marginal economics of streaming. There does seem to be a concensus that streaming is here to stay, the only questions being what quality and who provides the service. As a provider falls by the wayside will its subscribers transfer to a different provider. That would depend on the relative choices and quality standard. If there is a future for lower quality (ie Spotify type) streaming either free of charge  ( advertiser funded) or low subscription cost, how much extra would it cost the service provider to offer CD quality at a higher cost. If the net revenue stream from the premium subscriptions was greater than the cost of making the higher quality available then it would be worth the investment.

With regard to Qobuz, they have an infrastructure and a computerful of CD quality music which may well be of interest to one of the other providers, who could buy it from the administraters at a knockdown cost. I would not rule out Apple who are clearly wanting to promote streaming but have not (yet) offered 'hi res'. They could integrate the Qobuz catalogue with their own. If Apple then tell their disciples that hi res is a 'good thing' then they may well be disposed to try it.

I think that's unlikely. The fundamental issue is that streaming music can't be a profitable business with royalty rates in excess of 80%. Only those businesses with significant long term funding will be able to grow a user base that can deliver the required economies of scale. After Spotify and Deezer's most recent financial results, some are even questioning that. Only a week or so ago Deezer decided to postpone it's IPO. 

It's also debtable if long term, streaming businesses can compete with the likes of Apple and Google who can afford to take a loss, because streaming simply makes their products and services more attractive.

I'm convinced that there is a real risk that by milking streaming for all it's worth in these early days, the major record companies could inflict lasting damage to the business model and music in general.

The only unknown with Qobuz is just how valuable the digital download business is. We can safely assume not big enough to fund a streaming business, but perhaps a viable stand alone business? Only time will tell.

That won't happen. We know from the Sony hack and Apple's purchase of Beats that streaming rights are not transferable.

What could happen is that talented individuals working at Qobuz could find themselves at other streaming companies. Apple could certainly do with some help on classical and jazz curation.

Deezer's IPO announcement was the first time we got hard numbers on costs. This quote from Billboard tells you all you need to know.

The bad news is content costs have eaten nearly all revenue. As a percent of revenue, Deezer's cost of sales — a close estimate of royalty costs — fell to 84.4 percent last year from 97.6 percent and 91.3 percent in 2013 and 2012 respectively. This number if headed in the right direction, however, falling to 82.3 percent in the first six months of 2015 and 82.6 percent in the 12-month period ending June 30.

Source: Deezer's IPO Filing Shows Both Potential and Problems

Thanks for that info Greg. I wonder how much extra royalty is due in hi res vs lossy.

Of course , a counter argument for hi res streaming having a future is that, if streaming is restricted to lower quality, those hankering after better quality are more likely to buy the CD, vinyl or high quality download after sampling in lossy quality. That will no doubt be preferable to the artists and record companies (who, ultimately, call the shots). In which case, we've had it!!

Something that had not occurred to me in all of this previously, is who really gets stung here besides the end users of the service. My understanding is that bankruptcy protection is a way to hold off the creditors, and the authorities, from liquidating your company to settle debts, in the believe that you will find a way to settle the debts in full through investment, restructuring, or whatever else.  Given that Qobuz seem to have failed, and the COS figures above, I would assume the record labels are to lose out on this, and in turn the artists.  Taylor will be furious!  Expect an end to all internet music streaming tomorrow.

That's a pity. Of the streaming services I've tried Qobuz was by far the best of the bunch and much better than Tidal. On the other hand I never took a subscription, preferring to listen to music on my hard drive and buy the occasional CD or download.

+1

Bugger.

Hope they hang on in there.

You know, that was the first post I wrote, and then didn't commit.  But now you've said it......

Bugger!

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It's not over yet. Commercial negotiations being what they are, everything seems to be last minute. Let's see what the next few days bring. 

Agree, hope they make it through. Just paid for a few albums that were in my cart and download speeds are way off so perhaps connectivity already being terminated by either providers of Qobuz themselves. All standard stuff.

Sad way to end what was a great offering.

I doubt it, I suspect bandwidth will be paid annually in advance or at at best quarterly and possibly coupled with their application hosting costs..perhaps people piling in before it's possible demise...

I tried their service, and found it splendid for the quality, but the actual tracking was amateur to say the least.

For quality then it was fine, but it needed to be usable ...

ATB from George