squirrel
Buy EuropeanInteresting numbers from Qobuz, a french music streaming service. But the press releases have slightly different emphasis on being european in the different languages.
The first paragraph of this press release in german reads (translated):
Qobuz proves that a European alternative that relies on sound quality and human curation can also find its audience in a mass market dominated by tech giants and achieve a positive balance.
In the french and english version it reads:
The success story of an independent French company that has become a global player alongside the music streaming giants.
It seems they only emphasize being european in the german press release, it's missing from the english and french version.
It seems they only emphasize being european in the german press release, it's missing from the english and french version.
I read that less as downplaying European heritage to a global audience and more as downplaying their French identity to a German audience
I tried Qobuz streaming but for a product that advertises discoverability it does a very poor job of it. Bandcamp has far better discoverability UX.
Music purchases on Qobuz on the other hand are chef’s kiss. They have almost everything apart from the rare artist who ONLY distribute through Spotify for whatever reason.
They're humble about it, but the revenue share that they pay to rights holders (which is then paid to artists) dwarfs every other big player in the streaming industry. Based qobuz.
Does it? My understanding is that it's approximately 70% of revenue which is in line with basically every other player in the space.
If that's the case then they're simply making more revenue per stream and clearly users are still on board so end result is qobuz wins users win and artists win
Edit: I say this because their "artists get X amount per stream on average" value is far higher than other players in the industry
That might just be a function of popularity and scale though. Spotify has 750M active users. Qobuz (by this article) reached 1.2M in 2025.
They might be paying more from the goodness of their hearts or they might be paying more because they have no leverage. As the artist, if you get roughly 70x more streamings but each streaming is half the price, you're gonna get more money obviously.
Sure but evidently it is proving to be a profitable and sustainable business model
Able to comment on availability of music on the platform? I'd hope they have pretty much everything if they're paying more than others but it's never that simple.
I switched from Spotify to Qobuz and I've only missed two artists in my regular mix of ~30. And for one of them only their old albums are missing, the new ones are uploaded. They probably changed labels.
I've emailed some labels to notify them about specific albums not being available on Qobuz. It worked one time and the album is now available. Most of the time it takes only one click at their digital distributor to opt-in to Qobuz.
Everything I haven't been able to find on bandcamp has been on qobuz and vice versa - I dont use the streaming section of either but I assume the catalogues between their download store and streaming are the same. Qobuz is pretty good coverage!
For fucks sake. ... French company ..., France is in Europe, it is implied that a French company is European.
I know. "French company" is present in all three languages of the PR. My point is: "European" is only included in the german version, and I find that odd or at least interesting to note.
Disclaimer: I mostly agree with Daniel Ek's political stances and I'm especially a big fan of him putting significant capital into defence industry. And I like that Spotify is from Sweden and is still mostly owned by swedes. Just to say that the following is not politically motivated.
I just switched over to Qobuz because I got fed up with Spotify's convoluted UI due to it trying to cram in podcasts and audiobooks in there in addition to just music.
It's pretty cool. The QBZ client from Flatpak can output bit perfect audio to my DAC with just a few tweaks that the client itself helpfully guides through. QBZ UX is way better than Spotify for mindful listening: it guides towards listening to whole albums instead of badly created mixes.
I tested sound quality with Michael Jackson's Smooth Criminal. Was way better on Qobuz for reasons that probably have more to do with mastering than actual sound quality of the client. Because, you know, human ears just don't.
I've missed one album so far: Benedictum's Uncreation isn't there, but it is in Spotify. Oh well.
Likewise the political views of Spotify's CEO are not too problematic for me - those I know of. Defense spending is sadly necessary, at least the money stays in the EU.
What made me switch was that ICE was allowed to play recruitment ads. Granted as a premium user, I would never hear them, but it is the principal.
What made me stay was the quality of the streams. The difference in depth can easily heard, espescially on good stereo speakers or on headphones. The focus on albums, I've grown to like. I still do miss Spotify's weekly playlist. Qobuz' just isn't as good, it only reflects your recent streams. However that is made up by the curated playlists. I've found so many artitsts I've never heard of. It's like music radio shows used to be like.
Edit: however the qbz app does drain a lot of power
Are you able to migrate Spotify playlists? I've cancelled my Spotify premium after more than ten years with them and on the hunt for a new provider. Got podcasts sorted already and I like their per-stream money for artists so very tempted.
Qobuz suggests using a 3rd party service: https://help.qobuz.com/en/articles/10156-can-i-import-my-favourites-and-playlists-from-another-platform
