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Serious Problems with Qobuz

About six weeks ago I started having trouble with Qobuz. Many recordings that are available to stream suddenly appeared as "Unavailable" in Roon and as "Sample" in Qobuz own app (in this last case, you can stream only about a minute of each track and nothing more). I contacted Qobuz on several occasions and they emailed me saying that it is a "rights" problem. The labels affected are Chandos, BIS, Naxos, Capriccio, and CPO, and not all of the recordings are affected but mainly high resolution ones, and featuring certain composers, orchestras, conductors and performers. According to Qobuz, Naxos is the culprit as it owns all of those labels. Qobuz mentioned that the "are working with the labels to solve the problem", but up to now nothing has happened and the list of unavailable recordings is growing. In fact, some labels, like BIS and Chandos, have told some customers that have contacted them about this problem, that they are not the ones doing this.

Interestingly, this is not affecting the same recordings in Tidal, which are only available in CD resolution (44.1/16). This raises the question, at least for me, how viable is Qobuz when the recordings I want to listen to are being made unavailable. Mind you, recordings that were available before and which I listened to and marked as "favorites". Customers are paying for this service, which is not cheap, and it seems that Qobuz is reneging on the recordings it made available when one signs on.

I asked some very well known reviewers, some who had featured Qobuz reviews and interviews with the company's CEO, but none answered, and one is "sponsored" by Qobuz.

Qobuz has to answer to its customers and be forthcoming about the real problem and let us know if this problem can be solved or not. If not, they will be losing a lot of customers to others. A very bad way to run a business.
brucknermahler
brucknermahler OP
11 posts
 
First, I do have a very large collection of cd, lp, tape. I still buy them. However, there are many recordings available snd I can’t buy the all, so I rely an streaming services for them.

Second, yes it has been Sebastien the person I have been communicating with. And it was him who told me about the rights issues. There is another person from Qobuz USA who I have been in touch too, but I do not have his name immediately available. And, in addition, I have maintained communication with some members of the Roon community which have  experienced the same problem and have contacted persons from the labels affected, including the CEO of BIS recordings. And these persons mentioned that they had not changed thei availability of those recordings. The only culprit, it seems up to now if the rights issue is real, is Naxos, who owns all those labels. But, at this moment this is only a speculation based on Qobuz information.
big_greg
6,561 posts
 
Now you agree that these "serious problems" aren't with Qobuz as  your thread title states.  It sounds like they've been quite responsive actually. Good to hear! 
rvpiano's avatar
rvpiano
2,439 posts
 
As someone already suggested, go to IDAGIO,  Much better in every way than Qobuz for classical, INCLUDING sound quality. I have both services, but only use Qobuz for non classical.
btw, Adore Mahler, but HATE Bruckner.
rvpiano's avatar
rvpiano
2,439 posts
 
Have never run across the problem your facing in IDAGIO.
brucknermahler OP
11 posts
 
The problem is with Qobuz because Tidal is not facing the same problem. I do not understand why so much interest in defending Qobuz and not their clients.

Why do I sense there may be Qobuz employees lurking here to protect the firm and attack anybody that says anything contrary to their firm or jobs? 

Regarding the labels in question, Chandos, BIS, CPO, Naxos, try recordings by Hickox in Chandos as an example, most BIS.
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