What Can't You Find on Qobuz USA Yet That You'd Like to See?

[Hugo9000]

1 hour ago, Jud said:

I'm not seeing this yet, but:

 

- It's brand new.

 

- Qobuz USA is still in beta and hasn't completed its catalog.

 

- But this is very beautiful; I'd like to know in general whether Qobuz USA will have Hyperion label recordings, and this one in particular, or whether I ought to go ahead and purchase elsewhere:

 

 

I thought Hyperion was holding firm to zero streaming services for their releases.

[Hugo9000]

27 minutes ago, phosphorein said:

 

Peter Philips and the Tallis Scholars.

 

Both Qobuz and Tidal need to hire true database experts. For example, try searching on Qobuz for Bach Collegium Japan and only a handful of albums are listed. But they are there however are indexed under a variety of artist names. My experience is that one often has to search under a variety of terms to find the desired album.

Yes, it's a colossal mess.  Even Spotify is better, at least they tend to least more of the artists (conductor, ensemble, all soloists individually, etc).  On Qobuz, it seems to be one "artist" chosen for the work, and sometimes that's the conductor, sometimes it's the ensemble.  More irritatingly, they also do linked "artist" names, e.g. Herbert von Karajan and Berliner Philharmoniker.  I think it was the cellist Truls Mørk who is listed with each combination on an album separately, so there are over a dozen "artist" names with him and whatever chamber partner or ensemble.  When trying to find albums that are in my CD collection, I can manage, as I have a very good memory for my 3000 or so CDs.  But for searching to see if there is an interesting gap in my collection, it is useless.  For example, perhaps I'd like to look at every recording featuring the Vienna Philharmonic.  I can try searching under that name, also under Wiener Philharmoniker.  The problem is, many albums don't list the orchestra as an "artist" at all, but are listed with just the conductor as an artist.  Regarding operas, I can guarantee you that far more opera fans will go by the lead soprano than by the conductor or the orchestra.  Yet the vocal soloists are often not listed as artists.  lmao

 

Qobuz might be the best for classical in the sense that the sound quality is lovely, but their tagging is complete garbage for classical.  I wonder what's going on with that IDAGIO streaming service.  Qobuz search is essentially like doing a google search, where one might have to know a subject fairly well to obtain a useful result.  They need to have it work more like arkivmusic.com than amazon.

 

So with their lousy tagging and searching, it's hard to compare how full Qobuz's classical catalogue is compared to Spotify, for example.  Sound, of course, is much better in Qobuz than Spotify, but Qobuz seems to have issues with gapless playback, so it's not worth paying more for better sound that keeps getting interrupted while trying to play a whole opera for example.  I'll just use my CDs if they can't get that right.  I guess I'll see if it's working again today, yesterday I couldn't get anything on Qobuz to play gaplessly.

[Hugo9000]

It's not a deal breaker for me, personally, as I know what I want and will find it haha! 

 

However, I'm mostly using the trial to evaluate Qobuz as an option for family and friends who will never amass a wonderful collection like I have on CD, and they are not adept at searching or knowing what to search for.  As it stands, I'd have to make playlists for them and share those.  That's a lot of work in order for them to be able to have a virtual music collection to match my physical one.  I also don't want my email address on playlists I share, in case one of my friends or family decide they want to share one of my lists publicly at some point lol, so I hope they fix the user name issue on the U.S. platform!

[Hugo9000]

I would like to see Alia Vox and Gimell added.  These are very small specialist labels, of course, but unlike say 2L, they actually have important artists with magnificent catalogues of several decades of acclaimed work:  Jordi Savall on Alia Vox, and The Tallis Scholars on Gimell.

 

 

Not sure if either label is on any streaming service anywhere.  Perhaps they are like Hyperion and see it as a financial mistake for their company.  Alia Vox has at least some music on youtube, provided by "The Orchard" (never heard of The Orchard, but a quick look at their site, where they say "Distribution Done Right" yet they do not list artists let alone labels they represent (lmao!) shows that they are horrible distributors!  How can you pretend to provide good representation, yet not bother to list your client labels on your site?).

 

 

I wanted to listen to the Tallis Scholars this evening, and had to get the CDs off the shelf, since their music isn't on Qobuz.