Qobuz Feature Requests

[Balthazar B]

First post in this forum.

 

For context, earlier this year, we tried out Qobuz for a month and decided at the time not to add it to the music services to which we already subscribed. These include Google/YouTube Music and Spotify. We're not particularly interested in Tidal, and we tried and declined to extend Amazon Music HD. We'd really like to have a high def streaming music option, and while we liked Qobuz for the most part, beyond some catalog gaps we noticed, there are a couple of pretty basic functional capabilities we'd like to see, or expect, before we jump back in:

• Qobuz Connect, working from the Qobuz application (whether mobile, binary, or web) just as Spotify Connect and now Tidal Connect do. Qobuz-capable endpoints like Node 2i, CXN(V2), RPi, KEF LS50, etc., ought to be discoverable and targetable (is that a word?) from Qobuz itself, and not require us to go to BluOS, Stream Magic, or some UPNP app to listen via a streamer, with a crappy UX much worse than the user experience Qobuz wants to provide its customers, and should be proud of. Somewhat related to this...
• We've grown to enjoy, and often rely on voice interactions with our music services. It would be great if Qobuz could be specified as the default music service in our Google Home environment. In addition to enabling voice controls with music instantiation, playback, cessation, etc., it could be more easily integrated into home automation routines and the like.
• We enjoy robust music discovery functionality, and this is one area where you have to admit Qobuz falls a bit short of the competition. An ability to support AI-driven artist/album/song/genre/etc. radio listening, instead of just playlists, would go a long way towards enhancing the attractiveness of Qobuz as a fully-featured, well-integrated music service that further realizes the promise shown in your really nice applications, the high quality of your catalog, and your capabilities in providing exemplary streaming to your customers.

These items kind of differentiate Qobuz -- not in a good way, unfortunately -- from other music environments we've enjoyed, and we're very interested in any plans related to the above you may have, if you're comfortable disclosing them. Thanks for listening.

[Balthazar B]

7 hours ago, left channel said:

But I find AI that decides what I should listen to based on past listening to be as disappointing as machine translation of poetry.

If well-executed, AI won't be as limited as this at all. A good AI-driven musical discovery capability:

• Is fundamentally a neural network able to deepen its knowledge of each individual over time, and
• Can correlate patterns of musical preferences multidimensionally, which can include
• "Ideas" to offer based on comparing a person's wide body of preferences with others, as well as
• Using a profound form of "music DNA" to hop between genres, composers, eras for eclectic listeners, while
• Taking into acount not just particular pieces of music, but including dimensions such as performers and ensembles, acoustic/electric, live/studio, slow/energetic, album/song, etc. to assemble nuanced, fresh experiences tailored for each individual listener from the vast repository of recorded music available on most streaming services.

I enjoy many human-assembled playlists as well, but unless they organically change/develop pretty rapidly, I'll get as bored listening to them again as I would a party tape that hasn't changed since 1974.

[Balthazar B]

9 hours ago, rn701 said:

In a recent video discussion between Qobuz and Roon CEO, Qobuz David Solomon said they had looked at this feature, but decided it was hard to implement and that Roon already does it and does it better than they ever could. (Highly debatable whether Roon Radio is all that great, but whatever. )

That's really disappointing. It just means that Qobuz's competitors will continue pulling away and develop ever-more-sticky relationships with their customers. Of course, there may be only a handful or two of organizations with the resources and knowledge to competently develop this capability -- and nobody is quite doing it perfectly yet. But it's one of those things that will be table stakes for media providers, IMHO, if it isn't that already (not just with streaming music, but books, streaming video, and other information services as well).

[Balthazar B]

24 minutes ago, left channel said:

17 hours ago, Balthazar B said:

If well-executed, AI won't be as limited as this at all. A good AI-driven musical discovery capability:

 

Even Mr. Singularity himself, Ray Kurzweil, foresees limits in AI's ability to work with poetry and literature even as it reaches the ability to translate and organize nonfiction and even some types of fiction. I expect similar limitations in music.

 

17 hours ago, Balthazar B said:

That's really disappointing. It just means that Qobuz's competitors will continue pulling away

 

If Qobuz were like its competitors, I would not be here.

 

Thanks for commenting!

