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28 minutes ago, PorkChop said:

I don't understand the description for the Premium tier.  "All the difference of Qobuz?" By comparing it to the other plans, I guess it means lossy streaming only.  But can customers purchase downloads without any of those subscriptions?  It could have been explained more clearly.

 

One of the amusing (to me) features of the Qobuz UK site is the direct literal translations of French concepts, in this case "toute la différence..."  I don't speak French but I know that to say someone or something is "different" is a complement in France. In certain other cultures, not so much. It seems to me that "difference" resonates more deeply in French than "difference" or "new-and-improved" do in English.

 

In this case I believe they're referring to the Qobuz content, delivery, and look-and-feel wrapped around all the streaming tiers, lossy or not. Speaking of which, in the lossy world of internet radio and low-end streaming, 320 kbs is actually not bad, just not something I'd pay for unless supporting a worthy nonprofit station.

 

Hopefully for the US launch they'll hire translators and copywriters who are local subject matter experts. It looks to me like for the UK site they employed native French speakers translating from their desks in France.

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I have had Qobuz hifi 16/44 since 2013 in USA I think their layout web  page app both oval and square shaped are superior(and beautiful) to TIDAL(and in some respects to ROON) and the fact they integrate with A+3 give me Qobuz Tidal and my iTunes library at my finger tips. The sound either with A+3 or via the desktop apps is wonderful not to mention the Qobuz library-plus the A+3  or the Qobuz app for iPad and IPhone give me the luxury of listening with my wireless Sennheiser RS-195s and changing songs within a playlist or changing to another album selection or their recommendations just great(while freezing my ass off having a cigar and a Lageveulan on my porch since my CFO doesn't let me smoke and listen in MY house) . I hope they are able to stream to USA but for now I am glad they gave me a long long time ago a French address and an address in the USA of 'mytown',New France which I always thought was pretty cheeky of them since that is what the Northeast USA would have been called if they(the French) had won on the Plains of Abraham. Also I am able to easily translate all their news via Google.

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I'm a Qobuz Sublime subscriber, but I'm anything else than convinced about a positive Qobuz future.

 

1. Qobuz is not reliable. Qobuz has no quality management for the content. They are aware about many HiRes fakes in their catalog for a very long time now and took no action to replace this obviously faulty files. Qobuz announced expanding to several other countries in Europe in March, nothing happened then. 

 

2. A questionable business model for their Sublime or Sublime + streaming service. To support their high quality streaming services, Qobuz.com offers the subscribers significant discounts up to 50 %. Regarding that the average gross margin for the download stores is between 20 and 25 % and the net profit between 5 and 10%, Qobuz is subsidizing their streaming service with the profit of the download store, if there is any. It took me not even 3 months to compensate the costs for my subscription with the discounts for my downloads and I'm for sure not the only one. 

 

3. Qobuz was in receivership recently and has been recovered by Xandrie SA, known as a young supplier for digital video, ebooks and video games content but uncertain financial strength. It seems to me as if this has been a typical French deal to keep the national "icons" in domestic ownership. It remains to be seen how long Xandrie SA is able or willing to provide financial support to a still loss-making Qobuz.

 

I honestly wish all the best for Qobuz because I believe that real competition is always good for the customers. The more different audio streaming services for at least HiFi quality and of corse lossless music download stores are out there in the market, the better it is.

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@#Yoda# Good assessment and I fear you may be right.

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@CharenteI don't know, if you've noticed it already, but there has been a very significant rise of HiRes download prices from many labels to > € 20, the Qobuz discount is even more profitable for Sublime subscribers but ruinous for Qobuz and presumably other download stores. It is not so obvious at Qobuz and HRA because they are still selling many albums at the same price but reduced resolution. It seems as the major labels want to bury HiRes downloads in favor of streaming services. 

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5 hours ago, #Yoda# said:

They are aware about many HiRes fakes in their catalog for a very long time now and took no action to replace this obviously faulty files.

 

Where did you read that?

 

Were classical labels included?

 

Aside from their failure to purge old fakes, are fake hi-res albums continuing to be newly added to their catalog?

