{"id":2544,"date":"2009-11-05T14:50:30","date_gmt":"2009-11-05T12:50:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tokao.com\/?p=2544"},"modified":"2009-11-05T14:50:30","modified_gmt":"2009-11-05T12:50:30","slug":"spotify-competitor-deezer-debuts-desktop-client-premium-offering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tokao.com\/wordpress\/2009\/11\/05\/spotify-competitor-deezer-debuts-desktop-client-premium-offering\/","title":{"rendered":"Spotify competitor Deezer debuts desktop client, premium offering"},"content":{"rendered":"

[France] Paris-based\u00a0Deezer<\/a> is not waiting for\u00a0Spotify<\/a> to expand into new territories and is moving forward with its own plans pretty quickly. The French startup recently\u00a0raised $9.5 million (\u20ac6.5 million), bringing the total invested into the company to nearly\u00a0$20 million, and today the company\u2019s launching its previously rumored premium offering and a couple of new products.<\/p>\n

Basically, the Deezer website, where users can listen to streaming music and create playlists, will remain free of charge while users who would like better sound quality (up to 320 kb\/s) and no more advertisements can opt to pay \u20ac4.99 per month for Deezer HQ. The Premium offering (\u20ac9.99 \/ month) is the most interesting though, since it gives users the opportunity to download a full-fledged Adobe AIR desktop application and lets them gain access to their accounts through a wide range of mobile devices, including the iPhone, iPod Touch and multiple Android-run and Blackberry devices.<\/p>\n

The company commissioned a study that showed more than 80% of its user base was keen on getting mobile access, while 40% was interested in better sound quality. But the Premium offering in my opinion is interesting because it\u2019s basically a way for users to have seamless access to their account and playlists whether they\u2019re opening Deezer up in their browsers, start the cross-platform desktop client or listen to their favorite music on the go. It\u2019s the type of convergence I keep wishing every online music service would offer.<\/p>\n

That said, I\u2019ve been playing around with the desktop application for a couple of hours and ran into some bugs that need to be ironed out before it\u2019s good enough for daily usage. I also tested the iPhone application on my iPhone 3GS and that one didn\u2019t have any noticeable flaws. The Premium offering comes with a 7-day free trial by the way, so I suggest you try it out and see if it suits your needs.<\/p>\n

Deezer\u2019s catalog is currently about 4.5 million tracks strong and also boasts a good number of web radio stations in a variety of genres. And since it has signed licensing agreement with all the majors (Sony BMG, EMI, Warner and Universal, among others) there\u2019s no immediate risk of the service shutting down because of legal disputes, something we\u2019ve seen happen far too often to date.<\/p>\n

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[France] Paris-based\u00a0Deezer is not waiting for\u00a0Spotify to expand into new territories and is moving forward with its own plans pretty quickly. The French startup recently\u00a0raised $9.5 million (\u20ac6.5 million), bringing the total invested into the company to nearly\u00a0$20 million, and today the company\u2019s launching its previously rumored premium offering and a couple of new products. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[51,5,6],"class_list":["post-2544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-music","tag-news","tag-techcrunch"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tokao.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tokao.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tokao.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tokao.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tokao.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tokao.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2544\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tokao.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tokao.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tokao.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}