• We're not asking AI to create music, but to do immense and deep pattern matching to present a plausible set of existing musical (or video, or written) selections based on all the information it can correlate, over time, about what a person enjoys listening to (or watch, or read -- or find) -- and doesn't. AI can do this pretty well right now, and it gets better year by year. 
• If Qobuz had certain capabilities some of its competitors already have -- in addition to what it already is and does extremely well -- it would be a much more compelling service for me.

[Balthazar B]

3 hours ago, Pro Jules said:

I am streaming Qobuz from my iPhone and it shows the high sample rates. (But the chart suggests CD Quality is only possible from iPad)

Airplay always downsamples high-rez formats to CD sampling rates. See:

http://www.technologyfocus.net/can-airplay-2-support-hi-res-audio/

[Balthazar B]

5 minutes ago, Pro Jules said:

This is UPnP not Airplay. But the DAC is displaying 192k so I think it’s working @  hires

 

Ah, OK, which would make sense per the info on your chart since mconnect is a UPNP app. Are you getting gapless playback?

[Balthazar B]

On 3/16/2021 at 10:15 AM, The Computer Audiophile said:

Hi @David Craff taking a longer view of things, and realizing that many future Qobuz users won't have any local content, I know of several right now that only use streaming, have you guys thought about creating a remote app? This would enable people to run only the Qobuz app on a computer and completely control it via the Qobuz remote app. 

 

I fully understand something similar is possible just by using an Aurender or Audirvana or Roon, etc... but I'm thinking more of a 100% Qobuz solution. 

 

I know I'm not the only one who thinks Qobux would do well to support a true Qobuz Connect solution not unlike Spotify Connect or Tidal Connect. I included it on a list of feature suggestions a couple pages back. The challenge will be getting the manufacturers to support it in the same way as they do the competition already. The win for Qobuz is that they can then optimize and manage the user experience with their apps and not let third parties leave it functionally incomplete and compromised.

[Balthazar B]

On 9/11/2023 at 7:53 AM, vsrrr said:

All I can tell you is that, when I'm in Roon (which I use exclusively to listen to Qobuz), if I favorite an album, it becomes a favorited album in Qobuz. If I favorite a song, it does not become a favorited song in Qobuz.

 

Similarly, when I'm in the Qobuz app, if I favorite an album, it shows up as a favorited Qobuz album in Roon. If I favorite a song, it does not show up as a favorited Qobuz song in Roon.

 

My guess is that for whatever reason, this functionality may not have been built into the API.

The fact that my personal Qobuz playlists are read-only in Roon is also definitely a Qobuz "feature" rather than a Roon bug. 

 

I'm quite confident that both of these issues are down to Qobuz rather than Roon, because the exact same issues occur when I use Qobuz through Auralic's LightningDS control app.

 

 

 

Interestingly, in the WiiM Home app (Android), favoriting Qobuz tracks etc. carries through to Qobuz flawlessly, AFAICT. Also, my personal Qobuz playlists are reflected in the WHA, and I can add tracks to those playlists in the app. So if WiiM is using exactly the same API that Roon and Aurilac use, then I suspect the problem is with the latters' implementations.

[Balthazar B]

55 minutes ago, vsrrr said:

 

Weird. I would hope that both Roon and Auralic wouldn't mess this up. Just spoke to two different people (one with Taiko, one with Innuos), and they experience the same issue, which leads me to believe it's an API issue.

 

Maybe the difference with the WiiM Home App is that it's actually launching Qobuz inside the app

 

Now that I don't know. I've never seen its mechanism of action with Qobuz described anywhere, including on the WiiM forums. It's definitely not launching the Qobuz app within an iframe or anything like that. I don't have the instrumentation to do so, but perhaps someone out there with a WiiM device can do a deep analysis of what the WiiM Home app is doing.

 

It's probably worth noting that the web interface to Qobuz also supports adding tracks to playlists, favoriting items, etc., so these functions are probably supported via a REST API or similar interface.

[Balthazar B]

Thank you for clarifying that, David. It made the most logical sense to me that there would be only one API for third parties to employ.

 

I have a feature request as well. Can you discuss whether it's feasible, if not in the works to have Qobuz made available as a default music streaming service in the Google Home ecosystem? Thanks!

[Balthazar B]

35 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

I immediately thought the same. Blind people using screen readers? Translators to understand Italian opera lyrics? The language seems quite vague and overinclusive.