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On 18/12/2017 at 12:15 AM, #Yoda# said:

@CharenteI don't know, if you've noticed it already, but there has been a very significant rise of HiRes download prices from many labels to > € 20, the Qobuz discount is even more profitable for Sublime subscribers but ruinous for Qobuz and presumably other download stores. It is not so obvious at Qobuz and HRA because they are still selling many albums at the same price but reduced resolution. It seems as the major labels want to bury HiRes downloads in favor of streaming services. 

 

Interesting thought, and no I hadn't noticed. I mainly buy from HRA (almost in bulk during their promo deals !) and have seen quite a few of their (Jazz) labels regularly priced at €15. I often find HRA cheaper than Qobuz . Nor had I noticed that they were tending lower resolutions.  I presume HRA is still ALL 24 bit ?  On sample rates, I'm not sure it bothers me personally (other than VFM) ... my ageing ears aren't what they used to be to in detecting the difference between 48/96/192.

 

However, I had thought that the labels were struggling to get any meaningful revenues from streaming service providers, so, IF that's true, why would they 'bury HiRes downloads in favor of streaming...' ?

Main System: NAS or QOBUZ > BlueSound Node 2i > Schiit Gungnir MultiBit > PYST XLR > Schiit Mjolnir 2 or Gilmore Lite MK2

 

Office System: iMac > Audirvana > Schiit EITR + Audiophonics LPS25 > Metrum FLINT NOS DAC (DAC TWO chips) > Schiit Magni 3+ > Aeon Flow Open

 

Loudspeaker System: NAIM Muso Gen 2

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2 hours ago, Charente said:

 

Interesting thought, and no I hadn't noticed. I mainly buy from HRA (almost in bulk during their promo deals !) and have seen quite a few of their (Jazz) labels regularly priced at €15. I often find HRA cheaper than Qobuz . Nor had I noticed that they were tending lower resolutions.  I presume HRA is still ALL 24 bit ?  On sample rates, I'm not sure it bothers me personally (other than VFM) ... my ageing ears aren't what they used to be to in detecting the difference between 48/96/192.

 

However, I had thought that the labels were struggling to get any meaningful revenues from streaming service providers, so, IF that's true, why would they 'bury HiRes downloads in favor of streaming...' ?

Jazz music is mostly published by smaller labels and not the major labels I'm primarily aiming at.

 

Not all albums HRA is selling are real 24 bit, still there are some MQA files in their catalog ;)

 

Detecting the difference in resolution is not necessarily a matter of age. I assume, the average age of CA members is > 40 and most of them shouldn't be able to hear a sinus tone higher than 15 - 16 kHz but I know many music lovers, older than 50, who usually notice subtle differences in a suitable listening environment.

 

For the major labels, music streaming revenue in general is the main percentage of sales http://www.ifpi.org/facts-and-stats.php). Of course it is generated mainly with pop music and the top 500 chart hits in a lossy format. Labels, distribution channels and particularly the artists who are not serving this market are the losers of this trend.

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@Bob Stern ie your 12 dec 2017 post: A+3 allows you to access the entire Qobuz streaming library/playlists and can stream in 16/44 or higher-when i use either Schiit Gungnir or AQ DF RED it upsample to 96/192 or MQA (with the DFR)-if you go to ‘preferences’ you can change formates DAC’s and whole bunch of other things most of which i leave alone since the sound is good in HiFi

i don’t buy HiRes recordings except the Stones blues album and one other so all I listen to is their streaming service in HiFi and a lot of self made playlists

I have both apps older one which is a blue ‘square’ and newer one that is larger oval and still blue-the oval one has a much nicer looking layout in some ways nicer than TIDAL and all of this is on through A+3

you don’t have to upgrade to sublime to do this

A+3 easily and seamlessly imported all my Qobuz and TIDAL playlist libraries and my iTunes library so i have all three at my fingertips plus the iPhone and iPad apps let me change playlists and individual songs while listening somewhere else in my house with wireless headphones RS-195’s

howdid you manage 2 accounts in 2 different countries? When i got my account they gave me a french address and my USA address was NEW FRANCE!! Which i thought was pretty cheeky of them since that was what the Northeast would have been called if they(French) had won on the Plains of Abraham in 1759

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2 hours ago, bobbmd said:

A+3 allows you to access the entire Qobuz streaming library/playlists and can stream in 16/44 or higher

 

I assume you have a 10€/month streaming account.  I only have a free account, so I can only access albums for which I have purchased downloads.

