Qobuz Hit 1.2 Million Users in 2025, Driven by Spotify Backlash and ICE Ad Controversy

Qobuz's Growth Numbers Are Real — Just Keep Them in Perspective

Qobuz, the Paris-based hi-res audio streaming service founded in 2007, spent most of its existence as a niche product for audiophiles. That changed in 2025. According to Wired, the company nearly doubled its subscriber base in twelve months, climbing from roughly 500,000 to 1.2 million active monthly users. Streaming revenue grew 45.7 percent in 2025, compared to 8.8 percent growth for paid music streaming industry-wide.

Those are strong growth figures. They are also still small. Spotify has 293 million paid subscribers. Apple Music has more than 100 million. Qobuz is competing at approximately 0.4 percent of Spotify's scale.

What Actually Moved the Needle

Dan Mackta, Qobuz's New York-based managing director, gave Wired a candid breakdown of the moments that drove the spike.

The first was author Liz Pelly's January 2025 book Mood Machine, which criticized Spotify's business model using interviews with former employees and artists. Mackta told Wired: "This is not a music company; music was just a means to an end." The book renewed discussion about per-stream payouts and pushed some listeners to look for alternatives.

The bigger catalyst came in mid-October 2025, when free-tier Spotify users began posting screenshots of ICE recruitment advertisements appearing in the app. The images went viral on TikTok and Instagram. According to Mackta, the day that story spread was Qobuz's biggest single day ever in the United States.

A second spike followed in early December, when Spotify's annual "Wrapped" campaign circulated widely and apparently reminded enough listeners what they didn't like about the platform. Mackta told Wired that Spotify Wrapped day was Qobuz's second-best day on record.

The result: around a third of Qobuz's total revenue now comes from the US, making it the company's largest market.

What Qobuz Actually Offers

The product pitch is straightforward. Qobuz's catalog tops 100 million tracks, all in lossless CD-quality audio at minimum, with a substantial portion available in 24-bit hi-res. Digital Trends, in its 2026 streaming service roundup, lists Qobuz as its top pick for "audiophile quality for a little less" — placing it alongside Tidal in a tier above Spotify and YouTube Music on pure audio fidelity. Apple Music also offers hi-res lossless, but at a higher price point.

Library gaps exist. Wired's writer, who switched to Qobuz after nearly 20 years on Spotify, used a third-party tool called Soundizz to migrate playlists and reported a better-than-90-percent match rate. That's high, but the missing 10 percent matters depending on what you listen to.

The Strongest Counter-Argument for Staying on Spotify

Spotify's dominance isn't just inertia. It has the largest catalog, the best algorithm-driven discovery tools, the most seamless social sharing, podcast integration, and the most widely supported third-party hardware compatibility. For the vast majority of listeners who are not specifically chasing 24-bit FLAC files, Spotify delivers a better overall experience at a competitive price. The ICE ad controversy, while legitimately uncomfortable for users who object to that advertising context, did not involve Spotify directly contracting with ICE. It was standard programmatic ad inventory appearing in the free tier. Users who pay for Spotify Premium don't see ads at all. Critics conflating the ad controversy with Spotify's actual content policies deserve scrutiny too.

Qobuz's growth was also heavily concentrated among a specific demographic: audiophiles, "conscious consumers" responding to organized boycott campaigns like Death to Spotify and Indivisible, and K-pop fans seeking high-quality downloads. This is a narrow lane.

What This Tells Us About the Streaming Business

The artist payout debate is unresolved and almost certainly won't be settled by consumers switching services. Per-stream rates across the industry remain fractions of a cent, and the economics of music streaming are structurally tilted toward the platforms regardless of which one you choose. Qobuz has made noise about paying higher per-stream rates to artists, but the company has NOT published audited, per-artist payout data that would allow a direct comparison to Spotify's figures.

The TechRadar source included in the reporting for this article returned a broken page, so no independent review data from that outlet was available for verification.

The Open Question

Qobuz's managing director told Wired that 2025 was a "banner year." The company has NOT disclosed whether it is profitable, how it is funded, or what subscriber number it needs to reach financial sustainability. With 1.2 million users against a competitive field that includes Apple, Amazon, and Google, the question of whether Qobuz's growth translates into a durable business rather than a protest bump remains unanswered.