[IDEA] Streaming from Qobuz native app

[TheOldPresbyope]

Thank you for your support Tim.

From first analysis I think username/password authentication should be possible, like with pleezer. That is the goal.

Here's hoping you're correct!

Regards,
Kent

[roderickvd]

Kent, thank you too for your donation!

Yesterday I got email/password authentication working in plaintext. I think I see how I can send the credentials more securely as a hash. I intend to look at that this evening.

When that works, it will take some time to nail down the Connect protocol.

[the_bertrum]

I've spent a few hours digging into Qobuz Connect and it looks doable to build a headless player for it - along the lines of librespot or pleezer.

No promises yet, but I'll start exploring it further. If you'd like to support the effort, I'd appreciate sponsorship at https://github.com/sponsors/roderickvd. It'll help cover the Qobuz subscription and tools needed for protocol analysis and development.

I've thrown a few pennies in the pot.  I don't use Qobuz, nor do I expect to in the future, but I think it important that as many "connect" system as possible are out there.  It's good for everyone and hopefully the streamers themselves will realise it soon and do the development so we don't have to.

[roderickvd]

Really appreciate it Robert. Thank you.

[SnagBreac]

Sent a few cents your way Roderick. Many thanks for your work. Have recently moved to Qobuz not sure if i will stay but supporting these features makes it easier to.

[roderickvd]

Thank you for your donation.

Short update: yesterday evening I’ve succeeded in authenticating with the web socket that sends and receives all Qobuz Connect messages. This means that beyond authentication, I’ve also managed to capture the basic message format of the Qobuz Connect protocol.

Meanwhile, your donations have enabled me to invest in a one-year Proxyman license which is an immensely useful tool to help me with the protocol analysis.

[Onionhead]

Good on you. Sent some bucks to get you closer to goal. Not a music streaming service subscriber but sure seems like a good challenge and possibly well recieive by this community. Best of luck.

[roderickvd]

That is very kind of you, thank you.

A bit of background and way forward: what I’ve been doing is copying pleezer and adapting it to Qobuz. First as a proof of concept with a few hacks here and there, and now that it seems very feasible, proper robust adaptation. When I built pleezer, I took all my lessons learned from librespot into account to make it more robust. That is paying off here, because indeed the code base is so flexible that it’s not so difficult to change over.

I am now at the point that I really need to start getting the protocol messages exactly right so I can receive and send them. Initial analysis shows there are a *lot* of messages and I need to get them right byte by byte. This is just a time-consuming process. Fun, but time-consuming, with the laptop on the couch in the few hours I have between bedtime of the kids and my own every day :-)

Right now the code is not yet shared publicly, because there are quite a bit of Deezer remnants in it still. When I have removed all of them, and have gotten a few basic messages handled robustly, then I’ll open up a public repo.

In the meantime, I’ll take suggestions on a proper name. I’ve got a few in mind but let me know yours!

[Snoil]

"qobuz connect" would be great. Thanks for the effort.
I guess naming it "qonnect" already crossed your mind...

[Magic66]

Name suggestion: BuzLink or Qolink

Regards
Erik