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Qobuz dropping rights to my favorites. A pox on their house.

 

So, I favorite something on Qobuz, come back a few months later and SHAZAM, it's gone. "The rights holders have not made this content available to listen." This seems to be a growing problem for me and I doubt I';m the only one. WTF?? To add insult to injury, I take a look at Amazon (to which I do not subscribe) and there it is.

Qobuz is the only paid service I use. Tidal has too much overlap to be worth it and I find MQA dubious anyway. Amazon's march towards world domination is troubling and I just plain don't like Apple stuff. But my partner uses AppleMusic (I think) and reports similar annoyances.

This leaves me both perplexed and annoyed. I've been slowly culling my CD's, LP's and server library with the assumption that streaming service libraries would grow, not shrink. It's also in keeping with my wish to release my attachments to mere things. I'm coming to feel that this may be a grave error - in the realm of music what we don't physically possess, be it CD, an LP, BR disk or a data file, we never really possessed at all. I'm not content to live off memories of how much I once enjoyed hearing something. I might want to hear it again! So, as far as web/streaming content goes I'm moving back to downloading stuff so it can't be arbitrarily taken away from me.

Anybody else mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore? Bah, humbug! And Happy New Year

 
 
kletter1mann
kletter1mann's avatar
kletter1mann OP
20 posts
 

@facten  "I guess I’ll get busy ripping CDs before they disintegrate. I’ve noticed that it’s already started."

Really, disintegrating in what way? Have CDs since the outset and not a one is "disintegrating," and all play fine.

Then count yourself fortunate.  I've had them from the outset as well.  It's like there some kind of degradation of the lacquer top coat and then something happens to the reflective layer.  Then  they become hard to read, skip, etc.  It isn't common but I have seen it on enough CDs that it's a concern.   Google, there's a lot of info out there.

mlsstl
1,472 posts
 

@kletter1mann -- "I've been slowly culling my CD's, LP's and server library with the assumption that streaming service libraries would grow, not shrink."

I can understand getting rid of CDs and LPs for reasons of the physical space they take up, but why in the world would you get rid of material on a server? I've got my local music on a 4TB 2.5" USB drive that isn't much bigger than a pack of playing cards. I've also got two backups which are stored in drawers.

Copyright fights have been an ongoing issue in the music, TV, film and publishing industries for decades and decades. Those issues are not going away anytime soon.  I use Qobuz and enjoy it, but if I find an album I really don't want to live without, I either download it to my local server or get a CD copy and transfer that to my server.  I use LMS as my playback server and it integrates my local collection with Qobuz seemlessly.

kletter1mann's avatar
kletter1mann OP
20 posts
 

@mlsstl   Sorry, brain fart.  I'm absolutely NOT getting rid of what's on the server.  To the contrary, it will only grow.  It's a beast: an enterprise-grade unit running a 10Tb RAID 10 array with auto backup.  Next step is ripping CD's to it before they  all rot.

facten
2,969 posts
 

@kletter1mann "Google, there’s a lot of info out there"

Yes there are some folks who have noted issues with early 80s CDs produced by a certain mfg in the UK where the outer edge turned bronze. There are plenty of folks voice no issue. There are people who claim the life span of CDs is 20 years there are others that it’s 100-500 years. That said, do what’s best for you which is all that ultimately matters.  And, my apologies as my first post should have been worded in a different tone😀

 

mwatsme's avatar
mwatsme
188 posts
 

@kletter1mann The same culling happens on Amazon/Prime Music including the most expensive HD Family plan that I switched to from Tidal. And it can be very frustrating when tracks suddenly disappear from custom playlists. Not only that, but on AmazonMusic, they will also change-up the quality offering... Let's say you added the UHD (best sound quality version) to a playlist, then they change the SQ to HD - this causes the UHD version to become unavailable. So the only way to get it back is the search for it again and add it back to the playlist in the lower quality.

The other gripe I have with Amazon Music is when you buy the digital music, it is MP3 - unless you buy the physical CD and rip it when it arrives - thats lame.

My point is Amazon is no better than the rest in this regard - we might have thought the libraries would be ever-increasing, but this is not the case. Instead, they are ever changing, and without warning become unavailable or downgraded. I've seen tracks disappear, then return again a couple weeks later - but usually not.

@mspot has it right... use streaming services for discovery, then buy what you want to keep.

 

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