[Deezer]A Global Music Streaming and Subscription Service

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Deezer’s vision for music was outlined at London’s Abbey Road Studios in October, at the same time as the news of its $130 million funding.
What does Deezer serve to do?
1) Allow the discovery of new music via Deezer picks and artist-based / artist-themed radio channels
2) Create a unique user music library and playlists

As the company achieves 3 million paying subscribers who, on average, listen to 60 hours of music per month, Popwire was intrigued to find out if the user experience worked and the sound quality and streaming legit.

Popwire tested it out and we have to say, it’s pretty impressive thus far. In terms of music variety, relevance and sound quality.

After registering our account, we were greeted by an interface which categorizes the music by top tracks/albums/artists.

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Deezer’s User Interface

 

Variety and relevance because artists and songs featured included Swedish House Mafia’s ‘Don’t you worry, child’,  ‘Little Talks’ by Of Monsters and Men to ‘All your Gold’ by Bat for Lashes, all of who performed recently in Singapore.

Popwire had a quick interview with Dona Inthaxoum, Music Director of Figure8 Agency, to find out more.

On how the Deezer picks are selected and how frequently this is adjusted:

“Music discovery is a key part of what makes us different, and our local on-the-ground editorial teams are central to that. We’re much more than a just a music collection – our music experts all over the world make recommendations from their experience of local culture and local character. They’re passionate about sharing new music from upcoming local artists, not just in their own countries, but with editorial teams in other countries too – another example of Deezer taking music even further, regardless of boundaries. That is why you can see some recommendations that are up-to-date with the gigs in Singapore and in the region. We have an editorial team based in Singapore who updates weekly its recommendations on the Deezer homepage. The fun part is that users can also suggest their playlists to the editorial teams every month, and 3 of them are highlighted on the homepage.”
On how full tracks are streamed from the album and how the record labels are involved:
“Deezer is a global online streaming service that has agreements with majors and independent labels all around the world. Their catalogues are ingested in Deezer’s stores and every time a user streams the music more than 30 seconds, royalties are generated and are paid directly to the copyright owners. That is why we are able to offer more than 20 millions tracks worldwide, and that most albums are available in Deezer. It’s as if you had an iTunes with the music in the cloud, and you can listen to anything, anywhere.
 
To get Deezer-fied:

Sign up at Deezer.com. 

Deezer will offer music fans in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam two hours per month of ad-supported, free listening on PCs and laptops for life.  Providing users with a free 30 day trial of Premium+ upon mobile activation will furthermore serve to encourage discovery on mobile and tablets. In addition, to reach a mass audience Deezer will offer users in Singapore a discovery period of 6 months of unlimited free music on PCs and laptops while users in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam will enjoy a discovery period of 1 month.

Their mission statement reveals their ‘quest to liberate music and rebuild its value, restoring the magical connection between artist and fans.’

Deezer’s CEO Axel Dauchez commented, “Deezer has a proven track record of profitability and sustainability. Now we’re embarking upon the next stage in our journey towards becoming known to households around the world. Our ad-supported service is a necessary trigger to drive global change by bringing music subscription to mass audiences worldwide. Our aim here is to encourage music fans to try us, driving ad-supported service listeners to switch to paid subscription over time. Once they have properly experienced Deezer, people do not go back.”

Evidently so – as interviewed in a TechCrunch article, it seems ‘Deezer has been profitable since the end of 2010. It now has 2 million paying subscribers, 7 million active monthly users, 26 million registered users, and 20 milion music tracks — up to now all based on about $15 million in funding. Looks like Deezer isn’t anywhere near going down the direction of the Napster.