Deezer, a French streaming music service available in 160 countries, is looking at coming to the US as well. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, CEO Axel Dauchez said that the company started talking “months ago” with potential partners in the US. “We are looking for a partner in the US,” he said, “maybe an operator or a blue-chip company, that is able to provide us with a significant volume of subscribers.” If Deezer did come to the US, it would be competing with Pandora, Rdio, Spotify, and many similar radio or streaming services.
Deezer hopes to find a partner to help break into the US market
is a senior tech and policy editor focused on online platforms and free expression. Adi has covered virtual and augmented reality, the history of computing, and more for The Verge since 2011.
In October, Dauchez said that the US market was “not ready,” though he hoped to bring Deezer there in the future. At that time, the service had just launched in 76 new countries, compared to 17 total countries for Spotify. It’s also recently attempted to compete better by offering a year of unlimited ad-supported music to free users before limiting them to two hours a month. Deezer, however, counts about 3 million paying subscribers, far under Spotify’s 5 million, partly because it’s not available in the massive US market.
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