A week ago i let my Qobuz sub lapse. I was curious to see whether i really needed an online service. While i have a lot of locally stored music i figured that my account would still allow me news from Qobuz, and primarily allow me to stream my purchased albums. This is how it works with other streaming software, such as Simaudio Mind and Qobuz own app. Roon however, continues to bug me that my streaming account is incorrect. Well, i still have my account, i still have access to my purchases in other software, why can't i see and browse reccy's and decide to buy my music outside of Roon (in Qobuz store)?
Describe your network setup
Basic, all hardwired except for the tablets for control
When I first had a TIDAL subscription many years ago and switched to Qobuz, TIDAL was still displayed in Roon–the only restriction was that you couldn’t stream.
IIRC, TIDAL requested that this access be removed. My guess is that Qobuz followed suit. Not surprising really, as it enhances the Roon experience without benefitting those that provide the data.
Last summer, I stopped using Qobuz for a few months, and I soon realized that ~£10 pcm is a small price to pay for music discovery, and deciding if you like something before you buy.
While i certainly agree with your sentiment, the choice between buying a release and paying the "rental fee"could also be a conscious choice to support the artists you like (Not Jay Z Taylor Swift and Beyoncé).
As i see it, access to the news section for browsing (maybe 30second samples?) and buying album downloads benefits the market, the supplier and the consumer.
I don’t understand the relevance to Jay-Z et al since many companies have majority shareholders who benefit from customers. That’s business. Personally, I buy physical media wherever possible, and for newer releases, this is often direct from the artist or Bandcamp.
Moreover, it would seem that most people who use streaming don’t intend to purchase digital downloads, which, incidentally, you can’t buy from TIDAL. So, I get why these services withdrew the gratis account from Roon.
I doubt very much that Roon has any influence over this.
I always download the albums that I purchase. Two of the albums that I’ve purchased from the Qobuz shop have disappeared from the shop. And they can’t be downloaded anymore either.
One should not look at a streaming service as a online cloud storage. You buy something, download it.
My point referring to the big artist names are connected to the streaming model and that independent/smaller artists will benefit more from purchases of their albums directly, or through Bandcamp or whatnot.
But thats beyond the support request.
I have a Qobuz account, which i regularly use to buy albums. I don’t have a streaming sub at the moment, and i expected to be able to use Roon as a front end for those albums, like i can with Moon Mind and Qobuz own app.
I don’t understand the reference to Tidal though? I don’t care whether they offer an purchase option or not.
Thanks for writing in - Roon requires an active Qobuz subscription to stream content, even if the albums have been purchased. This is due to how Qobuz’s API integration works—without an active subscription, streaming through Roon isn’t available. It’s not something we’re able to work around, unfortunately.
However, you should still be able to download your purchased albums from Qobuz and add them to Roon as local files for playback. If you’re having issues with this, we’d be happy to help.
If you’d like to confirm the details on streaming purchased content without a subscription, it might be worth reaching out to Qobuz support as well.
Thanks Ben, i have done so.
My main question remains, why are there differences between API-using apps.
I still have a perfectly valid Qobuz account, only not for streaming.
I’m not particularly bothered about the “streaming purchased content” part (these are of course downloaded and available when local), but i’d like the augmented experience which an active subscription gives with Roon driving it.
For now, i’ll simply see it as part of the streaming benefits.
