We love Qobuz here at Narwhal Music, for a number of reasons. So we thought it would be good to explain why this is our goto streaming platform.
If you’re still paying for Spotify, you’re funding one of the least ethical companies in the music streaming business. That’s not a hot take, it’s a finding from Ethical Consumer, the UK’s leading independent ethical ratings organisation. In their most recent music streaming report, Spotify scored just 2 out of 100 on their ethics index. Qobuz, the French independent streamer beloved by audiophiles, scored 64. That’s not a narrow gap. That’s a chasm.
So what’s actually going on, and why does it matter to you?
What the ethics scores are measuring
Ethical Consumer rates companies across categories including environmental impact, workers’ rights, company ethos, and, critically for music platforms, how they treat the artists whose work they monetise. Spotify’s near-zero score reflects a string of serious concerns: alleged promotion of fake artists to suppress royalty payments, alleged refusal to negotiate collective agreements with trade unions, repeated mass layoffs including 17% of its entire workforce in December 2023, and its founder’s involvement in AI military technology development. The Musicians’ Union has pointed out that 80% of UK musicians earn less than £200 a year from streaming, while Spotify’s co-president took home $18.7 million in 2024.
He is richer and worth more than any musician his platform streams.
Qobuz, by contrast, is independently owned, a family business where all employees are shareholders. It has no ad-supported tier that suppresses royalty rates. It has no podcasts, no audiobooks, no AI-generated filler content. It’s a music company that does music, and it treats the people who make that music accordingly.
The pay-per-stream gap is extraordinary
Here’s where the numbers get stark. In March 2025, Qobuz did something no other major streaming platform has ever done: it publicly disclosed its per-stream royalty rate, independently audited. For the 12 months ending March 2024, Qobuz paid an average of $0.01873 per stream, or $18.73 per 1,000 plays.
Spotify, by comparison, pays around $0.003 per stream. That’s roughly six times less than Qobuz. Apple Music, widely considered one of the better payers among the big platforms, averages around $0.01 per stream. Qobuz beats even that by nearly double.
To put it in plain terms: an artist needs roughly 6,000 Spotify streams to earn what they’d earn from 1,000 Qobuz streams. For independent artists, for jazz musicians, for anyone outside the algorithm-driven mainstream, that difference is the difference between making a living and not.
Qobuz deputy CEO Georges Fornay described the disclosure as a first step toward a fairer and more sustainable streaming model. Nobody at Spotify has said anything comparable. The silence from the rest of the industry has been deafening.
Audio quality isn’t even close
Beyond the ethics, there’s the straightforward matter of what you actually hear.
Spotify’s lossless tier, which only arrived in September 2025 after years of delays and broken promises, tops out at 24-bit/44.1kHz. That’s better than the old compressed Spotify, but it’s still not what Qobuz delivers. Qobuz streams at up to 24-bit/192kHz in lossless FLAC, the full studio-quality master. That’s not marketing language. It’s a technically distinct and audibly superior format, especially on decent headphones or a hi-fi system.
Reviewers at Headphonesty testing both platforms directly found that Qobuz’s hi-res audio produced a wider, clearer soundstage with deeper, more accurate bass and better instrument separation. What Hi-Fi?, one of the most respected audio publications in the UK, found that Qobuz consistently offers more albums in true 24-bit/192kHz than rivals including Tidal. Qobuz was also the only platform to natively support hi-res playback on Windows without additional workarounds, something Apple Music still can’t manage.
The catalogue sits at over 100 million tracks, comparable to Spotify’s claimed library, with great depth across all genres including classical, jazz, and electronic music.
Price: the assumption is wrong
Here’s the thing most people get wrong. They assume Qobuz costs more. It doesn’t. It’s actually cheaper.
Qobuz Studio, the standard tier with full hi-res access, currently costs £10.83 per month in the UK. Spotify Premium costs £12.99 per month. Qobuz is £2.16 a month cheaper, which is over £25 a year back in your pocket. You’re paying less, hearing more, and sending six times more money per stream to the artists you love. It’s not a trade-off. It’s a straight upgrade on every axis.
What you’re actually voting for with you subscription
Every stream is a micro-payment. Every subscription renews the platform’s business model. When you pay for Spotify, you’re sustaining a company that pays artists a third of a cent per play, that has been criticised by trade unions across multiple countries, and that scored 2 out of 100 for ethical practice.
When you pay for Qobuz, you’re sustaining a company that pays nearly two cents per play, that opened its books for independent audit, that employs music writers and human curators rather than replacing them with algorithms, and that has grown nearly 40% year-on-year as listeners wake up to the difference.
Switching is straightforward. Tools like TuneMyMusic migrate your playlists. Qobuz offers a free trial. The audio quality upgrade is immediate and obvious on any decent playback system.
The ethics gap is 62 points. The pay-per-stream gap is sixfold. The audio quality gap is a generation of technology. The price gap is essentially nothing.
There’s no serious argument for Spotify anymore.
Listen with intent, support independent and stay safe.
The Narwhal
