Hello,
I just received an email from Qobuz this morning.
Their terms and conditions are changing (in France at least).
Starting October 1st, music you purchased on Qobuz will no longer be guaranteed to be downloadable infinitely.
Bad news from me and all the data I purchased there. I will have to manage backup of my music by myself…
Is it the same for other countries?
Thanks,
Erwan
Thanks for the information. I have not received anything similar for the UK service but I now expect that similar news will be on its way.
Frankly I am not concerned as I have had so many faulty downloads from them over the past year or so that I will no longer buy from them irrespective of the discount as a Sublime+ customer. I won’t renew this next year but will stay with a streaming account.
All purchased downloads should be backed up immediately anyway. Further for dCS/Qobuz I guess many of us download to a computer then transfer to NAS. So the album remaining as downloadable from your account with the download store is not so important. BTW, The NAS data gets backed up too.
Here is the email that Ive received.
Gentile utente,
"Desideriamo segnalarti alcuni importanti aggiornamenti relativi ai servizi di Qobuz e l’aggiornamento delle nostre condizioni generali di uso e vendita.
Per motivi legali, alcune delle opere attualmente disponibili su Qobuz potrebbero essere ritirate dal Servizio. Per rispettare i nostri impegni e garantire la protezione della proprietà intellettuale relativa alla musica, potremmo trovarci costretti a non consentire l’accesso, sia per il download che per lo streaming, a determinati titoli.
In questi casi particolari, a partire dalla data del ritiro, i brani già acquistati dai clienti sul download store di Qobuz non potranno essere nuovamente scaricati.
Non è richiesta alcuna azione da parte tua, ma ti consigliamo di effettuare sempre il download della musica che hai acquistato, il prima possibile.
Continuando a utilizzare i nostri servizi, dichiari di accettare l’aggiornamento delle nuove condizioni che entreranno in vigore dal 1° ottobre 2024."
got same letter today, located in Germany
Any idea of what they’re planning?
you have to download your purchased music until 1.10.24
Well thanks I’ve understood that 
My question is what is their plan of they have one. Asking because I subscribe to Qobuz Sublime.
The message from Qobuz has now been received for the UK service.Some repertoire will no longer be available either for streaming or downloading from 1st October.
Certain recordings may be withdrawn from the service for legal reasons. To comply with our obligations and ensure the protection of intellectual property in music, we may need to block access to certain releases, both for download and streaming.
In these specific cases, any releases that customers have already purchased from the Qobuz Store will no longer be re-downloadable following the date of removal from the service
Qobuz do not reveal what these recordings are. However you will find throughout the Qobuz catalogue that odd titles cannot be either streamed or downloaded, mostly temporarily. However this “churn” of repertoire has passed by unnoticed being a usual part of business.
This sending of notices to subscribers seemingly to all Qobuz services implies that a major supplier may have withdrawn their permission.
So from next Tuesday you might find all or part of the UMG or Warners or Sony repertoire is no longer available. You will not be able to find out what until the due date but you will be agreeing to this amendment and thus have no case for a refund if you continue to use Qobuz ( i.e. do not cancel) on 1st October. Which you will have to do to assess what has been withdrawn and how this may affect you. In other works we have been stitched up ( as we British English speakers say).
Note that this affects not only downloads as previously reported but streamed repertoire too.
Edit: Since writing earlier I have received another message from Qobuz specifically aimed at me and listing all albums purchased by me and which will be affected by this withdrawal. All emanate from Chandos. So it looks like Chandos have withdrawn from the service. I do not know if other marques are affected. However the loss of Chandos will only affect classical music listeners for whom this is an important independent label. I find it most helpful that Qobuz have decided to notify this. BTW, all of my Chandos purchases have been backed up in any case.
I’ve just received a short-list of 10 records Qobuz strongly invites me to download before they will be gone.
Each record of this short list belongs to a different label…
Interestingly mine are limited to Chandos. 100 albums is a lot but can you see any commonalities or at least provide a flavour of what you have at risk?
So far all the titles listed seem to be from small(ish) independent labels with no commonality. So it looks like this may not be a withdrawal by labels. However ,could it be a bean counter at Qobuz looking at titles without much activity taking place and removing them?
I always remember one streaming service revealing that 80% of their stored titles were never accessed.
Here is my list:
Being a listener to less popular repertoire and given the number of faulty paid downloads received from Qobuz over the past year, this all seems to help make certain that I will not be renewing my subscription next summer. I have been a loyal customer for 7 or 8 years.
My list includes
One recording on BIS the other Chandos. If Qobuz pulls these labels and UMG, Warner and Sony (really?) It will really impact the classical music repertoire. Other titles listed above include the Arcana Lable (owned by Out Here)
One item on my list is from Virgin, an other from Universal…
We’ll see.
3 albums (<1% of my 276 Qobuz-purchases) :
Find it hard to believe that that could be the case. As you say, that will decimate the catalog. I am guessing the underlying reason(s) will seep out onto on the interweb sooner or later. Keep your eyes peeled!
Having regard to the albums reported from Qobuz subscribers here it seems to me now that complete catalogues from majors are not at risk. There is a common thread and that is that all of the albums at risk are not likely attract large volumes of streams. Either the music or recording is of minority interest or or perhaps too old to attract that many streams. Further, there is no dominant label or group of labels involved. I am surprised to see “Purple Rain” but maybe it just went through a period of little interest.
As I said earlier, the majority of tracks held on streaming server’s software may rarely or never be accessed. Unfortunately these tracks cost Qobuz to keep, not only in storage but, perhaps more importantly, as although not streamed or not streamed sufficiently they still attract a copyright fee paid to the music publishers (mechanical royalties).
So it could be that Qobuz are trimming their catalogue to reduce costs. Only speculation as we do not know. However my listening may be considered as 90% plus " obscure" so I will check my Qobuz " Favourites" on Tuesday to see what remains available and report.
Here is my list;
