April 29th, 2013

Spotify May Need To Be More ‘Asian’ To Dominate Region

asian woman with headphones

Asia’s fragmented music fanbase and subscription habits may stand between Spotify and its total domination of the region, or at least so its competitors hope. The music streaming service recently launched in the Asian countries of Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong. When we spoke to Spotify’s head of new markets in Asia-Pacific, Sriram Krishnan, he was evasive on how extensive the… → Read More

March 12th, 2013

To Boost Music Subs, Deezer Turns On Affiliate Deals, Gaming APIs, And (Ahead Of Spotify) 3rd Party Apps On Mobile

deezer

Music streaming may not be making much money right now, but that’s not stopping music streaming hopefuls from trying. The latest development comes from Deezer, which is announcing a series of new services based around its APIs to drive more users to its service. They include an affiliate marketing program; more social and gaming integration; and the ability to port apps made for the Deezer App… → Read More

January 28th, 2013

Deezer Takes On Spotify With Expansions In Middle East, Africa, Brazil And Asia

deezer

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… → Read More

November 6th, 2012

WiMP Takes The Music Streaming Fight To Deezer In… Poland

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WiMP, the Norwegian music streaming service owned by Aspiro, has announced that it is expanding into Poland, stepping on the toes of European competitor Deezer, the other major player operating in the country.

The move also sees WiMP set up a local office in Warsaw, while (impressively) the company has recruited ex-Head of Digital at Universal Music Polska, Adrian Ciepichal, as Polish General… → Read More

October 10th, 2012

European Cozy Up: Songkick Chosen To Power Deezer’s Concert Recommendations

SongKick

I always get a warm and fuzzy feeling when two European tech companies cozy up. To that end, TechCrunch has learned that Deezer, the music streaming service which announced ambitious plans for growth today (off the back of a new $130 million funding round), has chosen the U.K. startup Songkick to power its concert recommendations. → Read More

October 10th, 2012

Deezer Pulls Back Curtain On Growth Strategy: Adds 76 More Countries, Free Version, Social Features

deezer

Armed with a fresh $130 million in funding from Warner Music owner Access Industries and Idinvest, music streaming company Deezer has this morning revealed more details on what it plans to do with that cash. The short version is as follows: Push on with Rest Of The World (ROW) domination — launching in 76 additional countries throughout Africa, the Middle East and Asia — as the company continues… → Read More

October 9th, 2012

Deezer’s CEO Axel Dauchez On Cracking Into The U.S. And Why It’s Not Just Another Spotify

deezer

Deezer, the web-based music streaming company that has just picked up $130 million in funding from Warner Music owner Access Industries and Idinvest, is gearing up for another announcement on Wednesday. There, it will lay out more details about what it plans to do with the cash injection — the largest ever for a French startup — and, we have heard, unveil a new user interface and other features. → Read More

October 6th, 2012

French Music Startup Deezer Gets $130M Fourth Round, Led By Warner Music Group’s Owner Access Industries

deezer

In France, it is the biggest startup funding round ever. Warner Music Group’s owner Access Industries and previous investor Idinvest are investing €100 million ($130 Million) into music streaming startup Deezer. €25 million ($32.6 million) will be used to buy out previous shares. Orange previously had 11 percent of the company and toyed with the idea of an acquisition. As it is not… → Read More

August 15th, 2012

European Music Streaming Service Deezer Heads to Asia; Partners With Telco dTac In Thailand

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European music streaming service Deezer is expanding to Asia. It’s announced that it will roll out in Thailand this week, with Singapore and Malaysia to follow shortly. In addition, Indonesia and the Philippines are expected “within the coming weeks”.

Of note, its Thailand launch is in partnership with dTac, one of the region’s leading telecommunications operators. This sees Deezer replicate… → Read More

May 3rd, 2012

Better Late Than Never: Deezer Releases APIs To Court Developers In Latest Bid To Catch Up To Spotify

Deezer Open API graphic

Music streaming provider Deezer is one of the bigger (and older — it’s been around since 2006) services of its kind, with some 20 million registered users in 48 territories, and 15 million tracks in its catalog — but it has failed to capture mindshare in quite the same way as rival Spotify; and some might argue that this will make it harder in the long run for Deezer to keep up and… → Read More

March 19th, 2012

Deezer Launches Offline Browser Mode To Catch Up With Spotify

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Deezer came out well before Spotify appeared on the horizon – 2007 in fact – to disrupt the streaming music space, but it faces a problem. Spotify has sucked up a lot of air despite having less registered users, 15 million to Deezer’s 20 million. The again Deezer has 1.5 million paying subscribers when Spotify is over 3 million right now. What do they do next?

Deezer is fighting back, doubling… → Read More

December 17th, 2011

Five European Startups To Watch

Euro map

Silicon Valley is famously, and rightly, proud of its place as the spiritual home for startups. And it has an inspiring and awesome track record that’s tough to beat.

However, as the recent Le Web conference proved, European tech hubs like London, Berlin and more recently Paris, can now also lay claim to breeding world-class entrepreneurs. There’s a sense that Europe is finally getting its… → Read More

December 7th, 2011

Deezer plans to launch music service in 200 countries by June 2012 (but not in the US and Japan)

Deezer, which in a press release quite literally claims to have “invented music streaming” four years ago (who knew!), is planning to roll out its music streaming services all across the globe in the next few months to reach a total of 200 territories by June 2012. Not on the roadmap are the United States and Japan, because Deezer considers those countries uninteresting due to “market saturation… → Read More

December 7th, 2011

Deezer Plans To Launch Music Service In 200 Countries By June 2012 (But Not In The US And Japan)

deezer

Deezer, which in a press release quite literally claims to have “invented music streaming” four years ago (who knew!), is planning to roll out its music streaming services all across the globe in the next few months to reach a total of 200 territories by June 2012. Not on the roadmap are the United States and Japan, because Deezer considers those countries uninteresting due to “market saturation… → Read More

January 28th, 2010

Post bloodletting, Deezer appoints a new CEO

[France] Following controversial moves in which its CEO went missing from a major conference and initially appeared to have been ousted, the streaming music startup Deezer, has finally clarified the company’s new structure.

