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Qobuz lowers price

Proactive attempt to minimize subscriber bleed once Spotify lossless is out.
 
gvl said:
Proactive attempt to minimize subscriber bleed once Spotify lossless is out.
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Interesting view. I saw it as defensive reaction (instead of being proactive) due to Amazon and Apple announcements earlier this year.
 
SKBubba said:
Qobuz has lowered US price to $12.99/mo. or $129.99/yr. ($10.83/mo.). Similar reduction for Sublime, $179.99/yr ($15/mo.).
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Extremely rare example of some French product/service being cheaper... outside France.
 
Qobuz and Tidal (and consequently Roon) are in a tough spot. With Apple, Amazon, and Spotify (coming) lossless, $12.99 is likely still not low enough. Unfortunately, it's going to be nearly impossible for these smaller services to compete against the tech giants over the long run.
 
One advantage of Qobuz is that there are (3rd-party) tools out there where you can download the music in the original format for free. They are also MQA-free and offer up to 24/192 for some albums, while most services only offer at max 16/44.1. Another benefit is that the family plan only costs 50% more but you get 6 accounts instead of 1. A lot of niche audiophile streaming devices/software have support for Tidal and Qobuz but not Spotify. I imagine that will change once they start offering lossless and software vendors will want to have integration for Spotify in their products. Amazon was OK but still lacking and they also have awful or non-existent integration. I really hate the Tidal interface and find it very intrusive, so I never really got into using it either. Their selection for some jazz and a lot of classical was also lacking. Spotify HD will be a good contender to Qobuz though. What is the pricing supposed to be like for Spotify?
 
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muslhead said:
Interesting view. I saw it as defensive reaction (instead of being proactive) due to Amazon and Apple announcements earlier this year.
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That too, the competition is getting tough, the lossless differentiator is no more, apart from it I don’t know why would anyone prefer Qobuz over Spotify. I guess Q supports Wasapi exclusive and Roon, but other than that Spotify is a better service with its vast library, fantastic recommendations, and Connect tech. Well, Q has hires too.
 
Frankly, at $10.99/mo, given the quality of playback, a real deal cf. Spotify @ $9.99/mo. However, price-cutting usually indicates a subscriber squeeze and heavy competition from the usual well-established suspects. Big boys notorious for dropping prices so low that smaller competitors are forced to the wall to compete. It’s the American way, don’t you know.
 
I like Qobuz and wish they manage to stay around, but I don’t expect to keep my subscription once Spotify lossless is out given it covers most of their library. I currently pay for both.
 
For most music I prefer Spotify. Classical could be the differentiator. Roon is lacking , thus so do Qobuz and/or Tidal. Apple Music snatched Primephonic a few months ago, this service claim to fame was/is their Classical music metadata. I am trying Apple Music if it is as advertised with Classical then … I’ll likely just keep Apple and Spotify and drop Roon and Qobuz.

Peace.
 
I just Qobuz because I get lossless and I'm not forced to buy specific hardware.

I don't have any expensive Apple hardware to plug in to my DAC. Or an iPhone to control it. No idea if there even is anything available for playing from Amazon. And Google? Well I've learnt not to rely on their services as they have the attention span of a toddler!
 
FrantzM said:
For most music I prefer Spotify. Classical could be the differentiator. Roon is lacking , thus so do Qobuz and/or Tidal. Apple Music snatched Primephonic a few months ago, this service claim to fame was/is their Classical music metadata. I am trying Apple Music if it is as advertised with Classical then … I’ll likely just keep Apple and Spotify and drop Roon and Qobuz.

Peace.
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Was primephonic better than idagio?
 
gvl said:
That too, the competition is getting tough, the lossless differentiator is no more, apart from it I don’t know why would anyone prefer Qobuz over Spotify. I guess Q supports Wasapi exclusive and Roon, but other than that Spotify is a better service with its vast library, fantastic recommendations, and Connect tech. Well, Q has hires too.
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I stopped using roon+qobuz for a month and used only spotify. The purpose of the experiment was to see if it would work for me and save me $15/mo. if/when they ever launch hi fi (which at this point doen't seem forthcoming).

