Official Qobuz Issues Thread

[jegreenwood]

New here and to Qobuz generally.  And no, I haven't looked through the 140 previous pages, and I can't come up with a helpful search term.🤷‍♂️

 

I do not have a Qobuz subscription, but yesterday I tried purchasing two albums of music by Morton Feldman.  The first purchase went OK (by good fortune, I later discovered).  The second one, not so much: the files kept disappearing.  The Qobuz app would say the download was complete, I would see them in the appropriate folder on my computer and a few minutes later they were gone.  See screenshots below.  After over an hour of frustration, I figured out what was going on - they disappeared the moment I logged out of Qobuz.  In the case of my first purchase, I had copied them to another location where they remained.  I of course have now done this with the second purchase and I have listened to portions of both purchases.  So problem avoided, but mystery remains.

 

Anyone know what's going on?

 

Using Windows 10.  My browser is Chrome, but I did the download using only the Qobuz app.

 

 

[jegreenwood]

Follow up - it has been pointed out to me that the highlighted page in the Qobuz app is the offline library page.  I don't know why that should be the case.  What I did was go to the Purchases page within the app, right-click on the album I wanted to download and select Download.  See first screenshot below.  The other possible choice was Import, but when I tested that choice, the app advised that it would become part of my offline library, which was not what I wanted.

 

Someone suggested I use the website instead.  I did so and went to my purchases page.  Again I selected the album I wanted to download and hit the Download button.  That gave me two options: download using the app or a TAR file.  As I was testing the app, that's what I chose.  Again the files downloaded; I could see them in their appropriate folder.  But once I logged out of Qobuz they disappeared.

 

[jegreenwood]

26 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

Do you have a Music/Qobuz directory? What's in it?

No.  I changed that in my Qobuz account settings to a folder on my external USB self-powered G:\ drive.  See the 2nd and 3rd screenshots in my first post.  That’s the directory to which the files are downloaded and from which they disappear.

[jegreenwood]

3 minutes ago, dmackta said:

If you plan to use the files outside of the Qobuz app, then you should download the TAR file from the website, unzip, and enjoy. 

https://www.loom.com/share/f809b292b68842c994482078c41b1238

 

 

So it appears.  It’s just frustrating to have such an unpleasant experience on first encounter.

 

Right now the files from prior downloads are on three different hard drives (my having copied them to my music server and two backups on other machines).  I’ll try to download the TAR versions as well just in case.

[jegreenwood]

1 hour ago, maramara said:

 

There are 2 different actions when you are a Qobuz customer, as far as I know:

 

1. You can buy music and in this case you don't even need a Qobuz account or anything else than using the website, purchase using whatever paying method is allowed and download the files (the tar) and those files are now yours to enjoy with whatever music player supports the format (I guess all, nowadays).
    
2. You are a Qobuz plan subscriber and using the desktop/mobile app you can both use the streaming function AND, if you want, buy files.
   
   These will appear in the "purchased" tab but it's just a...tab, they would be streamed (and cached) if you press play exactly like any other file, depending on how much disk space you allocate for the cache.
   
   The download command instead is to keep them in the app (instead of in the cache) without using the network to stream the album again and again, or just to have them shown there (you might have hundreds of purchased albums but only want a bunch on your disk *to be listened offline via the app*).
   
   This is not supposed to be a "download the files so I can use them whenever I want".
   
   If you log out the app, all your data are deleted from it (this seems obvious to me) until you login again.

 

So, unless you are a streaming plan subscriber or are in the trial period, you can uninstall and forget about the desktop app, and purchase the files via the website.

 

Hope it helps 🙂

But I don't have a streaming account.  All I can do is buy files.  Which I did through the store on the website.  Which led me to two download choices: download tar files or download through the app.  Why wouldn't it tell me that my purchased files could vanish if I use the app.  I have seen nothing of the sort.  Don't you think a warning is appropriate?

And by the way, the app offers two options import and download.  But as far as I can see, they do the same thing.

