As Foursquare focuses on the question of growing revenue, it has been slowly turning its game-style mobile check-in app into a platform to support location-based advertising and marketing. That strategy got an international fillip today in a new deal with music streaming service Deezer: people who use the app in the 15 of the 182 countries where Deezer is active, to check in to live music events across some 15,000 venues, get a chance to also pick up a three-month Deezer Premium subscription.
It’s not as generous a deal as it may sound: The offer only applies in Brazil, Mexico, UK, Ireland, Indonesia, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Spain, Italy, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Poland and users will need to check into at least seven events to qualify. That, in turn, makes a user eligible for the offer, although it not a guarantee that each will win the premium subscription.
Still, the deal highlights a couple of important things. For starters, it’s a measure of how Foursquare is continuing to push at growth and raising its profile internationally. This is not to be underestimated: in February, CEO Dennis Crowley told me that of all the new users it’s picking up at the moment, some 60% are outside the U.S.
The other is that while Foursquare is putting a lot of effort into transforming itself into the go-to platform for social location data — both as a standalone service but also as a big-data API provider for hundreds of other services — it’s still pushing a lot of services based around its bread-and-butter check-in features. Deezer says that this is the first music deal of this kind for Foursquare outside the U.S., but it’s been working with other music providers on projects, such as this partnership with Spotify at the last SXSW.
For Deezer, it’s a sign that the company is looking increasingly to leverage other services popular with smartphone users to continue to raise its profile — scale being an important part of the equation to make the financials for a music streaming service work. Deezer, which has raised an eye-watering $149 million in funding, currently has some 25 million tracks in its catalog.
We are reaching out to both Deezer and Foursquare to see if they can provide some more detail on how the financial terms of this deal work out.