Deezer goes for premium streaming
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By admin on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 (Deezer)

DeezerFrench startup Deezer has launched a two-tiered premium service model intended to extract revenue from power users. The cost for the premium service is €4.99 per month. This will remove advertising and also offer higher-quality streams. For €9.99 monthly you can add a desktop app and mobile streaming to phones including iPhones, BlackBerrys and Android devices. The premium services will be rolled out first in France, then elsewhere in Europe.

It remains to be seen if the model will work because Deezer’s immediate rival Spotify sees a very low conversion rate towards its paying services. It’s still to be seen if drawing subscription revenue from a low percentage of power users can cover streaming costs that aren’t paid for by advertising income.

Unlike Spotify’s, Deezer’s service is already available in the U.S., albeit with a very restricted catalogue as the company is still negociating linces with various labels.

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Why Last.fm, Pandora, Spotify and Rhapsody pay too much to (certain) labels
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By admin on Thursday, October 15th, 2009 (Deezer, LastFM, Playdar, Spotify)
At the moment Last.fm, Pandora, Spotify and Rhapsody (plus all related companies) are paying to stream content to people when they already have that song locally. “Criminal” says Last.fm co-founder Richard Jones who launched the open source project Playdar in a chat with Wire.
Playdar is built around the since ‘long’ forgotten XSPF (XML Shareable Playlist Format) developed in 2004 by a group of programmers and digital music geeks including Ian Rogers of Grand Royal, Yahoo, and TopSpin Media, Robert Kaye of MusicBrainz and  Lucas Gonze. The format allows people to share playlists with each other without worrying about keeping directory paths intact. The technology has now been picked up again by Playdar.
Built as an open-source software platform, Playdar knows the location of all the music on your computer and home network. Combined with services and plug-ins through its open architecture, it will enable music services to save money on bandwidth and… license fees. Because indeed, why should music services pay license fees for music that is already on your PC to start with?
Integrated (here we go again), the program could detect when you are streaming a song you have on your PC and play it from there. Gone is the license fee owed by the Spotifys of this world to the labels.
One loophole that the Wire lads forgot to think about: what to do with illegal content stored on a PC?

Why Last.fm, Pandora, Spotify and Rhapsody pay too much to (certain) labelsAt the moment Last.fm, Pandora, Spotify and Rhapsody (plus all related companies) are paying to stream content to people when they already have that song locally. “Criminal” says Last.fm co-founder Richard Jones in a chat with Wire. And Jones has the sollution with his open source project Playdar.

Playdar is built around the since ‘long’ forgotten XSPF (XML Shareable Playlist Format) developed in 2004 by a group of programmers and digital music geeks including Ian Rogers of Grand Royal, Yahoo, and TopSpin Media, Robert Kaye of MusicBrainz and  Lucas Gonze. The format allows people to share playlists with each other without worrying about keeping directory paths intact. The technology has now been picked up again by Playdar.

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French Deezer raises €6.5 million and intends ‘to spotify’
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By admin on Monday, October 12th, 2009 (Deezer, Spotify)

Music search and discovery engine Deezer has raised €6.5 million in a second round of financing so Techcrunch informs. It brings the total amount invested in the French upstart to an approximately very nice €12.2 million. The bonus capital was injected by AGF Private Equity and CM-CIC Capital Privé. Deezer is actually one of the most popular music services in Europe and especially France.

Not that all has went to smoothly for the company in the past. Formerly known as BlogMusik, Deezer ran into legal trouble when it launched its free music streaming service a few years ago. It took them some time but they reached all necessary agreements with copyright associations and were able to relaunch as a legal free music search engine in August 2007. Npowadays the company boast having 10 million plus users allover Europe, with over 5 million located in France allone.
Anno 2009 it will ’spotify’ its service by adding a ‘Deezer Premium’ subscription service. Users can sing up for 9.99 € per month which is… the same price as a Spotify premium account. Not that it has to learn mich from Spotify, Deezer launched a mobil application a while back already and claims it was downloaded more than one million times.

French Deezer raises €6.5 million and intends 'to spotify'

Music search and discovery engine Deezer has raised €6.5 million in a second round of financing so Techcrunch informs. It brings the total amount invested in the French upstart to an approximately very nice €12.2 million. The bonus capital was injected by AGF Private Equity and CM-CIC Capital Privé. Deezer is actually one of the most popular music services in Europe and especially France.

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