 

I know what to do now to keep my files: either download them as tar files or move them to another folder before I exit from Qobuz.  I just don't see the logic in the Qobuz system.

[jegreenwood]

1 hour ago, Jud said:

It's quite odd to me to be reading the last several comments, because I've had no difficulty at all using the app to download purchased music, then moving those files to my music drives and playing them using whatever method/app I like.

My experience is like yours.  Once I’ve copied the downloaded files to another directory the copies stay there.  And I can play them using JRiver and the Logitech Media Server.  But the originals will disappear once I log out of Qobuz.  Maybe it’s “works as designed.”  But it doesn’t make sense to me.

 

[jegreenwood]

34 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

Interesting.  I had the impression my originals weren't disappearing, but I've never concentrated that much on the process.  I'll test next time I purchase a download.

As I’ve said, it makes no sense to me.  What is the point of Qobuz deleting them from one location, when I can keep copies elsewhere.

[jegreenwood]

1 hour ago, David Craff said:

 

 

Hi,

 

Sorry, I have checked your issue. I will ask the dev team to correct this asap.

For the moment, do not log off from the app and move your downloaded content to another directory.

 

Regards

Thank you.

 

One more thing, in the course of my troubleshooting, I actually purchased the download twice:

 

Order 35000833 and Order 34996491.  Can you help me obtain a refund?

 

 

[jegreenwood]

12 minutes ago, David Craff said:

 

I can't but your can contact our support for that.

 

Regards

Done.  Thanks again.

[jegreenwood]

I heard back from Qobuz support directly.  I was quite surprised that the answer was works as designed (currently).

 

“If you log out of your account on our app, for legal reasons, all downloaded files are deleted. This eventually will only affect music downloaded for streaming not purchases. However, I don't have a timeline that I can currently share with you.”

 

My advice to them was that if this is the case, Qobuz should provide a notice to music purchasers selecting a download method.

[jegreenwood]

5 minutes ago, LowOrbit said:

I have been buying music from Qobuz for a long while, and recently took a subscription for the streaming service. I don't use Roon or any other form of library integration. 

 

The "app" on Windows 10 is garbage. Poor navigation, takes ages to initialise, and doesn't seem to handle mixed sample rate file streaming well to my Chord HugoTT2. It seems to get confused and the music replays at low speed so everything is dragged out - an interesting effect, but wears thin quickly. 

 

I shall buy an Audirvana license and see if that works better, otherwise I shall think seriously about cancelling the service which would be a shame.

 

Anyone else suffering this issue? I don't get playback issues with HQPlayer, JRiver (or the trial version of Audirvana) with local content.

Limited experience so far, but I’ve been using the Logitech Media Sever to play my Qobuz downloads.  No problem so far.  I’ve also tested them with JRiver without a problem.

 

My two downloads are 5-hour pieces, so I have to be in the mood. 😄

[jegreenwood]

5 hours ago, 111MilesToGo said:

To add (no edit function here?): Be aware, a performance hog not only on the Qobuz Android App itself, but in fact the entire Android Digital Audio Player.

This is a test of the edit function.  😀

 

It's available (for a while by clicking the three dots in the upper right corner of your post.

[jegreenwood]

1 hour ago, David Craff said:

 

Hi,

 

I have to review the feature. In fact for legal reasons you can't keep the import content. But for purchases content, we need to review this. We will do our best to find a more logical solution to this operation.

 

Regards

Thanks.

 

But I have to add that when I requested a refund of my duplicate purchase Qobuz denied it.

[jegreenwood]

1 hour ago, Jud said:

 

Ouch.

I filed a dispute of the charge with Amex.  Only then, after I advised Qobuz of the fact, they responded that they would have offered me a complimentary download,  But since I had started a dispute, they could no longer do that.

[jegreenwood]

And of course the troubles continue. There are a number of clicks in one of the download files (CD1 Part IV, and that’s as far as I got). I tried re-downloading with the same result. Haven’t listened to Guston yet.

 

So far, every aspect of my purchase from Qobuz has been a negative experience. I will not be purchasing from them again.