Qobuz: a guide for independent artists

Qobuz is a fast-growing streaming platform that focuses on high-quality sound for its listeners.

Unlike many other streaming platforms, Qobuz doesn’t offer a free or ad-supported tier - which means payouts to artists are generally higher than many other platforms, at the expense of having a much smaller audience.

Given that, is Qobuz worth distributing to for independent artists? Is it a realistic competitor for Spotify, Apple Music, or Amazon Music? How should Qobuz fit into your release strategy?

If you’re a mid-level independent artist looking for opportunities for growth, this article will answer all of those questions - so that you can determine whether Qobuz is a good fit for your music.

‍

What is Qobuz?

Qobuz is a music streaming service that prioritises high-res audio to deliver the highest quality experience to its listeners. It positions itself as the go-to streaming platform for audiophiles, particularly those interested in genres like jazz, classical music, world music, or underrepresented genres.

Qobuz is a French platform that started in 2007 and has grown steadily since. While it’s far off having the same listener volume as the more mainstream streaming services, largely due to its lack of free or ad-supported listening, its focus on audio quality means Qobuz listeners tend to be highly engaged streamers, rather than the more passive listeners that platforms like Spotify, Apple Music or Amazon Music might attract.

‍

What makes Qobuz different from other streaming platforms?

While lots of major streaming platforms have now caught up and have started offering lossless high-res audio, Qobuz was one of the first to do so - attracting serious audiophiles right from the start. Qobuz has been offering hi-res 24-bit/192kHz FLAC as standard for over a decade, focusing specifically on being easy to integrate with audio hardware for an elevated listening experience.

Since Qobuz doesn’t offer a free or ad-supported tier, like many other platforms do, it’s able to offer one of the highest per-stream payout rates to artists with content on the platform. Every stream that happens on Qobuz is from a paid subscriber, meaning that there’s less variation in per-stream payouts than there is on platforms where some users are on a free or ad-supported tier.

In addition to music streaming, Qobuz offers a download store, where, similarly to Bandcamp, listeners can pay a one-off fee to download a release for offline streaming. Downloads don’t require a subscription and offer another revenue stream for artists, in addition to usual streaming royalties.

Qobuz’s focus on targeting audiophiles and prioritising high-quality audio means that the platform, at least in its early days, naturally focused on artists with deep catalogues in specific genres that demand a higher quality listening experience. While there are no limitations on genre enforced by Qobuz, there is a concentration of listeners who are fans of genres like jazz, classical music, orchestral pieces, and other genres where crisp, deep sound matters most.

‍

Is Qobuz worth distributing to for independent artists?

In short: yes! Ultimately, the more platforms your music is on, the more potential listeners have access to your music. Even if your music isn’t in one of the Qobuz focus genres, your next biggest fan might be listening on Qobuz and just waiting to find you.

But here’s the caveat: while it might be tempting to think Qobuz will change the trajectory of your career, because of its higher per stream payouts than, say, Spotify, the real trade off is that Qobuz’s audience is much smaller than mainstream streaming platforms’. 

In the latest figures, Spotify has approximately 761 million users (293 million of whom are paid subscribers). In contrast, Qobuz has approximately 1.2 million users. Qobuz’s growth figures from June 2026 state their 2025 growth as +45.7%, compared to just 8.8% in the paid music streaming market overall, making it clear that they are becoming a more viable competitor to mainstream streaming platforms - but their total volume of users is still far behind the bigger platforms.

While the listeners your music might find on Qobuz are likely more engaged and you’ll earn a higher per stream revenue for those listens than you do on Spotify, the overall number of listeners is likely to remain far behind that of Spotify.

So, yes: having your music on Qobuz is a good idea as a growing independent artist, but it shouldn’t be your only focus. Keeping your music on bigger platforms, like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, etc., is still hugely important - and will likely continue to be where the majority of your streaming royalties are generated. 

Unless you have real data to suggest that Qobuz is your primary source of streaming royalties, centring your release strategies, promotional plans, and other growth tactics around Qobuz is not an ideal approach for most independent artists.

‍

How to get your music live on Qobuz

Like many streaming platforms, artists aren’t able to upload music directly to Qobuz. Instead, releases must be uploaded via a distributor. A distributor acts as the channel between your music and Qobuz, ensuring that your music goes live at the right time.

At Identity Music, we distribute music to Qobuz as well as over 80 other platforms - so that your music can reach listeners around the world, no matter which platform they prefer to listen on.

One important note: Qobuz’s focus on high-quality audio means that, if you want to gain traction on Qobuz, you should be distributing releases in hi-res formats. Qobuz is also explicitly anti-AI-generated music, so will not allow releases that are in large part generated by AI services.

If you work with Identity Music to get your music live on Qobuz, all releases are carefully reviewed for quality and to ensure that your metadata meets platform requirements. We will let you know if there are any issues with your music before it’s sent to Qobuz, so that you can be confident that the music you do release to Qobuz will perform as well as it should do.

‍

Qobuz: FAQs