French high-resolution music streaming service Qobuz has announced the launch of Qobuz Club, a new social platform for its existing subscribers across the world to share their musical likes and loves.
According to the company, this so-called “interactive forum” will enable users to “convene with like-minded listeners on topics such as music discovery and recommendations, as well as hardware and hi-fi advice.” It sees the brand looking to go beyond the personalised recommendations usually formulated by AI and algorithms to create a more human, more social forum of inter-connected audio enthusiasts.
Designed with customer preferences in mind, Qobuz Club features sections including Qobuz News, Music Clubs, Hi-Fi Spaces, and a Discussion Forum in which participants can chat directly with the various Qobuz teams. There’s also a so-called “collector's corner” for vinyl lovers as well as a beta testers area and a suggestions space where users can propose future improvements to the app itself.
Joining Qobuz Club is free to all members who already have a Qobuz account and doesn’t require any additional subscription. For those who want to join but don’t already subscribe to the service itself, that will set you back £12.99/$12.99 per month for the individual Qobuz Studio tier or £129.99/$129.99 (£10.83 a month) for a yearly payment.
We found Qobuz's dedication to high-resolution streaming (up to 24-bit/192kHz quality) including a hi-res download store utterly admirable, but it doesn’t quite have the same breadth of features or level of sound quality to truly compete with more popular rivals like Tidal and Apple Music. We found its occasional library gaps and lack of a really decent ‘discovery’ feature to be holding it back, so maybe the introduction of Qobuz Club will be the addition that changes that.
For those members who do want to get involved with Qobuz Club, the new platform is available online and is coming soon to the mobile app, too. Qobuz Club is currently available globally in English, with a French version to be released soon. According to the company itself, the beta version of Qobuz Club, available since December 2022, boasts nearly 2,000 members before launch.
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Check out our original Qobuz review
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Interested in a high-res rival? Here’s our five-star Tidal review
