I’m probably way behind everyone else, but I hadn’t realised that Qobuz have an additional subscription level that delivers some pretty good discounts (somewhere between 30% and 60%) on HD music you buy from them which I discovered last week when buying tracks I listen to often, but don’t already own.
I wouldn’t normally mention something like this (it isn’t an advert), but if anyone else is planning to buy music, it’s worth a look. I bought enough music last week that my streaming subscription is now effectively free for the next 12 months.
That said, I had a fair amount of music to buy before deleting Tidal from my list of streaming providers. It’s just a pity that CD quality albums don’t appear to be discounted at all.
Agreed, there is nothing more frustrating than having a song in your playlist that suddenly disappears. It also means, if the internet goes out, I can switch to Mosaic and the music carries on playing
Good find. I’ve had the Sublime+ sub for quite a while, and I like it a lot. Being able to buy and have guaranteed access to music, at a discount is a great advantage.
I’m in what I estimate as my seventh year of belonging to the top tier at Qobuz ( now Sublime+). It is a great bonus being able to buy just about anything as a download from their huge catalogue. Aside from the confidence of possessing a permanent copy that will not suddenly be removed you have access to much back catalogue that is not available in this format from other vendors. The additional cost of Sublime+ over the other tiers can easily be recouped by purchasing a few albums. Last time I checked buying an average of one a month suffices.
One thing I will mention as I found subscribers to other forums run into difficulties is to understand exactly how the downloads are offered. When the financial part is complete Qobuz gives two routes. One is to download to the Qobuz app. Note this is shown via a green coloured rectangle. If you choose this then the album will remain attached to the app. The alternative ( blue rectangle) downloads to your computer’s hard drive. This comes as a zip file to your default download file. The zip is a TAR file and you will need to get a piece of freeware to unzip it e.g. 7 Zip. The file is then free for you to move as you wish ( in my case to my NAS and to backups). Incidentally I hope that I got the colours round the right way as I am working from memory.
Agreed, the additional cost of Sublime membership is paid for very quickly and doesn’t take too many albums to find the whole Qobuz subscription cost has been paid for and you’re getting streaming completely free for the year!
One issue I did hit with the downloads is the Qobuz app kept crashing on my M1 Mac Studio and I ended up downloading the tar files instead. Unfortunately, that meant downloading each album individually as there isn’t an option to download all, once that screen has passed control to the Qobuz app. A ‘download all’ feature would be nice…
Another thing I spotted was that I was consistently getting 900Mbps download speeds, which is nice. It actually took longer for their system to prepare the track than it did to download it!
I buy all music I like because it can either disappear or be replaced by a new “remastered and squished” version. Also try to support artists. Sublime+ pays for itself many times over!
Yes but very odd, I got the notification from ROON rather than direct from Qobuz (i’m on their mailing list so was expecting an email from them at least! Roon has partnered with Qobuz to deliver a 60 day trial.
I also purchase much of my music via downloads. But like many here, there is a ton of stuff I want to listen to but not buy. The Qobuz sublime may pay for itself.
Hyperion is situated only a few hundred metres from my home and I had a long conversation with the boss, Simon Perry, a few years ago and he explained the plausible business reasons why he would not authorise streaming for this specialist label ( hat’s all I can say in public). However last month Hyperion was acquired by UMG and this might change the policy. However UMG say that Hyperion will continue to be a standalone company within the group and be run by Simon. So Hyerion titles will not become Decca ( as happened to Philips). So we shall see.
Thanks for sharing Pete. I didn’t know Hyperion was purchased by UMG. I have a ton Hyperion releases - so many I can hardly count. Many are desert island recordings for me.
I certainly respect their decision to stay out of streaming, but the sad thing is that many new to classical music, students, etc. only stream. Can’t even imagine being a cellist with out access to the Steven Isserlis catalogue for example… among others. A whole generation is missing out on some of the finest classical performances (and finest produced recordings of the last 40 years).
Regarding discounted purchases… I just signed up for the free trial for Qobuz through the Roon promotion. Nice! Great UI and first class integration with Roon.
BUT as far as purchasing discounted music, it is a non starter for me. As a classical music lover many of the boutique labels I purchase from don’t seem to allow purchases through sublime (at least in Canada). So…
I had a quick look on the UK Qobuz store and it says they have 464 Linn albums for sale and 50 Alia Vox albums, so it might be (in part) that the licensing agreements haven’t caught up with the Canada store yet.
That said, there seem to be many labels you listed that aren’t on the UK store (although might be listed in the US store). I guess boutique labels don’t draw the attention the big players do
Agreed. I once thought global licensing agreements in my industry (software) would make life easier, yet they often end up being negotiated on a country-by-country basis, making snails look like rocket ships!
I am sorry but you are jumping to conclusions far too early. Qobuz only came to Canada three days ago. Each territory that is served builds its own database so although some repertoire can be copied across much is added in accordance with agreements with the labels and as the labels supply the files. This process never ends and the catalogue will be added to continuously. For example when I last looked at the subject a few months ago the USA service was adding tens of thousands of albums monthly.
Aside from Hyperion which, as you say, was discussed above, all of the labels mentioned by you except Alia Vox and Arcana are available on the UK service and I would expect then to be added to the new Canadian service as time goes by. I have purchased albums from Qobuz from BIS, Harmonia Mundi, Pentatone, Chandos, Channel Classics, and Signum. I am also a big fan of the complete works ( so far ) of Vivaldi on Naive which are added in my Qobuz favourites listing. The complete edition is too large to buy IMO.
Of course not everything is available everywhere and each service also builds a catalogue of repertoire of special interest to the country in question. So I understand Qobuz will be creating a catalogue of francophone recordings for Canada just like we in the UK have access to Welsh language recordings.
Please don’t treat Qobuz on day three as being what it will be even next week.
In brief the reason that global agreements are less common in the recording industry is that the rights may be owned by different parties in different territories.
The good news is that the repertoire is all there for streaming from each of the labels i mentioned (Hyperion excepted) but one can’t purchase downloads from these labels through Qobuz in Canada as of now.
It is encouraging to hear that one can purchase titles from these labels in other GEOs. I hope you are right! Time will tell…
I admit that I had not appreciated that your earlier post was specifically about discounted purchases rather then overall availability with Qobuz. My fault and I should have read your post more carefully. Sorry.
Qobuz explained to me some time ago that the issue of discounts really depends upon their relationship with the label. So this will vary label to label, time to time and country to country. However I would expect that things may look quite different in a few months for Canada as the service becomes more established.
I would say that my experience is that although 9 times out of 10 Qobuz and Sublime+ are easily the cheapest this is not always so as a couple of labels do seem to be more expensive at full price compared with other vendors and thus even where a discount occurs the result is still costly. This is rare but I always check other sources before committing to Sublime+ ( normally the winner).
