- cross-posted to:
- music@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- music@lemmy.world
You must log in or # to comment.
It seems like the choice was not made out of mallice, but legal obligations (reply stolen from reddit):
2026-09-21 - Update by Qobuz support: Hello, thank you for your message.
Following the recent changes made to the QBZ repository, we’d like to provide some clarifications regarding this decision.
QBZ was an independent application developed by a third party and was not developed, maintained or distributed by Qobuz. We know that QBZ was a really convenient solution for our Linux users.
However, we have strict legal and contractual obligations toward rights holders to ensure fair artist compensation. Unfortunately, the app placed Qobuz in a non-compliant position, which left us no choice but to ask the developer to stop its distribution.
The use of the unoffical app unfortunately leads to streams not being counted with us and thus the artists end up empty-handed.
We completely understand that this situation is frustrating for the Linux community. This was a difficult decision, but it’s necessary to protect both artists and our platform.
We are actively working on releasing an official Linux application as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience and understanding in the meantime.
Kind regards,
Marina
Qobuz
I agree with the comments here, that this could have been handled better, providing an open API that ensures streams are counted, taking over or building on qbz to release their own client, etc. But I think this is not an issue with Qobuz, but moreso with the music industry.
Anyhow, I guess I’ll get a seedbox subscription instead now :/.
What the hell. So kill the one player working on Linux whilst offering no alternatives, especially as this player was not gaining any money? Qobuz had nothing to lose here, but now they’ve lost my subscription.
This is a bummer, I really like Qobuz but do not like using the web player, which doesn’t give me native controls or an easy workflow.
The Qobuz Mac client is kind of a hot mess, and Linux is missing. It would be nice if they’d hire passionate devs like this to work on improving the situation. I’m sure it would be a great synergy.
That’s what baffles me in this kind of situation. The dev basically did their job for them, and now they’re leaving happy paying Linux subscribers out in the cold. Just hire the clearly passionate and talented developer and make the product offering that much better!
Now when I look for Qobuz apps for Linux, all I’m seeing are weird little download utilities to essentially steal music from the service. Gabe Newell sure had it right.
Yup, cool that this can just exist https://github.com/vitiko98/qobuz-dl
I guess qbz got too many users and visibility that it started to show in some meeting.
I’m curious what it’ll mean for this one: https://openrepos.net/content/munkstolen/fiat-pons-native-qobuz-client
Says it’s built on a qbz-qobuz rust library, so if that’s from the same qbz developer and the library got pulled, it’ll make things difficult moving forward for them.
Big suck! I just discovered QBZ last month. As a Linux user it fixed my problem of there not being a Linux client and their Web player being absolute shit.
Oh well, I guess that’s the end of my subscription.
Does somebody still have it cloned? If it’s FOSS, we can just bring it back up, right? 😢
There were still a couple of up-to-date repos out there as of yesterday. They may have all been scrubbed by now.
I thought Qobuz was cool
Okay then, wow. Glad I didn’t go through with my transition from Spotify to Qobuz. Fuck those guys. Both of them actually, but Spotify has more of the music I require. 🤷♂️ What’s a guy to do.
Might be a time to build your own music collection.
It takes some work, yes, but the result is very satisfying, and it doesn’t even have to take as much time or drive space as you imagine.
Pretty much everything else is handled already. You can:
- Have brilliant personalized music recommendations (thanks, ListenBrainz and last.fm!)
- Download dozens of millions of tracks, including very obscure ones, in two clicks (thanks, Soulseek and its amazing clients like Nicotine+, also, support indie music producers on Bandcamp and take their music from there - your money there will go much longer way!)
- Automatically add all metadata to a song, even if you have none, not even its name, in which case the sound itself will be matched against the database (thanks, Picard!)
- Host your music somewhere to build your streaming service for a lower price than your Spotify subscription (thanks, Navidrome/Subsonic/Jellyfin/Koel/…!)…
- …or just dump it into your device’s memory and choose one of the million players out there, some of them laid out in a way very familiar to streaming service users.
All of the tools (well, maybe not hosting a music server, but it’s not too hard either) are absolutely grandma-level, and you can easily install and operate them seamlessly.
And on top of it all, of course, is that no one will take your music or the ways to play it away from you. No item will ever be removed from your library (unless you yourself do it). No player will stop working with it. It’s all yours, and it’s just a bunch of .mp3/.flac files that will outlive us all.
Give it a few evenings, and you’ll never need to worry about enshittification of streaming services again. Genuinely recommending it as someone who didn’t pay a dime to streaming services in 4 years now.
it doesn’t even have to take as much time or drive space as you imagine.
I follow almost 2,000 artists on Spotify 😅
Is there a way I can probe this library you speak of so I can make sure it has all my shit before I devote all this effort and drive space?
Sure, just download Nicotine+ or another Soulseek client and search for the artists you’re most interested in. You won’t be able to “import library” or probe 2000 artists at once, but still, it will give you an idea. Since Soulseek is a P2P network, ideally you should keep port 2234 (or whatever you set in the client) open to see all content it has to offer. But if you can’t, no worries, you’ll still see plenty!
Thanks, I might give this a shot. My whole family is on Spotify though so it’ll be a tough sell. We use it in order to play certain tabletop games as well, with printed links that open songs on Spotify. 😅
But this could be a fun experiment for just me.
You never know!
My girlfriend asked me to download her collection, too. She still didn’t give up streaming, but knowing her favs will never be taken away from her gives her some peace of mind.
Yeah that’s a nice aspect to it, for sure. Like that band that took away all their music from Spotify in protest, King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard.
Tidal and Apple Music offer high-res audio (or whatever it is called) too, if that’s what interested you about Qobuz.
It’s one of the things, yeah. I went through the Tidal trial period as well, and there were significant gaps in their library as well, with music missing that I really can’t go without.
And Apple… Well… No thank you.
I appreciate you giving me those tips though, thank you. 🫶
I understand the hate for Apple but depending on where you live and how cheap you can get the subscription Apple Music (aside from Bandcamp of course) can be the one that pays out the most to the artists per stream. It’s a per country, per market situation also in the Philippines Youtube Music pays close to what Apple pays per stream even though globally they pay the least.
For me it’s mostly about the library. If it doesn’t have the music I want to listen to, I have no reason to subscribe. I really, really wish Qobuz or Tidal had the library that Spotify does for my music taste. It’s a shame, but the bitter reality for me.
What even happened? The dev didn’t really explain the reasoning behind this decision, just that it happened.
Qobuz told them that their api is private and only available to paying developers. I assume qobuz threatened legal action.
Well that sucks. They should be so happy that their API is being used on a platform where they don’t currently have their own applications.
Strawberry still supports Qobuz AFAIK
