Qobuz The European alternative to Apple Music / Tidal

Qobuz is a French HiFi music streaming service from Xandrie SA based in Pantin near Paris, founded in 2007. The platform specializes in 24-bit Hi-Res streaming (FLAC, lossless) and offers over 100 million songs in maximum audio quality. In addition to streaming, Qobuz sells digital downloads in CD and Hi-Res quality as owned property (not just a streaming license). Editorial content such as interviews, reviews, and curated playlists complement the offering.

Qobuz is operated by French Xandrie SA, which belongs to the Thebaud group. For content delivery, Qobuz uses Amazon services (AWS) and Akamai as CDN. Xandrie SA states in its privacy policy that a service provider outside the EU is used for data hosting. The company itself is subject to French and EU data protection law. The cloud provider for content storage is a US company (Amazon).

Qobuz consistently focuses on audiophile quality: 24-bit Hi-Res streaming is standard, recommendations are made by human curators (not algorithms), and an editorial magazine section with reviews and interviews complements the platform. As the only service, Qobuz sells digital downloads as owned property, not just as a streaming license. Qobuz is also the only music streaming service that publicly discloses its average per-stream compensation.