Some streaming apps require a subscription to rent access to their music catalog. Other high res music sites give you one-time access to high res downloads. Qobuz has a subscription tier for those who want access to the entire catalog, but it also sells DRM-free music that you can access anywhere, any time — on your phone, iPad, computer, you name it. And you can re-download your music in case your files are misplaced. I have found Qobuz to be hands down the best place to legally purchase high resolution music. The price point is higher than non-high-res sites like the iTunes Music Store, but you’re paying for the added benefit of lossless/high res. Only drawback as of now is that there is no support (yet) for Dolby Atmos or other Spatial Audio technology, likely because those are proprietary formats and are therefore not DRM-free. (And Spatial Audio is not lossless or high res either. Yet.)

I have been buying Hi-Res music from Qobuz from the beginning, even before they were acquired by Xandrie. Their services were always somewhat buggy, but the Windows downloader worked just fine. Lately things have changed for the worst: I always purchase my songs in the maximum available resolution but I have noticed that when I download those files on the iOS app sometimes the resolution I purchased is not available for download. Another issue is that there are so many glitches with their recently revamped downloader for Windows that downloading a couple albums took me a whole day. Basically downloads start, then errors for some tracks appear and basically you are stuck. Another very annoying thing is that now all downloads are in FLAC format, and if you choose WAV the FLAC file is installed in a temporary folder (labelled "original") and then gets converted to WAV. This process is extremely slow on a laptop. Honestly, I like Qobuz, I have over 2000 tracks that I purchased from them, but I will not be buying anymore from them until they solve these issues. I have zero interest in streaming, I buy songs to download them, and they seem to be focusing mostly on streaming lately…

It’s a huge breath of fresh air after listening to Apple Music’s low quality codec and Spotify’s crushed tracks for so long. I nearly forgot that music is supposed to sound good. I got so frustrated that Apple makes it impossible to actually listen to the lossless format without buying a bunch of external workarounds, but luckily that frustration led me here. Sound is awesome and app is inviting enough to work with. I hope they get more classical/traditional music from around the world and have it indexed properly by people who are familiar with artists/rep/titles within the respective traditions—or better yet curated playlists the same way they have it for indie, jazz, etc. There seems to be some opportunity for growth there, but I’m relatively new to the app so some of the issue just may be my fluidity within it, though there isn’t almost any of the quintessential recordings of the 20th century masters of shakuhachi honkyoku, a very developed flute tradition in Japan with centuries of refinement, for example.