Why I'm saying goodbye to Qobuz šŸ‘‹

I am coming to the end of a Qobuz Sublime Plus yearly subscription and Iā€™m not going to renew.

Why?

The Qobuz website and app oozes curation but Iā€™m increasingly finding that they appear to rip everything indiscriminately making sifting though older out of copyright artists virtually impossible.

The last straw was after listening to a podcast about Charlie Parker and deciding to look him up through Roon - a whopping 896 albums





switching off Qobuz gives a more manageable 72





The Qobux collection littered with out of copyright gems like these





This type of ā€œrip everything that spins policyā€ feels to me like Iā€™m being spammed. Charlie Parker Christmas shopping songs FFS!

Tidal in their defence do seem to exercise some Quality Control when it comes to this area.



.sjb

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What did you search on? Iā€™ve got Tidal and Qobuz subscriptions, and a simple search for Charlie Parker doesnā€™t give me anywhere near that many albums/results.

If you want to search for Charlie Parker albums in Roon, looking at the album search results for search terms ā€œCharlie Parkerā€ is not the way to do it. You need to do the search and click through to Charlie Parkerā€™s performer page, where his entire catalog will be available.

Album search results will return some of his albums, but you have to realize that search is also looking to match album titles as well.

If this is what you are doing already, itā€™s possible that there are regional differences.

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@Sloop_John_Bā€™s first screenshot appears to be from Parkerā€™s performer page ā€“ itā€™s more or less the same as what I see there.

I was aware of that :slight_smile: - I wasnā€™t replying to him.

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Note to self: coffee first, forum later. :wink:

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Both screenshots are from performer page. As you imply it may be due to EU copyright, but certainly Qobuz are ripping and putting this dross into my lovely Roon is how I see it.

.sjb

@joel and @RBM, thatā€™s what Iā€™ve been wondering, because I (in the US) donā€™t see nearly that number of results when just searching for Charlie Parker and looking at the album results:

No access to Charlie Parker Christmas Shopping songs, I think you should send a strongly worded email to Qobuz :smile:

.sjb

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The significant catalog differences are the big reason I have both Tidal and Qobuz. :slight_smile:

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I donā€™t think Tidal is doing any quality control at all. People/Labels upload their music through an online service. Whatever the Label or the Artists upload through these services gets on Tidal. The end. This is the reason I can upload an album that has the artist name as an existing artist name. If I wanted to upload an album by an artist called Pink Floyd I can. Sure, Pink Floyd is gonna take action and that content will get deleted. It happened in the past with Anathema and other bands. Also, almost everyday I find bands with identical names that Tidal groups into one single artist/band. If they were doing any quality control this wouldnā€™t have happened. So, I donā€™t think itā€™s Qobuz to blame here, just regular, plain, old people who spam the service.

Iā€™d much rather have bloated search results for Charlie Parker than bloated rap singles being pushed on me every week. Qobuz isnā€™t perfect but thereā€™s so much music out there vs time, itā€™s a bit silly imo to get too upset about what they have or donā€™t have.

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I can never understand this complaint, rap singles are not pushed on me in Roon via Tidal at all, unless I go looking for them. How are they ā€œpushedā€ on you?

.sjb

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I prefer the curation of Qobuz is all. But, I only get 111 Charlie Parker albums via Qobuz, so sounds like weā€™re both taking about different streaming services so Iā€™ll leave it at that.

You are complaining that Qobuz has made available too many albums for an artist? Wow. That is a strange complaint.

I only get 118 albums listed here with my US subscription. But who, pray tell, gets to decide which albums shouldnā€™t be available to play?

https://roon-community-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/original/3X/9/1/91e3b5fa5d441441ba13f10771f75e6680c0f4cd.jpeg

Yes Iā€™m complaining about too many albums.

.sjb

I must admit that Christmas Shopping Songs is an intriguing title.

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Isnā€™t that like going to a big bookstore and telling them they urgently need fewer books there? Iā€™m very happy with my Qobuz subscriptionā€¦

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Itā€™s from a quality perspective obviously.

But sure Iā€™ve said my piece.

.sjb

Iā€™m confused. Your search indicates you have both Qobuz and Tidal. I only have Qobuz currently and I get 117 Charlie Parker albums.

Odd that the rest of us are asking for Qobuz to increase their catalog and you want ā€˜lessā€™ or just more curated? It seems better to have more/all and allow each individual to choose what to listen to than be limited or restricted to a ā€˜curatedā€™ list only.

Are you saying goodbye to Tidal too? If this was just a rant, ok.