Qobuz


Qobuz is a French commercial music streaming and downloading service. It was founded in 2007 by Yves Riesel and has expanded to a limited range of overseas markets, including the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and Spain. It launched in the US in May 2019. It offers a tiered subscription service and, similar to its competitor Tidal, does not provide free-of-charge streaming other than for a trial period.
At the end of 2015, after a period of financial uncertainty, Qobuz attracted a new investor which allowed the service to continue operating.
Qobuz is the first music service in the world to offer 24-Bit Hi-Res files for streaming to its Qobuz Sublime and Qobuz Studio subscribers.

Services

Qobuz currently offers four music streaming services: Qobuz Premium, Qobuz HiFi, Qobuz Studio and Qobuz Sublime+. The streaming service can be used via the web-based Qobuz Player, or by using the Qobuz Desktop player which is available for Microsoft Windows and macOS. Qobuz also provides Android and iOS applications, as well as Sonos support.
Qobuz offers digital music streaming in CD quality. Qobuz and Tidal are the only generally available CD quality streaming services. True third-party HRA support for Qobuz is provided by Sonic Studio's and Audirvana's native cross–platform applications. Qobuz started supporting the Roon music player in January 2019. These three products provide delivery of uncompressed Qobuz audio streams to the desktop at greater than or equal to "Red Book" quality, up to 192 kHz/24 bit, depending on the title selected and what sample rate and bit depth is available on Qobuz.
Qobuz also provides a digital music downloading service, offering all downloads in CD-quality as well as some in "Hi-Res" quality.
The company has a partnership with the British classical music magazine Gramophone, under which the magazine uses Qobuz to publish recommended playlists.