The Qobuz high-resolution on-demand listening and downloading service takes everyone by surprise and launches on the Canadian market on Wednesday. The announcement will be made at dawn. Pioneer of streaming in high definition, Qobuz will include in its offer editorial content born from the expertise of QUB musique, the defunct Quebecor service from which it takes over.
It brews in the world of online music. Two months after the announcement of the end of QUB musique, six weeks after the launch of the streaming from Presto, an English site specializing in classical and jazz music, three weeks after the debut of classic Apple and a week after the rout of MQA, which provided Tidal with the substrate for its “high fidelity” quality claims, Qobuz anticipates its arrival on the Canadian market.
Announced for May 2023 by a press release from Quebecor published in February in the wake of its restructuring leading to the elimination of 240 positions, the arrival of Qobuz is made possible by the cessation of the activities of QUB musique, a branch of the NumériQ division of Quebecor launched in May 2020.
Exclusivity
“Quebecor, the second main shareholder of Qobuz, wanted to launch an online music service. We had an exclusive contract to supply him with the music on the Canadian market. We therefore could not enter this market. With Quebecor reorienting its strategy, this allows us to take over and enrich the offer”, explains to the Dutyfrom Paris, Georges Fornay, Deputy CEO of Qobuz.
This now clearly explains Qobuz’s presence in the United States and its absence in Canada. As of today, the “real Qobuz”, eagerly awaited by audiophile music lovers, is rolling across the country. “Since the launch in 2007, our approach has been based on sound quality. QUB was in MP3 quality with a mass market approach to a younger target. We are on an older target, in their forties, urban, well-to-do, interested in classical and jazz, our main categories, along with rock and pop”, sums up Georges Fornay.
“We don’t just do streaming high quality, but also offer high resolution downloads and are a media outlet with over 500,000 music stories written by a team of 20 freelance journalists who write about music in major languages every week. This is the specificity of our offer: we are the only ones to offer this triptych. »
Local color
This editorial content will be adapted to the local market. Actors such as Vincent Lefebvre, head of growth and acquisitions, and Mélissa Pelletier, content manager at QUB musique, are now Qobuz employees. “We have a local team and will not leave the Anglo-Saxon part to the United States team. At all costs, we must be seen as Canadians. We will do everything to promote English and French-speaking Canadian artists. This is our approach everywhere. »
For Vincent Lefebvre, the challenge for the coming months will be to “position the platform and differentiate it well; to join the people who were eager to see Qobuz arrive; to position Quebec and Canadian content to continue to promote local players; to set up more in-depth partnerships with regard to classical, jazz and world music”.
Qobuz now reaches 500,000 subscribers in 25 countries. Georges Fornay indicates that studies show that a Qobuz subscriber earns six times more than an average market consumer. He also notes that “the market has been in turmoil for two to three years”, since Amazon has led a slingshot to lower prices on high definition. “Apple followed in June 2021, but at Apple and Amazon, music serves as a loss leader to sell something else. You don’t have, for example, classic Apple booklets, which we said would smash everything. It’s very good, what they do, but we don’t feel at all in the borders. Tidal is very dependent on the American market and very mass market. Presto, we’ll see what they do: the challenge is on their side more than on ours. »
Former QUB musique subscribers will receive a privileged subscription offer to Qobuz, which offers more than 100 million titles in all genres of music, unlike Presto, which is limited to classical and jazz. Both now have a head start on classic Apple, which stands out with exclusive content, but which remains limited to the iPhone universe.