Qobuz vs. spotify

[Mandryka]

The qobuz streaming service is mostly Flac quality. It's officially only available in France, but if you email them they'll let you subscribe straight away wherever you are. The sound is much better than most spotify streams I've tried, with the possible exception of DG streams, which are justlike the CDs on both services as far as I can tell.

Another differentiator is the catalogue. For older recordings especially, spotify is much much better. But they also have lots of small labels and unknowns, which may or may not be interesting. For historicals qobuz is rubbish, though they do have the Naxos catalogue more completely than spotify.  For pretty new records there are a few things I've found on qobuz which aren't on spotify - Virssaladze, The Mikrokosmos Quartet, the new Harnoncourt Mozart Cd with Buchbinder. But no Tokyo Quartet late Beethoven, the second recording, despite a much vaunted special relationship between Harmonia Mundi and Qobuz. Very disappointing there.

And price is a differentiatior too. Qobuz is twice the price of spotify.

I don't know what I'll do. The catalogue on spotify is so impressive that I'll defo stay with them. I'm tempted to dump qobuz. I'm not sure.

[Mandryka]

I subscribe to both Spotify and MOG, and have been happy with them.  I looked at Qobuz but the cost was too high.  The audio quality for Spotify's or MOG's 320 is good enough for me.  My concern, recently, is whether or not albums are disappearing from Spotify.  I could swear that I had found something there which is not there today.  I will make a concerted effort to confirm this or not.

Yes albums are going from spotify. That happened with the Tokyo second recording of the late  Beethoven quartets, and it happened with Egarr's Brandenburg concertos, and Koroliov's Beethoven op106.

[BobsterLobster]

As far as I can work out, there's the option to have Qobuz at 320 without offline playback at 7 Euros, which is better quality than Spotify's 128 for £5. I'm really sick of Spotify's non-existent Swedish customer support over their terrible forced upgrades in the last month or so (look at the Spotify forums to see how unpopular these are, and how appallingly badly Spotify have dealt with this), and Qobuz looks like a good alternative for 7 Euros. They seem to have a lot of classical and jazz music missing from the Spotify catalogue.

BTW, since I've been using Spotify for the last year, I've been making playlists of the albums that I've enjoyed. A HUGE amount of those albums are now grayed out, I'm appalled at how much music Spotify has had to remove from their catalogue, when all their hype claims a move in the opposite direction.

[Mandryka]

For me, there's too much good stuff on spotify which isn't on qobuz. I'm listening right now to Leonardo Careri's Scarlatti, before that I sampled Edward Parmentier's Scarlatti, and before that I really enjoyed the Schönbrunn Ensemble's Musical Offering. Earlier in the week I heard some Gesualdo from Francesco Cera and some Beethoven from Daria Rabotkina. None of these things are on qobuz.

The real question for me is whether to keep qobuz. I've decided to give them a four month trial, I'm at the end of the first month.

[nigeld]

I just wanted to give a bump to this thread to see if anyone has anything to add nine months on.

I have been a long term subscriber to Spotify and have recently started a classical only subscription to Qobuz.  Spotify does seem to have a slightly deeper catalogue but I do like streaming in FLAC on Qobuz.  Both work beautifully with Sonos which I use at home.  Qobuz user interface seems slightly cleaner.  Also like the ability to view new additions on Qobuz


thoughts?

[IfULikeMyPeruqPlizTellMe]

I am a satisfied Qobuz client since 2011 and never had an unsolved problem! I am using it mainly for listening before buying, as I have a limited internet bandwith at home! Their prices are most of the time the best for an european client (I am always waiting for promotions before buying up to 30-40%). They have a very good client service and are very responsive. The only negative points I see, is a limited catalogue (example: Melodya) and bit too much advertisments! One interesting aspect is also the possibility to buy upgrade when available for higher sound quality! If you understand french (sometimes in english too) you can also view or listen to very interesting podcasts. The reviews are also of good quality, even if I do not agree completely with Mr. Hudry, de gustibus!

[classical_music_lover]

I have subscribed to Qobuz classical recently. I am satisfied with the streaming quality. However, I am greatly dissapointed that the number of available Naxos, Supraphon and Hyperion albums has decreased dramatically. I would not have subscribed if I had known this.

[bhodges]

Hello, classical_music_lover, and welcome. If you like, feel free to post something about yourself in the "Introductions" section of the board.

In any case, enjoy yourself here.

--Bruce

[RonanM]

Qobuz is my idea of a classical music service. The site adds a lot of value through reviews, magazine articles, links to other magazines, interviews, podcasts etc. The search is excellent, and their iOS app is splendid. I don't subscribe to their streaming service, but I have no complaints at all about the quality when it comes to playing my purchases.

I live outside France, but I simply supplied them with my French postal address (which, to my knowledge, they have never queried) and they accepted me as a legitimate customer.

If you are a francophone, Qobuz is a no-brainer. I haven't seen what the site looks like in Google translate, but given the sheer quality of the writing and coverage, it's worth a look.