Pink Floyd albums from Qobuz no longer available

Hello everyone,

All the Pink Floyd albums I added from Qobuz are no longer available, thought I can listen to them with Qobuz app or via Webpage.

What’s the problem?

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They have been replaced again by the annual new remasters. Therefore, the database entries in your Roon library point to versions that are not available anymore.

You should find the new versions under the Versions tab of the albums. If not, search for them again.

Then you can add the new versions to the Roon library again. Roon doesn’t replace them without manual intervention because there doesn’t seem to be a mechanism between Qobuz and Roon to automate this. Unfortunately, your play counts and any other local data updates won’t be transferred.

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@Leonardo_Espejo_Sant - You might want to vote for this feature suggestion to underline the issue to the Roon Labs team…

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I was now interested, what happens to the „replaced“ albums in the Qobuz app which I never use. And hey, the albums are also unavailable in the Qobuz library. You have to search for the replacement version and add it again with liking it. And the best of it, you cannot remove the older unavailable version from your Qobuz library, as you cannot unlike it anymore as it is not available. :person_facepalming: :joy:

I don‘t see how Roon could fix that Qobuz problem. I wonder if nobody ever asked Qobuz support about this?

Or could it be, that Roon does another type of liking to the albums in the Qobuz library? If yes, then it could maybe solve the album replacement problem, to unlike und relike all albums in the Qobuz library which has been added in Roon. :nerd_face:

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Adding to the Roon library and favoriting in the Qobuz app are equivalent.

Roon may not be able to solve it fully automatically if the Qobuz IDs of the old and new album are completely unrelated and if the old Qobuz entry doesn’t point to the new one. (I suppose Qobuz could add “replaced by” data to the old one if they wanted to.)

However, Roon could e.g.:

  • If an album becomes unavailable, (offer to) auto-search for the new one based on artist/album name, and offer possible replacements to choose.
  • Copy the user’s metadata from the old to the new one.
  • (Generally, let the user copy any user-entered metadata between albums. This would solve a lot of other problems, too)

It’s definitely a far too common problem to not do anything about it

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If the adding in Roon and the favoriting in Qobuz are equivalent, then I do not see, why Roon should fix that replacement issue.

I think the point is, that all Qobuz app users which are likely more then those who use Qobuz over Roon, have to manualy search for the replaced albums and favorite it again. And they even can‘t remove the unavailable version from their library. I can‘t believe, that Qobuz subscribers just live with that akward behavior and don‘t push for a solution from Qobuz. And that Qobuz just ignores that problem.

They can’t fix Qobuz but I don’t care about Qobuz, I care about my Roon library, and I think they could do a little bit for that, as mentioned

i created a bookmark within Roon that shows unavailable tracks in my library, and occasionally I’ll see what’s new on that list and then re-add from Qobuz.

I think one issue with doing some kind of auto-replace is that it’s not “albums” that become unavailable, but “tracks.” Maybe an album might have a cover of a song they no longer have a license to, or something. So maybe only a few tracks of that album will be unavailable and you can’t really replace the whole album with any accuracy. Ahdunno.

I think we all just have to do library maintenance occasionally.

I had now a chat with Qobuz support AI. They are aware of the problem, then I asked about a timeline, when they will fix it. They have no timeline to fix it. The chat was in german:

Hallo! Ich verstehe deinen Frust bezüglich der nicht mehr verfügbaren Alben in deinen Favoriten und Playlists.

Derzeit gibt es leider keine konkrete Zeitangabe, wann Qobuz eine automatische Ersetzungsfunktion für nicht mehr verfügbare Alben einführen wird. Dieses Problem tritt auf, wenn Alben den Vertreiber wechseln oder vorübergehend aus dem Katalog entfernt werden.

I never had such a problem with Spotify. I have learned in another Roon thread, that in Tidal you even wouldn’t see, that an album got unavailable as it is just not listed anymore in Roon library. But I still don’t know, if this ist just with really getting unavailable albums or as well with just the change of the distribution channel or alike, where the album ist actually still available.

It should still be able to find out that all tracks from album A have become unavailable and the same tracks are now on an album B with the same title, so maybe suggest it the user as a possible replacement

Or at least explain the unavailable situation and suggest possible solutions so that we don’t have to answer the same question on the forum every week

exactly :joy:

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How can you tell an album has been updated? Qobuz just shows the original release date?
Thanks!

It will show as unavailable in Roon if you had it in your library. If not, there is no way to tell when Qobuz (or any streaming service) updates as they just replace it with the latest from the record company.

Strange that. Thanks very much @Rugby

As I lately found out, it shows as unavailable in Qobuz app too, so all Qobuz subscribers have this problem, not only Roon users with Qobuz subscription. In Roon there is at least the “Versions” button to add it again, in Qobuz you have to search for it.

My latest finding is, that you can unfavorite the obsolet version in the desktop Qobuz app, you can’t do that in the mobile apps as i reported. On the other hand, in the mobile apps it shows “unavailable” on the album view, whereas in the desktop version you get that information only when you try to play it. :crazy_face:

I never had this problem with Spotify and I still don’t know, if Tidal has this album replacment quirk too. I want to get rid of it.

I made the same suggestion a few years ago, but it seems like Roon did not care, What a pity!
Especially because it makes a central feature of Roon, the editing of metadata and collection of playback statistics, completely worthless if many beloved albums are simply replaced regularly without the previously collected and edited data being preserved,

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In Tidal it is worse. The albums disappear without a notice.

I have heard that, but does this apply to replacement caused by distribution changes allthough the album ist still available like in Qobuz, or just with albums which were really removed? I have also a bunch but much less of completely removed albums in Qobuz where no other version is available, i think nothing can be done there, if it is not allowed to be streamed anymore.

For playlists I already consider, to create and curate them now only in Spotify and syncing it with soundiiz to Qobuz. Interestingly that has no problems with changed versions in Qobuz as far I have seen, but for sure has a lot of other flaws. :angry:

The same albums disappear but you are never told about it in any way and may never notice. Same applies to Spotify. This applies to all streaming services.

AFAIK Roon+Qobuz is the first system that is manageable for this - Roon will tell you something has gone and you can find another version if one exists. Anything else, stuff will just disappear and that’s that.