Meet Qobuz, the anti-Spotify for music lovers

Qobuz has a team of music experts who handpick albums, curate eclectic playlists, and write reviews. It gave me instant nostalgia as soon as I started using the service. It reminded me a bit of walking into a record store and asking the person behind the counter what they’ve been listening to lately.

The people who share music are the ones who love it the most—something that is lacking when an algorithm is making the choices. Recommended music fed to you by Spotify and other streaming platforms often all sounds about the same. This cultural homogenization leads to boring playlists and flat sounds.

Qobuz offers unique personalities through staff recommendations and interesting articles about different artists and genres. To be fair, Qobuz does offer algorithm-based recommendations, too, but the human-curated Editor’s Picks are a big part of what makes the service stand out.

To the delight of audiophiles, Qobuz offers lossless and high-resolution audio. Whether you’ll notice much of a difference depends on your equipment, but anyone with a decent pair of headphones or speakers should appreciate the quality.

It’s worth noting though that unlike Spotify, Qobuz doesn’t have a free streaming tier. You’ll need to pay for a subscription, although there’s a free 1-month trial if you want to take it for a spin first. If Spotify’s machine-fed music feeds are getting stale, go ahead and give Qobuz a shot.

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