It recently launched in the UK and is surging to launch in 200 new countries, but Deezer has barely added any new customers this year, according to one reading.
Informa Telecoms & Media analyst Giles Cottle, in this new report on subscription music bundling, writes:
“Despite its promising start, Deezer’s growth has been flat for the past six months, with the service stuck at 1.5 million subscriptions.
“This suggests that some users who initially signed up to Orange to get Deezer free might have been tempted onto other packages once their Deezer/Orange contracts expired. It also suggests that Deezer has had relatively little impact in the UK, where it is up against the much-hyped Spotify.”
Informa says its numbers are estimates, but 1.5 million is the number Deezer itself has been using for a few months now.
Cottle does credit Deezer with growing its subscriber base a little after its UK launch in September, but says it has remained mostly static since the start of the year.
Its previous growth was the result of a domestic French deal in which Orange began bundling Deezer service for its mobile subscribers.
Orange invested in Deezer for 10 percent of the firm in 2010 and found success for both sides by bundling – a strategy it is trying to repeat in the UK and other territories, including Poland, Mauritius and Ivory Coast.
But doing so in some of the less-developed markets where Deezer is trying to gain traction may prove more difficult.
Deezer tells paidContent:
“Deezer is made up of a community of over 20 million users, 1.5 million of whom are paying subscribers. In addition, Deezer has more than 800,000 Facebook fans and 350,000 Twitter followers.”
Spotify has added around 500,000 paying subscribers in around the same period, according to company statements:
