Weekly Story #4

Deezer takes on Spotify with 5m paying subscribers and new discovery features

The streaming music service Deezer has doubled its number of paying subscribers to five million in the last year, just 1m less than rival Spotify. Deezer says they have 12 million monthly active users, and a 30m tracks available to for stream. "We multiplied our subscriber base by 2.5 in one year. Nobody else can do this, and we did it outside the US, so it's a very strong footprint," said Deezer chief executive Axel Dauchez, referring to the fact that while Deezer is available in more than 180 countries, the US is not one of them.Deezer's growth is being fuelled by those telco deals, particularly where the cost of subscribing to its service is bundled into people's monthly mobile contracts. However, that also means it is unclear how many of the 5 million subscribers are actively using Deezer, as opposed to simply having it available as part of their tariff.

My view:
The reason why i think that Deezers online subscribers have doubled is because their monthly subscription is included in their mobile phone plan. This is why loads of people have started using it because it is included in their mobile plan. This means they don't have to pay for extra subscription to get the service as it is already in the plan. This is the reason why they have doubled their monthly subscribers. Otherwise it is very hard to increase or persuade subscribers to subscribe. Spotify are not like Deezer, they have to persuade people to pay for their content on a direct debit, which is why it is not that easy for them to make money. Online music streaming has increase so much because people like using the internet, this is why the CD sales have dropped.