Qobuz is a music streaming service that prioritizes sound quality. It offers more than 100 million tracks in studio-quality and high-resolution formats—up to 24-bit/192 kHz—as well as CD quality (16-bit).
Through its Qobuz Connect system, the service is compatible with a wide range of high-fidelity equipment, such as Arcam, Denon, Klipsch, Onkyo, Sennheiser, Teufel, Audiolab, Bluesound, Hegel, Marantz, Monitor Audio, Samsung, and Technics.
It is available for PC, Mac, web player, and iOS and Android apps, and is already operational in 26 countries, including Spain, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States.
Qobuz: Payment Terms for Artists and Subscriptions
For artists, it publishes its rates transparently and avoids the free model that, on other services, reduces creators' income. They also remove background noise from podcasts to focus solely on the songs, and avoid constantly redirecting listeners to the most famous artists on social media, allowing emerging talent to have its own space.
As for available subscriptions, Qobuz offers the Studio and Sublime plans. Studio starts at 12.49 euros per month (with a discount if you pay for the full year and a special price for students) and provides ad-free access to the entire collection in 16- and 24-bit audio, along with editorial content and offline listening. Multi-user accounts cost around 16 euros per month. The Sublime plan includes all the features of Studio and, for an additional 4 euros per month, offers discounts of up to 60% on downloads—an incentive for those who prefer to store music locally. In fact, a 16-bit album stored locally may sound better than one stored on a server in 24-bit format.
The service thus presents itself as a good option for music lovers and audiophiles who want to incorporate streaming as another link in their Hi-Fi audio chain.
