Orange-backed music streaming service Deezer announced at a press event in London that it now has 5 million paying users around the world (compared to 2 million in October 2012) and that over half of them live outside its home market. Deezer said it has 30 million tracks on its platform, making it the biggest streaming music provider globally.
CEO Axel Dauchez told TechCrunch that the company had signed 11 new partnerships with operators, bringing the total number of mobile services bundling its music service to 25. It has also hired former PayPal executive Christopher Coonen as COO and German streaming service Simfy's co-founder, Gerrit Schumann, as vice president of European operations.
Deezer announced the launch of two new discovery features to improve customer engagement, and previewed an Apple app that will integrate the platform into users’ offline music collection. On the subject of who is the world's biggest music streaming service, TechCrunch writes that Spotify is probably larger than Deezer in terms of subscribers, with 6 million paying customers when it last gave a figure in March 2013.
Deezer's new features are Hear This and Explore. The first is described as a way of helping users find recommended tracks when they are on the go, which is very relevant as around 75 percent of the company’s customers are connecting on mobile phones. On the other hand, Explore is a search algorithm allowing users to find music by region and genre. Finally, the app that was previewed is Deezer Mac, a single music dashboard that will give customers access to Deezer’s catalogue, their own playlists and those of other users. Although the company said it would be integrated iTunes libraries, it is not clear whether other music platforms would will be added.
Dauchez also told TechCrunch that the company would launch a lower-tier paid service in 2014 in an effort to sign up consumers who are less frequent music consumers. He also confided that while the company was not profitable right now because it is in growth mode, it was operating at a profit before it raised USD 130 million to fund its international expansion last year.
