French high-resolution music streaming service Qobuz announced the launch of Qobuz Club, a new social platform for its existing subscribers around the world to share their musical preferences and loves.
According to the company, this so-called “interactive forum” allows users to “come together 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 move beyond the personalized recommendations usually formulated by AI and algorithms to create a more human, social forum of interconnected audio enthusiasts.
Qobuz Club is designed with customer preferences in mind and features sections such as Qobuz News, Music Clubs, Hi-Fi Spaces and a Discussion Forum where participants can chat directly with the different Qobuz teams. There is also a so-called “collection corner” for vinyl enthusiasts, as well as a section for beta testers and a suggestions area where users can suggest future improvements to the app itself.
Becoming a member of Qobuz Club is free for all members who already have a Qobuz account and does not require an additional subscription. For those wanting to join but not yet subscribing to the service itself, it will cost £12.99 / $12.99 per month for the individual Qobuz Studio tier or £129.99 / $129.99 (£10. 83 per month) for an annual payment.
We found Qobuz’s commitment to high-res streaming (up to 24-bit/192kHz quality) including a high-res download store entirely admirable, but it doesn’t quite have the same breadth of features or level of sound quality to really compete with more popular rivals such as Tidal and Apple Music. We found there were occasional gaps in the library and the lack of a really decent ‘discovery’ feature to hold it back, so perhaps 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 coming soon to the mobile app. Qobuz Club is currently available worldwide in English, with a French version coming soon. According to the company itself, the beta version of Qobuz Club, available since December 2022, has almost 2,000 members before launch.
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View our original Qobuz review
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Interested in a high-res rival? Here’s ours five star Tidal review