Isn’t it normal for any consumer to look for the highest quality at the lowest prices? You can then look further and see if their business practices match your moral beliefs before buying.
Should we feel personally guilty for the artist just because Qobuz lowered their prices? I should now switch back to Tidal and pay more?
Maybe I’m simple but I never thought about the artist‘s income when I bought albums. I liked their music so I bought their records. If they started making music I didn’t like, I stopped buying. Now we have streaming service and pick the one that makes the most sense.
Of course it’s normal to look for value, we all do this. I am just challenging the idea that music is free because in the long term, we all lose.
On the other hand, these are times of change and we all have to adapt to what is happening out there, and that includes artists.
The main way they can make a living now is by touring and selling merch as they go, but small venues are under pressure.
That said, if you do you to see live music, you will find out that it’s a golden age and you can enjoy incredible artists in some lovely intimate venues.
Going to gigs and buying some merch is probably the best thing any of us can do for music today. As they say, only you can prevent empty venues, use it or lose it. Simples.
I’m not for free music. These current streaming services are an answer to illegal downloads and free services like Spotify. I have no idea how these labels agreed to such bad deals. Does seems odd to pay less than what it cost to buy one CD to have access to millions of songs. But I suppose paying more for a music service than a movie/tv service didn’t make much sense either. But for the most part we don’t need to subscribe to multiple music services.
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Bill_Janssen
(Wigwam wool socks now on asymmetrical isolation feet!)
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Chris, do you have any tips for finding those lovely intimate venues? I find that simply Googling “house concerts” will give me a list of them, but I’m sure there are more sophisticated techniques.
Bill_Janssen
(Wigwam wool socks now on asymmetrical isolation feet!)
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Well, you used to have “access” to millions of songs in a CD superstore. The key is that most people can’t actually listen to more than a small number of songs in a day, so I suspect the pricing is tied to that, instead of potential.
That’s a good start, perhaps find an artist you like and see where they are playing. House concerts are great, we are going to see Angel Snow at one on Friday.
You can also contact an artist and see what’s involved in hosting them yourself.
I volunteer at www.littlerabbitbarn.com and we have a great list of artists to look up and find if they are on tour. Check out the blog for recent artists.
True but I was less willing to explore music I didn’t know. Now is can check out all the new releases. I can use roon’s influenced by, similar to, followed by sections to find much more music than I would have done before.
I actually listen to a lot more music since using streaming services. And for most part, I still listen to full albums. Not much of a playlist or radio user. Tried the radio feature a few times just to find new music.
I used Soundiiz to “move” Qobuz from UK to US. When I first sync’d UK Qobuz to Soundiiz I had 1623 albums. After I canceled UK Qobuz, created a new US Qobuz account and then sync’d Soundiiz to US Qobuz I had 1584 albums. A loss of 39 albums. Is that worth the difference in price? I’m not certain. It certainly wasn’t difficult to do. It took less than an hour to do. And some of that was creating Soundiiz and Qobuz accounts and closing my UK Qobuz account.
I haven’t noticed any difference in speed of loading an album metadata or in responsiveness. I am assuming that a US IP address was served by US hosts no matter where the account was created.
Registering for an US account was not that hard thanks to a proxy. Will wait for a European offer. If that is worse (e.g. more than 15 EUR for Premier) I’ll cancel my old account…
I noticed the Qobuz no longer says it’s in beta and the new releases we already shown when I checked this morning. Normally the home page isn’t updated until 10am pst. The new albums were always there but you’d have to search for them.
@Vincent_Kennedy did you lose all your purchase history when you cancelled the UK account? I would imagine that Soundiiz would only synch the “Favorites” and playlists, but not the purchased albums, in case you ever need to re-download something you bought from the UK store in the past I assume you would not be able to do it with the US account, am I understanding this correctly?
You will not lose your Qobuz purchases if you have downloaded them (and of course made a backup copy in a separate storage location). You will not be able to download them again.
You need to sign up using a VPN if Qobuz isn’t available in your country, and probably pay through PayPal rather than a credit card. I’m a Canadian living in Brasil with a U.S. Qobuz account paid via Canadian PayPal. No VPN is needed to use Qobuz after signup. I use it in Brasil and Canada, where it isn’t offered, with no problems.
Thanks David. Good to get more confirmation. I’ll probably do a brief 2 trial when I’m back in the U.K. for 3 weeks in Jan and if I decide to go ahead sign up before I leave again so I’ll still be in the U.K. if/when I subscribe thus avoiding any need to mess around with a VPN even for the signup which I’d do as an annual. That also gives a couple more months for Qobuz to get the UK offer(s) reported in the WhatHiFi article live on its U.K. site which surely will be up by January 2020 I would hope.
My Sublime+ account ends early December and have decided to cancel. Why, Because I have purchased around 60 albums so far and to be honest I am running out of Artists / Albums to buy. Do not want to purchase any content just for the sake of it!. Yes the savings made has more than paid for the Subscription price but my bank balance cannot sustain such an outlay. Logically the Sub price pluse the purchases comes to approximately £780, That’s at lot of CD’s I could have purchased and ripped but not Hi Res and that’s the conundrum.
Thats good news. When I cancelled my Sublime+ my comment was there are cheaper Hi Res streaming plans available. At the moment I am trying Amazon HD and will probably pay the yearly sub to save money as I am a Prime member already makes sense to me. If and when Qobuz does bring it’s pricing down will probably subscribe to both Amazon and Qobuz purely for the Qobuz integration into Room.
