How Spotify's Lossless Launch Shook, Then Ultimately Helped, Qobuz

The moment the industry had been dreading finally arrived

For years, the question wasn't if Spotify would launch a lossless tier, but when — and what the fallout would look like for the specialist streaming services that had built their entire value proposition around high-quality audio. Tidal had already faced existential pressure. Apple Music had quietly moved lossless into its standard subscription at no extra cost. Amazon Music had done the same. And all the while, Qobuz — the French-born, audiophile-focused streaming and download service — kept its head down, grew its catalogue, and bet that a genuinely music-literate audience would stick around for something more considered than a checkbox feature buried in a settings menu.

Then, through October 2025, Spotify finally pulled the trigger. The company rolled out lossless audio — 24-bit/44.1 kHz FLAC, if you're keeping score — across more than 50 territories simultaneously. It was a significant technical and commercial move, and the audio press, including this one, watched carefully to see what it would do to the specialist services downstream.

In a November 2025 interview with SoundGuys, Qobuz Managing Director Dan Mackta gave what might be the most honest public assessment we've heard from the company in years. The short version: yes, there were cancellations. But they were modest. And since then, the numbers have grown. Qobuz's user base is, in Mackta's words, looking healthy — particularly in the US and the UK.

That's a more interesting outcome than either the doomsayers or the optimists predicted. Let me explain why.

What Spotify actually launched — and what it isn't

First, some context on what Spotify delivered. The lossless rollout brought 24-bit/44.1 kHz FLAC playback to subscribers across the supported territories. That's a meaningful upgrade from the compressed formats Spotify had previously offered, and for the vast majority of the platform's half-billion-plus users, it will represent the highest-quality audio they've ever streamed.

But let's be precise about what it is and what it isn't, because this matters enormously when you're evaluating the competitive landscape. Bit depth and sample rate are the two primary axes of digital audio resolution. At 24-bit/44.1 kHz, Spotify is offering what's sometimes called "CD-quality plus" — the full dynamic range of 24-bit encoding with the 44.1 kHz sample rate that CD uses. That's genuinely good, and better than the 16-bit/44.1 kHz of a standard CD rip.

What Spotify is not offering — at least not at launch — is the higher sample rates that make up the upper tier of hi-res audio: 88.2 kHz, 96 kHz, 176.4 kHz, 192 kHz. Nor is it offering DSD formats, which occupy a different technical territory entirely. Qobuz, by contrast, has built its library around files up to 24-bit/192 kHz, and its download store goes further still. That distinction — modest in terms of file specs, significant in terms of philosophy and catalogue curation — is at the heart of why Qobuz has a reason to exist post-Spotify-lossless.

It also doesn't hurt that Qobuz has editorial. The platform's music curation, liner notes, and the general sense that someone on the other side of the interface actually cares about music as an art form — these are things Spotify hasn't prioritised in the same way. For the kind of listener who's reading this article, that matters.

Why the cancellations were modest

The conventional prediction was that Spotify lossless would function like a pressure hose pointed directly at Qobuz's subscriber base. The logic was simple: Spotify has the brand recognition, the catalogue, the social features, the podcast integration, and now, it has lossless audio. Why would anyone pay a separate subscription for Qobuz?

Mackta's account suggests the reality was more nuanced. The cancellations happened — he didn't pretend they didn't — but they were modest. A few reasons for this seem plausible, and they're worth examining for what they say about the audiophile market's actual structure.

The first is that Qobuz's subscriber base was never competing head-to-head with Spotify's general audience. People who subscribe to Qobuz are, almost by definition, music obsessives who've already made a deliberate choice to prioritise audio quality and are willing to pay specifically for it. These are not casual listeners who stumbled onto high-res streaming by accident. They're people who own dedicated DACs and network streamers, who've read reviews of kit that costs more than most people's rent, and who have opinions about the differences between masters. That audience doesn't defect to Spotify just because Spotify adds a lossless checkbox.

The second reason is infrastructure. A listener who's invested in a proper hi-fi chain — a quality DAC, a streaming amplifier, a serious pair of speakers — has usually set that system up to get the most out of high-resolution audio. They're not going to abandon Qobuz's 24-bit/192 kHz content and its deeper integration with audiophile playback apps because Spotify now offers 24-bit/44.1 kHz. The hardware capability sitting at the end of their chain wasn't purchased to be satisfied by the lowest common denominator of lossless.

The third reason, and possibly the most important, is that the fear of competition sometimes drives better outcomes for the threatened party. More on this in a moment.

The growth that followed

What's genuinely surprising — and genuinely good news for anyone who cares about the survival of specialist audio services — is that Qobuz's subscriber base didn't just stabilise after the Spotify lossless rollout. It grew. Mackta was direct about this: numbers are looking healthy, especially in the US and UK.

This counterintuitive outcome has a name in competitive strategy circles: the rising tide effect. When a dominant platform legitimises a category — in this case, lossless streaming — it doesn't just take from existing players in that category. It also expands the category itself by exposing a much larger audience to the idea that audio quality matters.

