Qobuz reveals how much it really pays per stream, and I want to see more of this transparency to help us spend money more ethically
Qobuz reveals how much it really pays per stream, and I want to see more of this transparency to help us spend money more ethically
I love Qobuz. Also for those of you trying to boycott US goods, it's a French company. I just wish it had the same adoption and features as Spotify.
Which features does it miss compared to Spotify?
Qobuz's audio quality is a game changer. I had some technical issues with it with glitches short pauses in playback awhile back when I tried it; hopefully those are worked out now. It's great if you know exactly what you want to listen too. It's well known for lacking good algorithms for music discovery. I use Tidal and really like the daily discovery feature, automated Playlists, and the "track radio" that will give you a large list of songs similar to the exact song you are listening to. I've heard similar laments from people looking to switch from Spotify to Qobuz.
I mean, Spotify is a publicly traded Swedish company.. but it is worth noting that Qobuz is French and that the original creators still seem to retain both control and ownership
Spotify Connect is a feature I use extensively that nobody else even comes close to doing as well (even though the Spotify implementation leaves much to be desired). Why does nobody else support controlling the player on my PC from another computer?
Qobuz apparently has a connect feature in beta, I've seen a few people say it works very well so hopefully it'll be public soon.
The only deal-breaker for me was that the android app doesn't persist its play state, so if I pause and do other stuff on my phone, it usually loses its place.
The number one thing I've been missing are Spotify jams. Spotify also has a wider selection of music, but tbh it's rare for Spotify to have something that Qobuz doesn't. Spotify also has lyrics, playlist folders, and audiobooks; though tbh I haven't checked to see if Qobuz has the latter.
One example is podcasts. I would miss the single interface for both podcasts and music, although Spotify is enshittifying rapidly; the turning point may be closer than I thought.
Tbh, podcasts through a "storefront" is a poor way to experience them. It's meant to be decentralized via RSS feeds. Tho having some cross-device metadata about what you've listened to is definitely helpful.
I've been using Pocket Casts for a long time for that more refined experience and ease of use between listening devices. Their new owners are ethically complicated nowadays (Automattic), and the cost for their pro features is a bit high unless you are a podcast fiend (I was grandfathered in from their old mid-2010s pricing scheme that was pay once/own forever), but it's a good app (for now).
100% with you, plus, with spotify premium you still get shitty ads on podcasts (that also do ad reads like hello fresh...) so there's no advantage at all at listening to podcasts on spotify. I also find their media library management to be clunky at best so a dedicated podcast app is a far better option IMHO.
