Qobuz Sees Subscriber Surge Amid Spotify's Controversies

When Dan Mackta, Qobuz’s New York–based managing director, was looking for musicians to endorse the music streaming service after its US launch in 2019, he tapped up a friend—the manager of the Flaming Lips.

It was mid-pandemic levels of tricky.

“I flew to Oklahoma to shoot with Wayne Coyne,” Mackta says. “He shows up wearing one of those helmets, with the ventilation system to protect you, a metallic puffer jacket and big silver moon boots.” They couldn’t hear a word Coyne said in the helmet, so the frontman went home and shot the promo video himself: “How to pronounce this weird word ‘ko-buzz.’”

The Qobuz questions after “How do you say it?” are likely “Can I transfer my music library across?” and “Does it have everything?” The answers: yes and almost. Case in point: I recently switched to Qobuz, after nearly 20 years with Spotify. (Emotional.) I used a third-party service called Soundizz to transfer my songs; it took half an afternoon to port, with a more than 90 percent hit rate for my playlists.

One Million Club

I'm not alone, according to Mackta, who landed at Qobuz after years at major and indie record labels—2025 was a banner year for the 19-year-old company. Twelve months ago, Qobuz had around 500,000 subscribers. The French streamer had grown steadily since 2007, targeting “people who already knew what hi-res music was” with its 100 million–plus catalog of lossless CD-quality and 24-bit music.

The first winds of change arrived with Liz Pelly’s January 2025 book Mood Machine, which criticized Spotify’s business practices, featuring interviews with former employees and artists calling for fairer industry economics. As Mackta puts it, “This is not a music company; music was just a means to an end.” It renewed the scuttlebutt amongst artists about low payouts, and Qobuz’s daily US trial numbers started to pick up.

In mid-October, free-tier users started posting the ICE recruitment ads they saw on Spotify, which went viral on TikTok and Instagram Reels. “The day that story broke was our biggest day ever in the US,” Mackta says. Qobuz saw another spike in numbers, plateauing until Spotify’s own marketing convinced more people to switch in early December. “The second best day was Spotify Wrapped,” he says. Qobuz hoovered up everyone from audiophiles and “conscious consumers” responding to boycotts like Death to Spotify and Indivisible, to K-pop superfans searching for high-quality downloads.

Qobuz now has 1.2 million active monthly users, and its streaming revenue shot up 45.7 percent in 2025, compared to 8.8 percent growth in overall paid music streaming. Around a third of its revenue now comes from the US, its biggest market. Those are still teeny numbers next to Spotify (293 million paid subscribers) and Apple Music (more than 100 million). “For us to say we're gonna compete with Apple or Amazon,” Mackta says, “we might as well say we're trying to launch a rocket.” Qobuz’s goal is to reach 1 percent of the paid streaming market; under its French CEO Denis Thébaud, it expects to reach profitability by March 2027.

Higher Payouts

For years, Qobuz had popped up in posts by artists bemoaning being paid “a quarter of a cent per stream” on big platforms versus “a much higher number” on Qobuz. Wading into digital payment structures to labels and rights holders can get murky, with low transparency, vague payout ranges and, same as it ever was, conflicts between labels and artists. But in multiple evaluations and artist anecdotes, Qobuz has the highest pay-per-stream, edging out rival hi-res music service Tidal and, in some cases, paying out five to six times as much as Spotify.

An average per-stream rate is an artificial metric, which doesn’t reflect how everyone gets paid. But in March 2025, the company released that all-important number, verified by an independent auditor: Qobuz pays an average of $0.01873 per stream, or $18.73 per 1,000 streams. “We knew we had the best number so we thought we’ll just lay it down,” Mackta says. “Anyone else want to tell us what theirs is? They don’t.” Spotify’s average per-stream range is around $0.003 to $0.005 per stream, or $3 to $5 per 1,000 streams.

When you’re listening to Qobuz, it really is just music. No free tier, which means no ads. No podcasts, audiobooks, or videos in your feed, so no news when you’re just looking for tunes. It’s music streaming, paid music downloads, and music editorial. More than 100,000 people have joined the Qobuz Club message boards, with a $60-per-year VIP pass offering perks and priority service.

In February, Qobuz published its AI Charter, setting out red lines on prohibiting and removing 100 percent generative AI “content,” which has washed into streaming services at an industrial scale in recent years. This charter outlines how Qobuz uses AI—for admin work, translation, customer support—and what it will not allow, including scraping its catalog to train AI models.

The team developed a machine-learning algorithm to detect 100 percent generative AI music tracks; first analyzing new submissions and combing through audio analysis of the “last few years” of the back catalog. “It’s outrageous, as much as 40 percent of the tracks being delivered [use generative AI],” Mackta says. “We’ve started seeing some ‘labels’ where 100 percent is AI garbage. Ban this and screw those guys.” Qobuz plans to roll out in-app AI music tagging this summer, at the release level, while playing “whack-a-mole” with fraudsters flooding the zone.

Aside from system stability and security, considering the now-doubled user base, Qobuz has been playing catch-up on features we now demand from streaming services. Users might find that some older hi-fi systems aren’t compatible—Qobuz Connect is adding partners “all the time,” with Cambridge Audio recently expanding its lineup. Its CarPlay interface just got a makeover, and the company is working to get a native Qobuz app into more connected cars this year.

An updated Qobuz player is coming “soon” and will include synchronized lyrics, as well as quick access to album credits and a new button to pop up the artist’s other releases, records from the same label, and recommendations based on the track you’re listening to. Later in 2026, alongside a Rough Trade partnership, we’ll see more platform music exclusives, formal artist endorsements, and projects across hip-hop, rock, blues, and folk.