Looking for volunteers to test a future “Purchased Music” feature

[vicrodh]

Hey everyone,

I’m considering adding a new feature to QBZ -requested by users, more than once-: access to your purchased music on Qobuz directly from QBZ.

Here’s the catch, and why I’m posting this first instead of just shipping it

Qobuz does not support music purchases in Mexico, so I literally cannot buy anything myself to test this feature end-to-end. The API endpoints exist and are documented, but from my account they always return empty results. That means I can write the code, wire the UI, and handle edge cases… but I can’t validate real-world data without help.

I could push this blindly, but that would almost guarantee broken behavior and a flood of issues that are impossible for me to reproduce locally. I’d rather not do that hehe

What I’m looking for

I’m looking for a small number of volunteers who:

• Have purchased music on Qobuz (albums and/or tracks)
• Are willing to run a test build
• Can report whether:

• Purchased albums/tracks appear correctly
• Metadata looks sane (artwork, titles, artists, etc.)
• Anything crashes, looks wrong, or behaves unexpectedly

No payment handling, no funny business, what I only will be needing is controlled log pastes (always visible to you) and screenshots of teh UI

Why this matters

This feature is highly requested, and I’d love to ship it, but without testers, it would be a pure blind-fold release. I want to make sure it’s solid before enabling it broadly.

If you’re interested, please reply here (or DM me if you prefer) with:

Your country/region

Whether you have purchased albums, tracks, or both

If there’s enough interest, I’ll proceed with the implementation and share testing instructions/builds.
If not, I’ll hold the feature until proper testing is possible.

Thanks for reading, and as always, appreciate the trust and feedback you all bring to this project

[jrgn9]

I would like to volunteer! I bought an album and a track to be able to help. From Norway

[ThaYke]

I just started using Qobuz. I'm not fully in, yet, but I test-bought one album. I guess, more will follow soon, and I'm willing to volunteer.

[fvlvivs]

I have purchased some albums, so glad to help.

[vicrodh]

Hey guys, I didn't forget about this, can you help me?
There's a pre-release that includes the shopping section, as I mentioned in this post. Most of it was done following the API and was completely blind, ha ha ha.

So all your comments are welcome.

1. In the Settings > Appearance section, there's a toggle to activate this section in the sidebar.

2. If something goes wrong, screenshots and videos help me, and capturing what happens in the terminal and console helps me even more. This isn't usually visible, but you can go to Settings. Here are the instructions to activate advanced logs.

I. Enable verbose logs

II. Test the feature

III. If it fails, please share the logs:

Thank you very much in advance for your help. As long as the folks at Qobuz continue to think that we in Latin America can't buy things and believe that I'm going to pay for releases with cactus and beans, I can't make purchases myself, so your rounds of testing will be very helpful in bringing this feature to light.

The pre-release: 1.1.15-rc-5

If you prefer to compile by yourself, clone the pre-release branch.

@jrgn9 @ThaYke @fvlvivs and everybody who want to test.

[jrgn9]

Any preference when it comes to package type? I am daily driving .deb, but if it is relevant I could test flatpak and AppImage instead.

[vicrodh]

I think is the same, deb and bin from the tarball are usually better. But the debug section is aimed to avoid that difference between distribution formats.

[vicrodh]

Hey guys, if anyone el ese wants to test this. I've pushed a new pre-release to test this. 1.1.15-rc-2 so, if want to test use this release.

If no enough quorum I'll send this feature to the freezer. :(

[jrgn9]

Only done a quick test, and it looks really good! I am currently trying out all functionality. Group, sort, filter and view works as expected. Need to try out download later, and follow the test checklist more thoroughly.

Is it okay with updates/notes here for stuff that is not bugs?

[vicrodh]

Absolutely, as I wrote in the issue page, basically you are my eyes for this feature. I've created a fake API to see how it looks but it will never be the same as the real one. So, please be my guest, share whatever you want.