I'm back on roon+qobuz.

Spotify connect is a great feature. Their curated, generated, and user shared playlists and playlist management are great. Mobile app is great. Radio features are way better than roon or roon+qobuz. (Qobuz desn't have the feature at all.)

Other than that Spotify is very song/playlist oriented. Forget trying to organize a library of albums and browse/search it by genre, etc. It is also weak on metadata.

Roon raat is better and more capable than connect, although not as widely available (hello Denon+Marantz?). Roon's metadata and library management features are light years ahead of spotify and every other streaming service. Focus, bookmarks and tags are indispensable features. Genre classifications are way more extensive. Not to mention per-zone dsp/peq.

I guess that's somewhat apples and oranges, but yes, without roon, Qobuz apps are nowhere near as nice as spotify, unless all you do is pick albums and play them.
 
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Does anyone know if Qobuz has any plans to further expand world wide? Just checked and they're still limited to 18 countries, unfortunately not including mine.
 
SKBubba said:
Roon's metadata and library management features are light years ahead of spotify and every other streaming service.
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It has to be for the money they charge that is on top of your music subscription fee.
 
Qobuz has a very limited library and terrible indexing, which made me not stick with it after the trial.
 
SKBubba said:
I stopped using roon+qobuz for a month and used only spotify. The purpose of the experiment was to see if it would work for me and save me $15/mo. if/when they ever launch hi fi (which at this point doen't seem forthcoming).

I'm back on roon+qobuz.

Spotify connect is a great feature. Their curated, generated, and user shared playlists and playlist management are great. Mobile app is great. Radio features are way better than roon or roon+qobuz. (Qobuz desn't have the feature at all.)

Other than that Spotify is very song/playlist oriented. Forget trying to organize a library of albums and browse/search it by genre, etc. It is also weak on metadata.

Roon raat is better and more capable than connect, although not as widely available (hello Denon+Marantz?). Roon's metadata and library management features are light years ahead of spotify and every other streaming service. Focus, bookmarks and tags are indispensable features. Genre classifications are way more extensive. Not to mention per-zone dsp/peq.

I guess that's somewhat apples and oranges, but yes, without roon, Qobuz apps are nowhere near as nice as spotify, unless all you do is pick albums and play them.
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There's a lot to like about Roon. I used it for a long time with Tidal and Qobuz (no local files). The issue for me is that I'm deeply in the Apple ecosystem (long time user due to being in the graphic design industry) and the Roon apps on iOS are sub par. I've spoken to Roon support and followed the threads on the Roon forums, but it seems because Roon is built on Xamarin the Roon apps may never be any better than partially broken on iOS. When Apple started offering lossless earlier this year I made the switch to Apple Music and saved myself ~$40 per month. So far I've been satisfied with the switch and I'm happy to be rid of the buggy, non-compliant Roon mobile apps.
 
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Once Spotify comes out with lossless I will likely dump anything else I am using. Amazon's user I/F is brutal. Buggy piece of crap is most applicable adjective. I want to listen to music, not screw around with the app.
 
acbarn said:
There's a lot to like about Roon. I used it for a long time with Tidal and Qobuz (no local files). The issue for me is that I'm deeply in the Apple ecosystem (long time user due to being in the graphic design industry) and the Roon apps on iOS are sub par. I've spoken to Roon support and followed the threads on the Roon forums, but it seems because Roon is built on Xamarin the Roon apps may never be any better than partially broken on iOS. When Apple started offering lossless earlier this year I made the switch to Apple Music and saved myself ~$40 per month. So far I've been satisfied with the switch and I'm happy to be rid of the buggy, non-compliant Roon mobile apps.
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If I was an Apple user I would have probably switched by now, too.
 
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