Deezer, the music streaming service which raised $130 million this fall to expand its business internationally, is today making good on those ambitions with launches in twenty-two new regions across the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Brazil. Included in the rollout are the Republic of Korea, Taiwan and the United Arab Emirates, among others. The company is also touting its claim to fame as the first legal streaming service in the Maghreb region of Africa.
Deezer, which now has over 20 million tracks available for streaming across smartphones, PCs, tablets and wireless speakers, has been making several moves in recent months to compete with big names like Spotify in both feature set and international support. In November, the company rolled out a ton of product updates, including an app store called App Studio, which competes with Spotify’s own App Center, as well as new APIs and partnerships with Echonest for music discovery and Songkick for event listings. It also released upgraded mobile apps.
At the time, the company announced it had grown to 26 million users across 160 countries, with 2 million paying subscribers. Today, the company maintains that 26 million user figure publicly, but says it has grown its paying subscribers to 3 million across 182 countries. For comparison’s sake, Spotify has 20 million+ tracks and 20 million+ users across 17 countries, over 5 million of whom are paying subscribers.
The new regions included in Deezer’s expansion are: Algeria, Bahrain, Brazil, Egypt, Hong Kong, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Republic of Korea, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Taiwan, Tunisia, UAE, Venezuela, and Yemen.
Of those, Brazil is an especially important emerging market for Deezer to address, which is why it has now opened its South American headquarters in Sao Paulo. Gaining the first-mover advantage in other regions will also help Deezer compete on the international stage, where users in developing markets have skipped buying PCs, but are coming online via mobile devices in incredible numbers.