[jrgn9]

I am not sure if this is intended behavior, but the toggle for verbose log, Qobuz link handler and show purchases is not persistent between application restarts. It seems like the other toggles are, as far as I can tell.

[jrgn9]

Another note which I am not sure if is intended or not:
If I download all three qualities to the same directory, the two FLAC qualities merge. And mp3 will place itself next to the FLAC files.

I guess people will choose different directories for different qualities themselves, so it is not a big deal. I can check how the official client deals with this

[jrgn9]

This is how the official client deals with installing all three qualities. And since download location is set globally, this is probably a scenario one easily can end up with

[jrgn9]

And not sure if it is intended:
If I go to my purchased album from "outside of" Purchases, I don't get any indication that the album is purchased. I checked in the official client, and it is not very clear there either. For a purchased album, if I mouse-over the buy icon, the help text will show "buy again" instead of "buy". And if I press the ellipsis, there is a "Download option" and if I click that I can choose between the qualities:

The official client handles downloads a bit weird, and it looks like shit imo. They get placed under the "Offline" tab. I get a red dot indicating that it is downloading, and I can go to Download queue to see progress:

I don't get a choice for where to download the music per release, there is only a global setting for where the music download directory should be. So this is only a global setting.

[jrgn9]

@vicrodh here is a screenshot of the official client

[jrgn9]

I am not able to actually test the sort function though, since I've only got one album and one track. I can try to buy a couple more tracks later to test track sorting. I don't have money to spend on albums right now, so that will have to wait.

[jrgn9]

If I download the same quality to the same directory, it will still download every file again. I can see both from the progress bar and from date modified that the files have been overwritten. Not sure if this is intended functionality or not

[jrgn9]

I'll leave the screenshots here too for visibility, so they don't just get buried in the rc-1 issue.

Purchases screen:

Purchased tracks:

Track search:

Track search with no results:

Album search:

Album search with no results:

Group: A-Z album:

All dropdowns in album (yes, if I click them one after one they stack like this)

Group: Artist and view: grid

Filters (valid filters - album should be listed)

Not valid filter (album should not be listed)

Track group off:

Track group album:

Track group artist:

Track group name A-Z:

Track valid filters (track should show)

Track invalid filters (track should not show):

Purchased album:

Quality dropdown menu:

Download in progress:

Finished mp3 download:

Album download single track:

Album single track finished:

Downloaded files (all three qualities to the same directory):

[ThaYke]

I'm giving the feature a try right now. At first sight, most things seem to work. However, if I download an album, go out of the "purchase" section and back in, there is no indication, whether the album is downloaded already. Pressing download redownloads the files. Also, if I press "add to local library" nothing seems to happen. As for the sort function : it seems to work fine.

[jrgn9]

Also noticed this. In the official client, there will be a green check mark for all tracks being downloaded whenever going to a downloaded album

[vicrodh]

Also noticed this. In the official client, there will be a green check mark for all tracks being downloaded whenever going to a downloaded album

Can you please share a screenshot of the purchase sections on the official app / web app?
Linux fanboy here, no Windows machines on my house and certainly I dont even know where my Macbook is hahaha

[jrgn9]

I have the official client installed with Bottles, wasn't too much of a hassle. This is a *nix household too. I can take screenshots if you are able to wait until tomorrow, maybe Monday

[vicrodh]

Hey guys, can you guys do another round of tests? 1.1.15-rc-3 is out right now.

[jrgn9]

Unfortunately, I don't have the time for a thorough test before Monday. I might be able to do a quick check tomorrow, but no promises

[ThaYke]

I'm not at home for a few days. I'll try to check it out, then.

[jrgn9]

Great work! Here is a quick rc3 feedback. I can create issues (if you want), provide logs and test more thoroughly tomorrow:

Shortcuts works as expected now! And label is now correct. I can still not see what the shortcut will be changed to before saving and going back. Customize shortcut screen disappears behind the control bar. Reset shortcuts almost not visible. Scrolling or resizing do not help:

Verbose log, show purchases and link handler toggle is not persistent after quit.

