Dear customers, subscribers, and friends,
The entire Qobuz team passes on their best wishes for the New Year, and hopes that 2015 fulfils your expectations and desires, as well as those of your friends and family!
In 2015 we will do even more to enhance your love of music. Our primary aim is to provide a service that matches your passion for music, whatever your tastes, by providing you with expert recommendations, but still respecting your own space and freedom to discover. The music available from a service like Qobuz is a vast ocean. Hundreds of new releases are ingested every day, which are then examined by our music merchandisers in order to select the best choices, to save you the trouble, and to help you on your voyage of musical discovery. It is a Sisyphean task, as so much content flows through our servers without contextualisation. A lot of what we provide we have never even listened to! Our mission is to improve the standards of online music. There are numerous services available today, but there is very little differentiating one from another.
2014 has been a year of extremes for Qobuz. The difficulties that we have had to face, as well as the methods that we had to employ to resolve them, required immense determination and energy, constantly challenging our team to provide excellent results. We found that the foundations of our work (our sound quality, editorial quality, and quality of our recommendations) addressed an important need for our music lovers - contrary to what we have been hearing for a long time. The evidence? Our turnover has soared by 55% during the calendar year of 2014-2015. It is an unparalleled performance in the industry. Furthermore, our progression has been spectacular since last May, with between 4-13% growth month-on-month!
Carrying out and improving our innovations was our second feat - not least, during such a turbulent period! Thus it is not without a certain pride that we have recently launched our new applications for IOS and Android, with the general consensus deeming them faster, more efficient and attractive. Furthermore, we have integrated music streaming in True CD-quality FLAC (16-bit / 44.1kHz) into our navigator, directly on the Qobuz website, and on our Webplayer. We have also published new widgets to be used by our partners, and multiplied the connections and integrations in our audio-connected devices. To make all of this possible, we have enriched and continued to develop the possibilities of our API.
But above all, you are our main reason for existing. To show our appreciated, we present to you our jam-packed plan for 2015:
• We will entirely redesign our website, to make it more consistent with the business model which we are increasingly adopting: a streaming service which also offers a downloading option.
• We will ensure that our developments are of the best standard for those with visual impairments.
• We will continue to improve our search tools.
• We will (finally) produce an application for Windows Phone. We have a few things in mind which we’re sure you’ll find exciting…
• We will offer downloading in DSD format, with an exclusive and partially new catalogue.
• We will finish our application system with an additional smattering of dedicated applications, offering your devices a complete and practical experience, including the exclusive content that we provide each day, at home or on the move.
• We will base your user account in the ‘internal Qobuz community’, being aware that our users have a deep musical knowledge and are eager to share their tastes – all of this in the strictest respect of their freedom and privacy.
• Finally, we will increase the number of our playlists, and make them easier to access and enjoy, both on the web and through the applications. We have been rather late developing this. The playlists have been an important part of our service, and we aim to become a true ‘playlist factory’, in order to help our users in their exploration of our extensive music catalogue. Our experts know how to surprise them.
Thanks to a rise business partnerships, Qobuz is finally gaining a level of recognition that has so far been lacking, stemming from the fact that we were unable to invest to the same extent as our competitors. This recognition has emerged due to the unique character of our service, singular in the world for its formula and innovation, which we have always upheld and will continue to do so.
However, innovation sometimes takes unforeseen detours:
Three years ago we worked to develop a catalogue of 24-bit albums, as we wanted to prove that online music can not only surpass the MP3, but even offer better sound than the CD. At the time, we had to convince the labels one by one to provide us with files in their 24-bit format. Today, this quality, of which Qobuz is the world-leader, is becoming a consumer standard, thanks to both a strong growth in the number of 24-bit releases, as well as an increase in the number of devices able to use them.
We believe that top sound quality should not be a privilege, nor reserved for elitists, but available for people with the good taste and musical knowledge to appreciate it. The aim of Qobuz is to provide quality for everyone at an acceptable price for those who can contribute, and to do all this in an ethical manner, giving as much back to the artists and producers as we can. The launch of our Qobuz Sublime subscription in France, which combines the Quality CD subscription with large reductions on 24-bit downloads, is a first step towards the Qobuz of tomorrow, making it possible for producers to invent profitable operational methods about how to better-exploit these platforms.
We want to take this opportunity to warmly thank your constant support. Your subscriptions and purchases are vital in supporting our work, and they give us the means to carry on.
The strong progress and the trend of our turnover during the last six months are conclusive of our beliefs. To help Qobuz, there is one small thing you can do: you can help us make our service known to your friends. This is easy and risk-free, as every new subscriber receives a free period of one month without commitment.
As for those who would have the means to offer their services to help this cultural business develop - don’t hesitate to contact us as well!
Happy new year from all our team and…
We’ll be here for you when you need us!
qobuz@qobuz.com