In a terse press release, the startup announced the appointment of Axel Dauchez as CEO, replacing former CEO Jonathan Benassaya. Dauchez was the CEO of leading European… → Read More

January 25th, 2010

Deezer rides a doozy of a storm as CEO is ousted by investors

[France] Music search and discovering service Deezer is currently caught up in a storm of controversy: its co-founder and CEO Jonathan Benassaya has effectively been forced out by his investors. After Deezer faced mounting competition from services like Spotify, it’s emerged that investors ousted the founder in order to put in place a more experienced business manager to both reorganize and… → Read More

January 25th, 2010

Spotify Rival Deezer's CEO Kicked Out By Investors, Drama Ensues

[France] Music search and discovering service Deezer is currently caught up in a storm of controversy: its co-founder and CEO Jonathan Benassaya has effectively been forced out by his investors. After Deezer faced mounting competition from services like Spotify, it’s emerged that investors ousted the founder in order to put in place a more experienced business manager to both reorganize and… → Read More

December 23rd, 2009

Play And Share Your Music Collection In The Cloud With tunesBag

Vienna, Austria-based tunesBag is opening up the public beta version of its social music service today, after allowing access by invitation only for the past year or so.

The launch has been a long time coming, considering the fact that the startup has already produced a fully functional web client, and Adobe-AIR powered desktop client and applications for iPhone, Facebook and Boxee since its → Read More

November 5th, 2009

Digital music startup Deezer debuts desktop client, premium offering

[France] Paris-based Deezer is not waiting for Spotify to expand into new territories and is moving forward with its own plans pretty quickly. The French startup recently raised $9.5 million (€6.5 million), bringing the total invested into the company to nearly $20 million, and today the company’s launching its previously rumored premium offering and a couple of new products.

Basically, the… → Read More

November 5th, 2009

Spotify Competitor Deezer Launches Premium Offering, Desktop App

[France] Paris-based Deezer is not waiting for Spotify to expand into new territories and is moving forward with its own plans pretty quickly. The French startup recently raised $9.5 million (€6.5 million), bringing the total invested into the company to nearly $20 million, and today the company’s launching its previously rumored premium offering and a couple of new products.

Basically, the… → Read More

October 26th, 2009

The New Grooveshark: Faster, Prettier And Still Phenomenal

I’ve always considered the Grooveshark web app’s UI to be quite amazing, so I was wary when I was granted preview access to the service’s new look, which the startup is presenting publicly for the first time today (at 12 AM EST). Fortunately, they somehow managed to make it even more awesome than it already was, and the makeover was more than a new lick of paint as it also included a number of… → Read More

October 12th, 2009

Spotify competitor Deezer raises €6.5 million Series B round

[France] Music search and discovery engine Deezer has raised €6.5 million in a second round of financing, bringing the total amount invested in the French upstart to approx. €12.2 million. The additional capital was raised from from AGF Private Equity and CM-CIC Capital Privé, thus joining the historical shareholders who make up the DOTCORP Asset Management funds.

Deezer is one of the most… → Read More

October 12th, 2009

Deezer Raises $9.5 Million More For Free Music Search And Streaming Service

Music search and discovery engine Deezer has raised €6.5 million ($9.6 million) in a second round of financing, bringing the total amount invested in the French upstart to approx. €12.2 million ($18 million). The additional capital was raised from from AGF Private Equity and CM-CIC Capital Privé, thus joining the historical shareholders who make up the DOTCORP Asset Management funds.

Deezer… → Read More

August 22nd, 2009

Your Guide To Music On The Web – Part #1

I’m a Web fanatic, I admit. But you probably already knew that… My work environment has been completely web based for years now. The same applies to my music. Like many people, I used to download music from Kazaa or eMule (Yeah, I know some of you still do). Most of the time now, I listen to music on the web and don’t have any need to download it. My laptop benefits the most from this… → Read More

January 24th, 2008

SpiralFrog Exceeding Our Lack Of Expectations

SpiralFrog has just announced the site is up to over 1 million uniques each month and expected to end this month with over 1.2 million uniques. SpiralFrog, for those of you who don’t remember, is the free (as in ad supported, not P2P) legal music service that unlocks over 1 million songs to their users as long as they log back in to their site at least once every month (an easy task if you… → Read More

November 28th, 2007

Music Search Engines Tread Fine Legal Line

Music search engines are just one of the many ways to get free music on the Internet (BitTorrent and MP3Sparks, formerly AllofMP3, are other popular ways). But for some users they are a near perfect way to listen to music on demand, and/or round out their music collection. Three that we’ve been tracking are SeeqPod, Songza and Skreemr. All three index the web, or parts of the web, looking… → Read More

August 21st, 2007

Exclusive: BlogMusik To Go Legit; Launches Free & Legal Music On Demand

Back in September last year Michael suggested everyone check out BlogMusik quickly before it was shut down. BlogMusik is a service born in France that lets you search for mp3 files on the web and listen to them in streaming mode for free. At the time the service was young and had no particular licensing agreements. A few months later, the SACEM, the organization in charge of collecting payments… → Read More