Not sure why we’d pay full price for a beta service that is missing substantial catalog, but that’s just me.
Had a friend visiting from UK and we compared his and my account for the main types of music I like (classical, jazz, and folk/Americana). The UK catalog blew away my US account. I know we keep hearing that it will get better over time, and I know there will always be minor regional differences, but it would be nice to know that the eventual complete catalog will be similar in scope to the established catalog elsewhere. I want to but I’m not willing to commit to a full year without seeing how this pans out.
I have decided that I will keep Tidal, as there are (somewhat surprisingly) quite a few titles that I’ve found that are on Tidal but not Qobuz.
Just my $0.02. I am fully behind Qobuz US and look forward to the full roll out.
James_I
(The truth is out there but not necessarily here)
42
I haven’t done anything scientific, but my feeling is that Tidal goes a lot deeper into alternative and punk, as well as the related 70s-80s wave bands. Just in general in terms of albums I’ve added from either Qobuz or Tidal, it is 5 Tidal to 1 Qobuz.
I hope Qobuz’s total library is a lot bigger than what I am seeing so far.
staying in the Netherlands. also not convinced during Qobuz trial. Main music interests in classical, jazz, pop, vocal. Even in classical I find Tidal has a lot more to offer Qobuz at this moment (you need to find it though, but here is where Roon comes in)
I dislike the Tidal standalone app and prefer hi-res over MQA, but for now Qobuz is just too limited in comparison with Tidal.
Quoting myself here - but this is basic stuff you find in any halfway decent record shop… shows that Qobuz is certainly not focusing on clientele on the punk/independent side of things.
I like my occasional audiophile stuff but I am still a music fan in the first place and I think a streaming service should be able to actually serve all sorts of genres…
At first, I was psyched by Qobuz, but after 3 weeks I dropped them and restarted my Tidal sub.
Simply not enough Americana genre stuff for me. And a bunch of other music I love was gone.
And I’ve discovered that using the Tidal app on my Apple TV gives me the ability to find a lot of new albums/artists, favorite them there, and voila! - they show up in Roon.
I was psyched at first too - but then I realized that Tidal is better for anything that goes slightly outside the mainstream music (maybe other than Jazz/Classical). Singer/Songwriter, Folk/Americana, Punkrock/Hardcore etc… Q was always missing about 25 - 30% of my music.
Also, after the first hype passed and I moved back to Tidal, I really have to admit that the 44.1/16 FLACs are absolutely equal in terms of SQ!!!
I really really want to switch from Tidal to Qobuz but they have too many missing albums. Alternative, pop, rock tons of albums not available.
1 Like
James_I
(The truth is out there but not necessarily here)
48
I’m straddling both for the time being since I think another streaming entrant into the US market will ultimately be a good thing. But so far I don’t find I am using Qobuz nearly as much as Tidal. There have been a handful of albums not on Tidal that I have found on Qobuz. If there are enough, it may justify the dual subscription fees. I figure it is worth 6 months to get a good picture of Qobuz value. But so far, they don’t seem to have much in the way of non-mainstream rock. Maybe better on the jazz and classical side.
Yes, that’s what I had heard too. Qobuz was meant to offer much better catalogs for classical and jazz, and (rather sniffily) less ‘pop/rock’.
Well jazz is obviously a broad church…but in terms of what I would describe as ‘modern jazz’ (post 1970) there’s really no contest. Tidal has a far greater depth and variety of music I enjoy.
Honestly, I’m keen to delete one of these services and avoid doubling my monthly bill. I’m sure many people feel the same way. At this moment I’m still trying Qobuz - I’m in my second month. The sound quality is excellent, as good as Tidal (probably no better).
Unless the Qobuz jazz catalog expands considerably I’ll drop it soon.
For me, living in the Netherlands, who is mostly listening to non mainstream metal, the situation on Qobuz is not much better. While Spotify, Apple Music and Tidal are offering me an overview of complete new albums each week Qubuz thinks it is wise to present me a genre playlist, so they have a ‘metal’ playlist, that is refreshed once a month with new songs. I can find the albums by clicking on the album likened behind the song titles.
It’s hard to find bands that are not mainstream metal on Qobuz. Which is a problem for me because I mostly listen to more extreme genres or obscure 1970s hard rock. It’s a pity, because the interface is really nice and the sound quality is quite good as well.
I wrote them about my observations and they promised to do better but I am not optimistic since I do not belong to their core audience.
Yesterday I had another go with converting two playlists from TIDAL to Qobuz. Both lists filled with alternative rock/pop, singer-songwriters, post-rock, etc. Non-mainstream stuff so to say.
List 1 Tidal: 876 | Qobuz: 791 = 85%
List 2 Tidal: 1023 | Qobuz: 904 = 83%
A few days ago I did a conversion of my favorite albums in Tidal to Qobuz. I forgot the exact figures but it was disappointing too.
I think I end my membership with Qobuz and rejoin the service within half a year or so to do the same conversion again. See what happens than…
Is this bad conversation rate only because of the limited offer of Qobuz or because of the different metadata of the 2 services or because of limitations of Soundiiz? I’m specifically asking as I made the same bad experience in opposite direction when I joined Roon and started to subscribe Tidal because Qobuz was not available in Roon. Later I found many, by far not all tracks with manual search. Now after 2 years I was happy to be able to cancel my Tidal subscription. Only 25 out of more than 400 Albums I added in Tidal could not be found in Qobuz. I subscribe Qobuz in France. Maybe you could give a few examples of tracks you could not convert and I could check if I can find them manually in Qobuz.
I had 178 Tidal that I just converted and only got 66% (maybe it’s because I like American rock bands). I also did manual searches and still have my Tidal tiles to compare. Qobuz US catalog doesn’t have much in the way of Alternative favorites as this thread states, and I am surprised they don’t have much from pretty popular bands like Weezer (although they do have a few albums).
I’ll give it some time as they are in US Beta, and the current catalog doesn’t seem populated enough to be a viable offering unless they are just focused on specific genres or Hi Rez catalogs. It would seem logical to expect a smaller delta vs. Tidal (it’s not like I’m comparing them to Spotify or Apple).
Even Hi Rez has been somewhat disappointing missing many of the 192khz versions vs. HDtracks which isn’t a big deal if the mastering is the same but in the case of Van Halen the 96khz versions are brickwalled remasters where the 192 versions are the preferred digital.
I`m in Germany and have decided to drop Qobuz completely - way to limited in all alternative areas… and I hear no difference in SQ between the two for regular 44.1/16 FLAC… really hard to justify the extra $$ when there is less music and no other advantage. As for high res - well, if I feel that I really need a high res album, I just buy it
It’s not much better in the non beta areas. Consensus seems to be that for Indie it isn’t as good as Tidal. I dropped qobuz after similar transfers and searches were disappointing.
I have found the same thing for Jazz. I really don’t care for the Jazz from the 1950s, rather have the smooth Jazz from recent years.
I am really puzzled why Qobuz along with HDTracks and others upscale music such as Coltrane. Seems to me that the original recording quality is not worthwhile upscaling, but it does sell so others do not share my opinion.
Back to topic, I also find more of my taste in music on Tidal. I understand that Qobuz may still be loading music into the US servers so I have yet to drop my subscription. But I likely will in another month or two if the selection for my taste in music does not improve.
have noticed more albums appearing in the indie / alt / nashville 2.0 genres recently as well as more albums appearing from artists already on qobuz. will give it some more time before deciding one way or the other.