 

What is it that Qobuz doesn't want? AI to reverse engineer or develop competitive products? I would think language regarding prohibited purposes might work better. (I very much do not intend to tell your solicitors their jobs. It's just that this language seemed so broad and opaque that both @davide256 and I, and I'm sure others, noticed it immediately.)

 

I suppose a clever attorney could argue successfully in court that the embedded smartphone tool that records app usage, correlates it with other data, and analyzes how much battery it consumes could be considered a form of artificial intelligence. The problem is, even if "AI" and "use" are defined very strictly -- which it would be helpful for Qobuz to do to reduce ambiguity that as an unintended consequence could work against them -- practically-speaking it may prove largely unenforceable, depending on whatever it is they're trying to prevent. Unless they decide to silence Qobuz output if there is any chance AI might be listening nearby.

 

Perhaps this change was motivated by reports of Apple and Spotify (and maybe everyone else) leveraging AI functionality to turbocharge the capabilities of their content services, which becomes quite straightforward as AI is becoming commoditized?

[Balthazar B]

1 hour ago, David Craff said:

 

Hi, 

I don't know if this is possible or how to do it. We are not the most important choice for users, so I believe Google would not accept this.

 

Regards

 

I think there are two main items that need to be done:

• Enable account linking such that Google accounts can be associated with Qobuz accounts. Then on the Qobuz end a device registered to a Google account (e.g., a Google Home speaker) can be enabled to play music for an authenticated user because the accounts are linked.
• Google would need to add Qobuz to the list of available music streaming services to be chosen as the default in the Google Home environment. The current list of available services includes Spotify, Deezer, Apple Music, YouTube, Pandora, and iHeartRadio. 
• I realize Qobuz is smaller than these others, but that should be more of a motivator than a constraint, wouldn't you agree? :)

It may end up being moot for me if I convert everything in my home automation managed environment to run via Home Assistant. Right now Qobuz functionality can be cobbled together using LMS, Music Assistant, or other approaches, and it would be even better to be able to do so through a more direct integration with Qobuz, as is possible with Spotify today.

[Balthazar B]

On 10/4/2023 at 1:19 PM, vsrrr said:

Hello @David Craff! Curious if it's possible to transfer my playlists to Qobuz without using a service like Tune My Music or Soundiiz.

 

My playlists are currently saved in CSV format with the following schema: title;artist;album;isrc

 

I'm curious about that as well, but AFAIK you'll need to use a service that leverages non-public APIs to populate libraries/playlists in Qobuz. As you're probably aware, most if not all of those services can import a CSV and use that data to generate the content in Qobuz.

[Balthazar B]

4 hours ago, vsrrr said:

I figure that these transfer services do not search for an exact artist-album-song match, they just search for the first result that matches the artist-song.... which means that they get the album wrong a lot.

ie: even if the original artist-album-song is: Roxy Music - Avalon - Avalon

the transferred artist-album-song will end up being Roxy Music - The Best of Roxy Music - Avalon 

 

I can't confirm it right now, but I think the same thing happens with Spotify and Apple Music. If song records are transferred between services -- usually as components of playlists -- it's only title and artist. I know I've had some studio songs that became live or rerecorded versions on the receiving service, using various transfer apps. And sometimes a few don't carry over at all, even though I know the same release and track exists on both services. So clearly the APIs and/or methods are maybe universally crude.

[Balthazar B]

Feature request

 

In the event Qobuz releases a Radio feature on their mobile apps, it would be very helpful to include a one-button Download function to be used with the selection of tracks assembled for that on-the-fly playlist. "Why?", you may ask.

• I'd like to take that playlist with me, either using Android Auto, or playing on earbuds while I'm walking around, and not be dependent on a mobile data connection, both for cost and reliability reasons. Other streaming services provide this capability.
• It makes it easier to go back and explore or favorite some of the tracks that come up. And depending on what the UI provides, it could make it easier to save the on-the-fly playlist as a static playlist afterwards.

To clarify "Radio feature", it's just the ability to select an artist, album or track and build an on-the-fly playlist, which could utilize a number of factors (including "mood", "style", "era", "associated artists", etc.) as elements of the tracks selected for the playlist. In one form or other, Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, Deezer, and other services have a feature like this, though the overall quality of execution varies considerably between providers.

[Balthazar B]

3 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

The race is neck and neck between Qobuz Connect and Spotify HiFi.

 

If this is true, I hope it's going to be a photo finish.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/3/24147887/spotify-hifi-lossless-audio-music-streaming-ui-leak