We’ve chronicled the sudden rise of YouTube Premium and Music, an upsurge that started last year. But a quieter, albeit equally fascinating, ascent has also been taking place for the independently-owned, music-exclusive service Qobuz.
That’s right: Qobuz, the high-resolution streaming and download platform once exclusively prized by niche audiophiles, is surging. According to data from SimilarWeb, it was the second fastest-growing music and media app in the US in 2025.
It also ranked third in the UK, by the way.
Now, the company has confirmed to DMN that it has officially surpassed 1.2 million monthly active users (MAUs), alongside a massive spike in paid subscribers. Just recently, DMN joined forces with the platform to further accelerate growth.
So, what’s driving this unexpected growth spurt?
While Qobuz has long served as a digital haven for hardcore audiophiles, a different crowd is suddenly knocking at the door. And part of the uptick is coming from users ditching Spotify.
Amidst seemingly endless price hikes and controversies over at the market leader, listeners (and artists) are quietly seeking alternatives. Curiously, Qobuz Managing Director of North America and Northern Europe, Dan Mackta, notes that a surprising number of Spotify users ditched their accounts right after their year-end ‘Wrapped’ campaigns were revealed.
(Hey, maybe they needed the proper closure before cutting the cord.)
But to the surprise of Qobuz execs like Mackta, this is going beyond a simple surge of Spotify refugees.
The Qobuz brand became much more prominent in 2025, pulling in everyone from high-profile celebrities like Chelsea Handler and Christina Hendricks to dedicated fan communities.
The platform’s lossless and Hi-Res download store even attracted a throng of BTS fans—a retro-tech phenomenon we’ve also seen driving sales on platforms like Stationhead. It turns out the historical audiophile preference for owning high-quality downloads over streaming is finding a whole new audience among rabid K-pop fans.
Qobuz may also be benefiting from a more artist-friendly demeanor.
Last year, the company took the unusual step of validating and publishing its per-stream payouts. The result? An independent auditor revealed that Qobuz rights owners received nearly $19 per 1,000 streams.
Without naming names, Qobuz told us their per-stream payouts are ‘four times higher than the nearest competitor.’ According to DMN’s stats, that’s also approximately six times Spotify’s per-stream payouts, a company that, incidentally, entirely downplays the use of per-stream royalty measurements.
And then there’s the simple rejection of the faceless, nameless algorithm.
Qobuz seems to be capturing a broader consumer trend toward intentional consumption, which includes decoupling from ultra-sophisticated, AI-driven algorithms, not to mention endless content-inclusion tricks.
By sharp contrast, Qobuz offers 100% human-led curation, a seemingly retro approach that is gradually attracting fans. Playlists and Albums of the Week are picked by actual experts, not fed by a machine, and Qobuz plans to keep it that way.
As Mackta put it: “It’s almost so quaint; ‘Wow, humans picking music.’ Well, it turns out a lot of people love that.”
The platform’s stance on AI and audio fidelity has also proven to be a big differentiator.
Like its French rival Deezer, Qobuz is identifying and will tag AI-generated tracks, keeping them out of editorial recommendations or simply removing them. Furthermore, the company has pledged not to generate audio content, replace human curation with AI, or use customer data to train external AI models.
As rival platforms become flooded with generic AI music, Qobuz is framing high-resolution audio and human curation as the ultimate way to respect the artist’s original creative vision.
The platform is also taking a wide-ranging approach to partnerships. Qobuz has just launched a retail-side tech integration with Rough Trade, part of its goal to add a digital component to physical media locations. It’s an attitude that gels well with Qobuz’s indie ethic and could set the stage for more unique partnerships in the future.
But there are also broader trends working to Qobuz’s advantage.
For starters, switching platforms is no longer as big a headache. With third-party tools like Soundiiz making playlist translation easier, the chore of switching is easing a bit. That trend could finally shake up the current DSP market-share rankings, which, according to DMN Pro data, have remained largely static over the past few years.
Now, the question is how much ground Qobuz ends up taking.
Mackta surmised that just 1% of the broader paid streaming music subscriber market share might be enough, and the company is clearly growing and bulking up with its recent gains. As long as things stay profitable and attractive to a core of music fans seeking alternatives, Qobuz is likely to remain a long-term play.
