Canada is about to get another streaming music service–and if you like high-quality audio, pay attention
Most Canadians believe that when it comes to streaming music services, we’re limited to Spotify, Apple Music, You Tube Music, and Amazon Music. Not true. There’s also Deezer (based out of France). And there’s Tidal, which has been a favourite of mine because it offers high-resolution audio. As an unrepentant audiophile, I appreciate the quality of music streamed through Tidal.
Canada will soon get another option when it comes to high-quality streams. Qobuz (also based in France) is finally coming this way in May. Audiophiles love this platform because it may have the highest resolution of all the platforms–up to 24 bit/192 khz. That’s as good as what the artist and producer hear in the studio. And with access to 100 million tracks…
Qobuz will offer a couple of other things that will set it apart from the competition. First, this may be the service with the greatest selection of music from Quebec anywhere online. Some 4,000 carefully created playlists featuring material from the entirety of Quebec’s music history will be available with the integration QUB Musique, an existing service pioneered by Quebecor, the media, entertainment, and telecommunications powerhouse. A fan of Francophone music? This ticks the boxes.
The second thing about Qobuz that I like is that it is a rich editorial environment featuring not just playlists, but liner notes, album reviews, feature articles, interviews, biographies, and more. Find something you like and need a deep dive into that artist/album/sound/scene? This is the service that will let you do it.
Qobuz will debut in Canada sometime in May. Pricing is TBA. Watch this space.
Hey Alan
I’m also an audiophile Tidal subscriber. Are you going to migrate to this new service assuming the pricing is similar?
Qobuz: highest resolution of all the platforms–up to 24 bit/192 khz.
Having access to more music catalogues is a good thing but one should not pay more just to have more data bits. CDs are 16bits. I believe most of the studio recordings in the past century only require 16bits.
This is a complicated topic. There is a good discussion here:
best regards
RMM
My understanding is that only a small percentage their music is at a higher bit rate. And besides like you pointed out in the past today’s modern music sound like crap due to poor recording or no attention paid to make a quality recording that would benefit from a higher bit rate
I love Tidal, but the one feature that it does not have that Spotify does is to be able to filter your tracks by genre. It is very tedious needing to make playlists for everything when it would be a lot more conveninent to just be able to listen to only metal, hip-hop of EDM etc out of your liked songs.
WIll Qobuz offer this feature?