Xandrie SA, parent company of Qobuz, the French music streaming and download platform, announces the acquisition of e-onkyo music and expands its business in Japan

Paris, October 5, 2021. Xandrie SA, parent company of Qobuz, the French high-quality music streaming and download platform, is accelerating its growth strategy in Asia and announces the acquisition of e-onkyo music, a high-resolution music download platform, from Onkyo Corporation, the Japanese high-end electronics manufacturer.

Qobuz continues its international growth strategy in Asia

The acquisition of e-onkyo Music, a music download platform, represents a new major strategic step forward for Qobuz, which intends to pursue further international expansion. It follows the launch of the service last April in the Nordic countries (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland), as well as in Australia and New Zealand. Other expansion projects should materialize in the coming months.  

For Onkyo Corporation, the sale of e-onkyo music is part of a plan to restructure its activities as the company focuses on its core business. Onkyo Corporate has transferred the assets of its e-onkyo music business to the newly formed Xandrie Japan Co Ltd. Xandrie SA holds 85.1% of the shares of Xandrie Japan Co Ltd and Onkyo holds 14.9%.

The development of a high-end international offering:

For Qobuz, the acquisition of e-onkyo music is an opportunity to broaden its high-resolution offerings and to enrich its catalog with local content and cutting-edge musical genres such as J-Pop. 

A pioneer of high-quality sound since 2007, Qobuz offers a rich and eclectic catalog of varied repertoire (jazz, classical, pop-rock, world music and more) in addition to articles, interviews, and album reviews, demonstrating its complete and borderless musical universe. With over 70 million tracks and nearly half a million pieces of editorial content, Qobuz offers all music lovers the unique opportunity to (re)discover the history of music and artists of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. 

"Thanks to the acquisition of e-onkyo music, Qobuz has taken a new step in its international development and is successfully pursuing its growth ambitions on the Asian market. This union will allow Qobuz to offer a high value-added and eclectic music offer as well as the most complete high-resolution download offer on the market. In the long term, Qobuz also aims to rapidly launch a streaming offer in Japan", says Georges Fornay, Deputy CEO of Qobuz.

About Qobuz

Founded in 2007, a pioneer of high-quality sound, Qobuz is the French music streaming and download service that meets the needs of demanding music lovers and audiophiles. Available in 18 countries around the world, in Europe, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. Qobuz offers an exceptional range of exclusive editorial content written by a team of experts. With its catalog of more than 70 million tracks, Qobuz also has the richest choice of high-resolution (hi-res) references on the market. Qobuz is the only multi-genre platform to achieve Hi-Res certification – a label awarded by the Japan Audio Society (JAS). For more information, visit qobuz.com

About e-onkyo music

Since the launch of the service in 2005, e-onkyo music has been a high-resolution sound source distribution site that distributes high-quality sound of the latest hit songs, anime and game songs by top domestic and overseas artists such as Katsumi Watanabe and Bill Evans in jazz, Herbert von Karajan and Seiji Ozawa in classical music, and Hikaru Utada and Radwimps in J-Pop. The site also offers downloadable 384kHz/24bit, 32bit (integer) and DSD 11.2MHz ultra high quality sound sources. As of September 2021, the number of music tracks distributed will be approximately 1,070,000, one of the largest in Japan. For more information, visit e-onkyo music website: e-onkyo.com/music

For more information on Qobuz, please contact Mark Satlof (msatlof@shorefire.com) or Hannah Schwartz (hschwartz@shorefire.com) at Shore Fire Media.