Track shows zero when entering purchases. Shows 1 when switching to track tab:

Track download works mostly as expected. Track doesn't start to play, and download button works. I can't seem to find any way to choose quality. Track is downloaded at FLAC 24-bit - 96 kHz/Artist/Album/01 - Title.flac. Don't know if that path is intentional? I would prefer artist/album/quality/tracks. Check mark shows that track is downloaded. It is persistent after restart (even though "view purchases" toggle in settings is not). No "add to local library" functionality like with album. Not sure if it is needed though? The green check mark persists even though I have deleted the track locally, and I am unable to download the track again. This also persists between restarts, so I can never download a track more than once.

Album download seems to work as expected. Same path as with tracks. If I download the same quality to the same directory, it will just overwrite all the files. Maybe give a warning that the files already exists? Progress bar persists when exiting and re-entering the album. Add to local library works, but it does not automatically refresh, so the album does not show up before manually refreshing. The progress bar with "download complete" never disappears, neither does "Add to local library", even after adding it. Check marks do not persist between restart. When switching quality, the check marks persists. I think it would make sense for the check marks to follow the quality, if that makes sense? Because the check marks persist between quality, I am unable to download only one track in mp3 if I have downloaded the whole album in flac for example. Or download a track in general if I have already downloaded the album/downloaded the track before.

Deleting locally, then refreshing local library now removes the album/track.

If I go to an album (outside of purchase) and press the ellipsis on a track, it does not disappear unless I press the same ellipsis again. It does seem to "timeout" and disappear after a few seconds.

Cover image does not disappear behind the sidebar anymore.

Open link from other services feature seems to work great! Have not been able to test it thoroughly yet. I know of a couple of possible gochas that I want to test but did not have time for.

Could not get qobuzapp:// to open from Vivaldi, but did not have time to try creating a .desktop file with mimetype.

[jrgn9]

Woah, nice work with Daily, Weekly, Fav and TopQ!

[jrgn9]

A different issue completely (I can create a issue on it tomorrow, for tracking) - It seems to me like the "More From Favorites" do not work as intended? In my list, there are two albums I recently added as favorite (both already favorite artists, and newly released albums), one album from a favorite artist which I added and removed from favorites, and lastly, an album I listened to a while back, but not marked as favorite artist nor album.

[jrgn9]

The expand arrow for Remote settings is not placed all the way to the right like the rest. Plex Connection has an expand arrow even though it is toggled off (it doesn't do anything, so not a problem really). And I feel like Composition is such an important setting that it should be its own category. Now it is a bit hidden under Appearance. Just my opinion though, it do make sense having it under Appearance too.

[jrgn9]

@vicrodh I have created issues for all these now. Sorry I did not have the time before. You probably didn't see my feedback here?

[jrgn9]

Some official client screenshots for how the purchase stuff looks

A purchasable album - Marked with the shopping bag icon:

Clicking purchase button opens the purchase screen. Other payment options sends me to https://www.qobuz.com/shopping-cart in browser with the album added in my shopping cart. The 1-click would just add it to my account directly I guess, but as I understand it requires me to have funds in my wallet.

For a purchased album, if I mouse-over the buy icon, the help text will show "buy again" instead of "buy". And if I press the ellipsis, there is a "Download option" and if I click that I can choose between the qualities:

Downloads get placed under the "Offline" tab. I get a red dot indicating that it is downloading, and I can go to Download queue to see progress:

A downloaded album/track have a check mark in the regular album page:

A downloaded album gets put in the offline section:

Purchases lists my purchased releases/tracks. Pressing them just sends me to the "regular" album page

[jrgn9]

@vicrodh Here are the screenshots from the official Qobuz client that you asked for