Qobuz review

Streaming services have been dominant for a few years now, and it seems the new craze is high-resolution audio streaming. MP3 files just aren’t cutting it for some people, and plenty of consumers demand CD-quality playback at a minimum. Qobuz is one of a few options for lossless streaming, competing with Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music HD, Tidal, and Deezer. Let’s see how Qobuz stacks up and if spending all your beans on it is worth it.

Editor’s note: this Qobuz review was updated on December 12, 2025, to address changes in pricing.

What is Qobuz?

Qobuz is a French streaming service that specializes in high-resolution and lossless audio. It’s the only streaming service to offer both high-resolution streaming and the opportunity to purchase high-resolution music downloads from its online store.

Qobuz also offers editorial content, such as articles and videos about the music industry. You can search for news articles and Panoramas (articles about specific artists, labels, genres, and more) the same way you can search for music. Rather than relying on algorithmic playlists or recommendations, as Spotify does, Qobuz workers recommend music to its listeners. This sounds nice, but you might find it harder to stumble across new music that you actually enjoy because of this manual process.

Who should get Qobuz?

Anyone who misses the old days of owning music but doesn’t want to miss out on lossless audio or on-demand music streaming should consider Qobuz.

What countries support Qobuz?

Qobuz is available in 26 countries, including Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the USA. If you create your account while residing in one of these countries, you’ll still be able to use your Qobuz account if you take a vacation to, say, Canada, or another country where Qobuz is unavailable.

What audio quality does Qobuz support?

Qobuz supports a range of audio quality options. The maximum quality is 24-bit/192kHz lossless files. While these are extremely high-quality audio files, there are some things to consider before you dive into Qobuz or a similar service. Lossless audio files take up way more space on your device than standard downloaded MP3 files, and streaming them via your cellular network can get costly.

What’s more, you need the proper equipment to appreciate these files fully, and even with the right gear, the quality difference is subtle. Most listeners will likely only notice differences between MP3 and Hi-Fi quality.

What is the difference between Hi-Fi and Hi-Res?

Hi-Fi audio refers to CD-quality lossless, 16-bit/44.1kHz audio. Hi-Res audio refers to studio-quality, 24-bit/192kHz audio; you get access to this no matter which subscription tier you register for.

Qobuz has over 100 million tracks and albums in Hi-Res quality. When you purchase tracks, you can select your preferred audio quality, ranging from 128-320kbps lossy MP3 files to 24-bit/192kHz quality FLAC files. The quality options available for download depend on the specific release, and high-quality files cost more than low-quality files.

How does Qobuz work?

The MacOS app lags quite a bit when loading different pages, even when my internet connection is decent. The search functionality isn’t great, especially on the Android app. Searching for the song Digger by Great Grandpa by typing “digger great grandpa” produces nothing. The Android app forces you to search within categories of Artists, Releases, Tracks, and more; while this can help narrow down a search, it’s not nearly as intuitive as the general and lyric searches Spotify and YouTube Music offer.

Once you locate the desired song or album, Qobuz displays the maximum audio streaming quality. You can play songs on demand, add them to a queue, set them to play next, favorite them, and add them to custom playlists.

When you start a new playlist, you can give it a title and a description, set it to private or public for sharing, and make it collaborative. However, Qobuz isn’t quite as much like a social media platform as some other streaming services: you can’t search for users on the database, and you can only follow someone’s playlist if they send you a direct link.

What kind of discovery features does Qobuz have?

Qobuz employees make editorial playlists based on Hi-Res songs, different genres, new releases, and more, but it doesn’t offer any algorithmic features. If you want personalized suggestions, you’ll have to look beyond Qobuz.

Qobuz artists can publish playlists of music that inspire them, and artists often write lengthy descriptions to give fans some insight. If you’re viewing an artist’s release, you can also see a list of releases Qobuz deems as similar. You can sort through the discovery tab by genre, and inform Qobuz of your preferred genres. You can also go to a particular record label’s page to browse all of an artist’s relevant releases under that label.

How big is the Qobuz music catalog?

The Qobuz catalog offers over 100 million tracks. This is comparable to Spotify and Apple Music, but the type of music varies slightly. Qobuz features many popular artists, from classic rock stars to rising indie-folk artists. However, there isn’t nearly as wide a selection compared to more popular services. If you have niche tastes, Qobuz may not satisfy your needs.

Does Qobuz offer podcasts?

Qobuz has previously resisted calls to implement podcasts into its platform. However, the company is teaming up with indie music mag Drowned in Sound to produce six months of artist-first podcasts next year. The partnership will run from December 2025 until June 2026, with Qobuz serving as title sponsor for the podcast. Drowned In Sound will release weekly companion playlists on Qobuz.

