Definitely not my experience. Apple Music seems ot have a much better sense at what I want to listen to and feeds me with curated playlists. I just don;t get that experience from Qobuz, even after a month of developing a library. Anyway, I have 11 months of Qobuz left to develop that and hope it works. I intend to dich Tidal at year end and keep AM for my out and about.
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Guess the setting is quite easy to describe. Every other market participant but Apple and Amazon is likely burning risk capital on their bet to be profitable one day. The sooner the better. Times were tough before Apple started the serious attack. And you can bet they have a game plan like a chess grandmaster. Question is only who will fold first. Quboz or Tidal. Both will.
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So true, I still have 1700 titles ripped in my library that served me very well as physical media many years ago.
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My money is on Tidal to fold. Qobuz have quality and consistency at their back. Tidal will be bought rather than fold and the buyer will be interesting.
Thatās one area where we are differentā¦.I couldnāt care less about curated playlists. Qobuz recommends artists, and lets me explore them. Then those artists recommend other artists, and so on and so on. Your method works for you, mine for me. Neither better that the other, just different.
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I think the new owner of a couple of months ago will morph Tidal, and vier it away from music streaming.
Tidal and Qobuz rely on a much larger subscriber base than the 100k Roon users that exist today. Tidal has (allegedly) 3 million subscribers, and Qobuz has a few 100,000ās. Back of the envelope lets assume all 100k Roon users are on Tidal and 400k more use Tidal relying on some form of integration that does not exist with Apple or Spotify. Then if all of the users of Tidal apps switch to Apple, thatās a massive loss of subscribers.
Also keep in mind that Spotify is joining the lossless club soon. If I recall correctly, they will offer CD-quality but not higher. Now recall also that Spotify Connect is implemented in a huge number of streamers ā even my dCS Rossini has Spotify Connect. So now you have a situation where even those people that relied on an implementation can instead move to Spotify lossless.
The prospects of Tidal, Qobuz and Roon surviving this is bleak in my opinion. If, however, Roon is able to get Apple Music on itās platform, then at least Roon can survive.
This is all my analysis and opinionā¦
What is Tidal if not streaming?
For mobile use, Qobuz is dreadful. AM wipes the floor with it. Qobuz via Roon is great though. I have no doubt that Roon would do as good a job of integrating AM if all the stars aligned and it became possible.
At the moment I am paying for Roon, Qobuz and AM. Would be nice to drop one of those.
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This is true, but remember that Roon is not the only game in town. BluOS and others have enabled these services. I think Roon will grow to service the niche audience and Qobuz will be the service of choice.
Lossless only - theyāve been clear about that and I think itās deliberate I think. I agree, they are a greater threat than Apple because they have Spotify Connect. I really donāt enjoy using Spotify.
Roon is always serving a niche - it only needs one streaming service and I think theyāll have that. Apple Music will never integrate with Roon unless Tim Cook instructs them to do so. Even then, Apple Music is run so differently to Apple. They push to market with bugs and all sorts of issues.
I subscribe to Qobuzās Sublime+ plan.The beauty of this plan is you get discounts on any purchases of album above 16/44 in resolution. Sometimes the discount is 50%! Since I would be buying those albums anyway, the discount itself pays for my Qobuz subscription and then someā¦ Highly recommended.
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I was going to ask Miguel. Are these fully DRM free? NOt tied to Qobuz? Not digital watermarked in any way?
Fully DRM free. Also, you can redownload anytime, in any format. I personally use AIFF, but FLAC, ALAC, etc are available. Also, the metadata is often great, I rarely have to fix anything. I donāt think thereās watermarking, but the metadata includes a lot of info that would indicate it is a Qobuz download. I donāt āshareā anything thoughā¦
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Thanks Miguel I have looked at this a few times, but subscription fatigueā¦
I already pay for Tidal top level family plan, YouTube premium (so also get YouTube music as well) and those two are almost Ā£50 a month alone.
My son is a big Rap/Hip Hop fan and it took a lot of work to move him off Spotify, and now he is fully settled with Tidal as well and had his own streaming system in his bedroom.
My default purchasing site has moved from Qobuz to Bandcamp, and then I look at the options on Qobuz and Highresaudio and see who has the best resolution and offer and then buy it from there.
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Neil exactly as Miguel says, I have dozens of CD quality and 24bit files downloaded in my Roon Library from Qobuz.
I have never tried to stream them from Qobuz as I thought that requires an active subscription, but I could well be wrong on that count.
I always look on Bandcamp first, even if it is more expensive - I try to support the artist as much as possible. Obviously things like Coltrane or Martha Argerich wonāt be on Bandcamp soā¦
I usually find Qobuz to have the highest resolution - publishers are the same really. But sometimes I can find music in DSD on other services and I usually go for that.
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I think to authenticate to Qobuz on Roon you do require an active subscription. You can play your purchases on the Qobuz website for sure. Not sure if you can do that from the Qobuz app without a subscription.
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Pretty much what I thought thanks
I just download and play from Roon
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More of a podcast and production company.