Think of it this way. A casual Spotify user in Melbourne hears that their subscription now includes lossless audio. They turn it on. It sounds better. For perhaps ninety percent of those people, the journey ends there — Spotify is good enough. But for perhaps ten percent, something clicks. They start reading about why it sounds better. They stumble across the concept of bit depth and sample rate. They realise that 24-bit/192 kHz exists, and that their current setup might be capable of reproducing it. They find Qobuz.

That funnel, multiplied across Spotify's enormous global user base, can generate a meaningful number of genuinely new audiophile converts. And those converts, by the time they land at Qobuz, are already pre-sold on the value of high-resolution audio. They're not the sceptics — they're the believers looking for more.

What this means for the Australian market

Mackta specifically called out the US and UK as strong performers, which raises an obvious question for Australian readers: where does Australia sit in this picture?

The honest answer is that we don't have specific local data from the interview. Qobuz's public comments were focused on its English-language markets, and Australia — while part of Qobuz's available territory — has historically been a smaller part of the company's commercial footprint than the US or UK.

That said, the structural dynamics are the same here. Australia has a healthy and well-funded audiophile community, strong specialist retail presence, and increasingly sophisticated infrastructure for high-quality streaming. Australian listeners who've invested in serious kit — whether that's a network streamer like the Cambridge Audio CXN100 (check price) or something further up the chain — are exactly the profile of subscriber Qobuz retains and attracts, regardless of what Spotify does.

There's also the question of catalogue access. One persistent frustration for Australian Qobuz users has been that licensing agreements occasionally limit what's available here versus the US or UK catalogue. If Qobuz's growth in those stronger markets translates into better commercial leverage with labels, that could have downstream benefits for the Australian catalogue as well. It's not guaranteed, but it's a reasonable hope.

For Australian buyers thinking about how to get the best from whatever streaming service they choose, the setup still matters enormously. A lossless stream, regardless of whether it's from Qobuz at 24/192 or Spotify at 24/44.1, will only sound as good as the equipment downstream allows. If you're running a streaming-capable amplifier or receiver and piping audio through a decent DAC, you'll hear a genuine difference between formats. If you're listening through a phone speaker, you won't. The investment in the playback chain is what makes the format debates meaningful.

The bigger question: can specialist streaming survive long-term?

Qobuz surviving the Spotify lossless launch is good news. But it would be naive to declare victory and move on. The structural pressures on specialist streaming services haven't disappeared — if anything, they've intensified.

Apple Music, Amazon Music, and Tidal all offer lossless or hi-res content at competitive price points, with varying degrees of commitment to the audiophile end of the market. Tidal in particular has had a turbulent few years, shuffling ownership and rethinking its positioning. The broader question of whether a service with Qobuz's specific value proposition — deep hi-res catalogue, editorial curation, download purchasing, genuine music-nerd identity — can sustain itself commercially in a streaming market dominated by trillion-dollar technology companies is not a trivial one.

Mackta's comments suggest cautious optimism, and that's probably the right register. The service is growing. The US and UK are healthy. The Spotify lossless launch, feared as a death knell, turned out to be something closer to a market expansion event from which Qobuz captured a portion of newly awakened high-quality audio converts.

But growth needs to be sustained, and sustained growth requires continuous investment in catalogue depth, app quality, integration with audiophile hardware ecosystems, and the editorial voice that differentiates Qobuz from a service that simply ticked a lossless checkbox and moved on. These are ongoing costs, not one-time investments. Whether Qobuz's ownership and business model can support that long-term is the question to watch.

What should you actually do with this information?

If you're an existing Qobuz subscriber, this is reassuring news. The service appears to be in a better position than many predicted after the Spotify lossless launch, and the content and curation that made you sign up in the first place are, by all indications, being maintained and developed.

If you're a Spotify user who turned on lossless and is now wondering what more is possible, consider trying Qobuz. The trial tier lets you test the catalogue depth and interface before committing. If you're already running a system capable of resolving 24-bit/192 kHz — a good DAC, a quality amplifier, and a speaker or headphone pairing that can communicate fine detail — the difference between Spotify's 24/44.1 ceiling and Qobuz's higher-resolution offerings is audible under the right conditions. Whether it's audible enough to justify a separate subscription is a personal and financial judgement, but it's worth making that call from informed experience rather than assumption.

If you're building or upgrading a streaming-capable system and want to get serious about source quality, the streamer and DAC section of your chain deserves careful attention. Our guide to the best DACs and network streamers covers a range of price points, and pairing that with a capable streaming amplifier gives you a system that will let you hear the difference between sources and formats — which is, ultimately, the whole point of this conversation.

The Spotify lossless launch was supposed to be the beginning of the end for Qobuz. Instead, it appears to have been something more complicated and more interesting: a genuine market test that the specialist service, improbably, passed. That's worth taking seriously — not as cause for complacency, but as evidence that the audiophile listener Qobuz serves is more resilient, more committed, and more discerning than the conventional wisdom about streaming market dynamics assumed.

That should come as no surprise to anyone who reads this site.