Does Qobuz let you download music?

Qobuz lets you download music in different ways. First, you can purchase and then download music from the Qobuz store. Qobuz then organizes your purchases under the “Purchases” tab. You can also download these songs, store them on your laptop, and listen to them on any device.

You can download songs for offline listening as imports and cached music. This is how Spotify downloads work—you don’t need to pay for offline access to these tracks because you don’t actually own the music.

What is cached music?

When you listen to a song while online, Qobuz automatically downloads it onto your device for offline listening in the same quality you listened to it in—this is called cached music. Cached music can only be accessed by going to the media player’s sidebar menu, selecting “Playing history,” and playing the song there. You can delete an item from your cache by selecting the relevant option from the song menu. Similarly, if you wish to disable the cache, you can do so on a smartphone. However, the desktop app only allows you to reduce the cache storage up to 1GB.

How do you download music for offline listening?

You can manually download songs for offline listening. However, if you import a song on your desktop app, it doesn’t automatically import on your smartphone app, and vice versa.

Instead, on Android, select the vertical ellipsis in the bottom corner of the media player, then click “Import in quality …”. Then, choose your preferred streaming quality, and the song will appear in your library. To import an entire album, go to the album’s information page with the complete tracklist and click the “down arrow” icon next to the “heart” icon.

With the Android app, when in your Offline Library, there’s a subpage called Genres where you can select various genres and then click “Validate.” When you choose to validate your genre selection, Qobuz creates a temporary filter that shows downloaded songs of the genres you selected.

Can you listen to local media files?

Qobuz does not support local media files. The only local media files that can be played with Qobuz are those that you purchased and then downloaded from the Qobuz store.

Does Sonos have Qobuz integration?

If you have a Sonos speaker or home audio system with Sonos S2, you can stream Qobuz directly through it. Sonos S2 products stream audio up to 24-bit/48kHz Hi-Res FLAC, and if you attempt to stream a track with a sample rate above 48kHz, it will switch it to 16-bit/44.1kHz lossless CD-quality.

If you plan to vacation in a country that doesn’t offer Qobuz, you won’t be able to stream your Qobuz files to your Sonos system. Not that many people have to worry about this currently.

How much do Qobuz subscriptions cost?

Qobuz offers a few payment plans. Qobuz Studio is the most basic plan, costing $12.99/month. It includes a one-month free trial, and you can cancel before the billing period begins if you don’t like it. Alternatively, you can sign up for Studio’s annual subscription for a discount and pay all at once (which breaks down to $10.83/month).

Qobuz Sublime is also an annual payment costing $179.99/year, which breaks down to $14.99/month. This tier gets you a bit more, like exclusive discounts (up to 60% off) when purchasing certain Hi-Res tracks or albums from the Qobuz store. If you intend to buy a lot of music through Qobuz, then this makes sense. However, you don’t need a Qobuz subscription to shop at the store. There is no free trial for the Sublime tier.

Qobuz also offers a Duo variant for each plan, allowing you and a partner to stream music separately with one subscription. This costs $17.99/month or $14.99/month if paying annually for Studio, and $22.49 for Sublime. Students can also sign up for a Studio membership for just $4.99/month. Families of up to six people can create up to six individual accounts, all under the same bill. The Qobuz Studio and Sublime annual family plans cost $17.99/month.

How does Qobuz support artists?

Of all the streaming services out there, Qobuz pays artists the most per stream, though it still doesn’t compare to directly supporting an artist through something like Bandcamp. Qobuz has also partnered with live events, such as the Brick Lane Jazz Festival in London. As part of the festival, the company offered an exclusive compilation album of performances.

Qobuz’s artist pages display descriptions, awards, and releases. It also makes it easy to find the production and writing credits for each song an artist releases. Another way Qobuz supports artists is through promoting artist discovery with artist-made public playlists. These playlists get advertised on the discover page.

Should you get Qobuz?

While the Qobuz user interface has a long way to go before anyone calls it intuitive, it’s a great option for a certain type of music lover. The ability to stream and download high-resolution music is desirable, though the music selection isn’t as mainstream as more popular streaming services.

It has other significant drawbacks, like a lack of personalized music suggestions and social features. Plenty of people don’t want or care for such features, though, so that may even be a “plus” depending on your priorities. We recommend you give the Qobuz free trial a whirl before committing to anything long-term.

If you’re unimpressed by Qobuz, check out Amazon Music. It offers similar features to Qobuz and is much more affordable.

Frequently asked questions