I switched to Qobuz

I've been on Apple Music literally since the first day it started. I've loved Apple Music ever since and I have no real issues with them. However, since I've been migrating away from all things American Tech, I decided that it should be replaced. Enter Qobuz.

Qobuz is a European company, which means it falls under GDPR, and that's a good thing. Now, you may be thinking why that is important when it comes to music and, frankly, I can't tell you that offhand as I'm not well-versed enough in the legalities to say whether or not it makes a difference. However, one thing I have learned over the last few years is that rights are very, very, important. The more rights I have, the better off I am. American companies basically give you no rights. Not really, at any rate. They give you what they want to give you to placate you. That's not the case with European laws. Europe makes laws to give you rights and the companies have to obey those - hence why American companies are constantly being sued in Europe (because they're not willing to give those rights to you).

So, I switched to Qobuz this morning. Apparently, their classical catalog is excellent and, from my import (more on that), I can see that this is entirely correct. I get a free month to try it out. It's a touch more expensive than Apple Music, but it's a lot more in depth as well. And it also pays the artists far more fairly than Apple does, so I'm all for that as well.

I imported my entire library from Apple Music with Soundiiz and it went extremely smoothly. I opted for a one month fee of €5 which, to me, seems like a bargain to get off of Apple Music. It was an excellent experience. I'm actually very happy I didn't do it some more convoluted way because this only took about ten minutes of my time, most of that just watching the progress bars fill up on a nice looking interface. When it was done, it emailed me and it also gave me a full exported list of everything it had matched and not matched.

All in all, I can't say that the experience was bad in any way whatsoever. So far, I'm liking the Qobuz interface. I'll give a few days before I cancel Apple Music - I have a few days to decide as it renews every month around the 15th, so I have plenty of time.

I know that IDAGIO is supposedly the best classical service around, but I can't pay for two full services for music right now and I listen to more than just classical. Perhaps one day soon, I'll get them as well. However, for now, Qobuz appears to be more than excellent enough to enjoy what I want, when I want, with all of my rights, as well as give Apple less and less of my money every month.

I'd say it's a pretty good start to an early morning.