 

I plan to upgrade to Sublime, but I still expect to use the Qobuz app rather than A+ because my main interest is buying downloads, not streaming, so I want to see the prices.

 

 

2 hours ago, bobbmd said:

how did you manage 2 accounts in 2 different countries?

 

Using Tunnel Bear, I registered under 2 email addresses via proxy servers in GB and FR.

HQPlayer (on 3.8 GHz 8-core i7 iMac 2020) > NAA (on 2012 Mac Mini i7) > RME ADI-2 v2 > Benchmark AHB-2 > Thiel 3.7

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On 12/12/2017 at 2:44 PM, #Yoda# said:

There is a bypass for the regional restrictions of Qobuz. If you browse Findhdmusic.com on your computer and click on the Qobuz links you'll get to the specific country site you've chosen. There you can see the prices, quite often they are very different between the three given options in Europe.

 

(1) What is the third region besides FR and GB?

 

(2) findHDmusic.com has a link to the Qobuz home page, but I don’t see an option to choose a country site.

HQPlayer (on 3.8 GHz 8-core i7 iMac 2020) > NAA (on 2012 Mac Mini i7) > RME ADI-2 v2 > Benchmark AHB-2 > Thiel 3.7

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1 hour ago, Bob Stern said:

 

(1) What is the third region besides FR and GB?

 

(2) findHDmusic.com has a link to the Qobuz home page, but I don’t see an option to choose a country site.

Hi Bob,

 

usually you'll see in brackets behind Qobuz their main countries, France, Germany and the UK if the album is available in all three regions, what is not always the case unfortunately, because of regional restrictions within Europe; A real shame in a so called "Common Market" for nearly all goods beside digital contents. One effect is that sometimes there are very different prices in each country with a price range up to 800%. The major labels are playing their game with the EU institutions and customers globally. 

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 12/12/2017 at 6:01 PM, #Yoda# said:

Qobuz announced in March this year that they will be available in Italy, Spain and Poland until summer but the people there are still waiting.

Qobuz finally launched in Italy and Spain on December 15, 2017.

 

I hope Qobuz can make their target USA launch timeframe of mid 2018.  Paying for my subscription in Euros is getting increasingly expensive, approaching 25 USD a month.

 

Now, if Qobuz would only launch in Canada.  I'd love to pay 20 Canadian dollars!

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I know very little about Qobuz, but the press release mentions “streaming or downloading”.  Does anyone know if downloaded content is yours to own, or does it “disappear” if/when you cancel your subscription?

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13 minutes ago, catastrofe said:

I know very little about Qobuz, but the press release mentions “streaming or downloading”.  Does anyone know if downloaded content is yours to own, or does it “disappear” if/when you cancel your subscription?

 

The downloads are yours to own. The high-end streaming price tiers include discounts for "hi-res 24-bit downloads at MP3 prices", but are not otherwise linked.

 

Most new users see Qobuz as a streaming service, but longtime customers still perceive it as a download store competing with the likes of HDtracks.

 

I have not yet seen a US pricing announcement, but you can scroll down to the bottom of the following page for the UK prices. Prepare for sticker shock. Qobuz is targeting profitability within a few years by remaining a niche service, streaming MP3 to the masses while charging premium prices for audiophile quality.  https://www.qobuz.com/gb-en/plans/music-streaming-subscription

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28 minutes ago, left channel said:

 

The downloads are yours to own. The high-end streaming price tiers include discounts for "hi-res 24-bit downloads at MP3 prices", but are not otherwise linked.

 

Most new users see Qobuz as a streaming service, but longtime customers still perceive it as a download store competing with the likes of HDtracks.

 

I have not yet seen a US pricing announcement, but you can scroll down to the bottom of the following page for the UK prices. Prepare for sticker shock. Qobuz is targeting profitability within a few years by remaining a niche service, streaming MP3 to the masses while charging premium prices for audiophile quality.  https://www.qobuz.com/gb-en/plans/music-streaming-subscription

Thanks!

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I thought they started with mp3 quality streaming and added Sublime and Sublime + later. My bad.

I only dowloaded High Res albums, but enjoy the site content a lot (french is my second language). I am seriously considering dropping Tidal and going Qobuz.

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