On Spotify, I had been using the iOS app on my iPhone 4S and the Desktop app on my Asus Zenbook having rarely used Spotify’s web interface, I was a bit stunned that Deezer didn’t have a desktop app (equally stunned that Spotify had a web interface, which is awful compared to the Desktop app). No one ever likes a new haircut, so I was determined to not let this get in my way. I knew going into Deezer that I was going to have to adjust to the difference in design however, I likened this to the switch between iOS and Android. Also, as tracks are licensed on a country-by-country basis, it’s difficult to tell how many tracks a user in any given country has for each service. Spotify’s press page claims that they have over 20 million tracks licensed, while Deezer’s november announcement included a mention of 30 Million licensed songs there is clearly a large gap in music provided by the two services, yet no real way to know what you’re missing out on.ĭeezer is available in 150 countries more than Spotify (180 vs 32), meaning that much of their 10 Million tracks may be local artists however, Deezer isn’t available in the US, so artists only available in the US wouldn’t be available on Deezer. The second assumption that was proven wrong was that the catalogs of the two services are identical – my realization of this came when I carried my “ Chill Out” Spotify playlist over to Deezer, and upon listening found that not all songs had been carried over (specifically, Obadiah Parker’s bombtastic acoustic cover of “Hey Ya” – available here in Spotify, is nowhere to be found on Deezer). Any ‘network effect’ that one service (or its users) claims to have over the other are essentially null. The first was that switching services would be hard, which was busted quickly when one Deezer user introduced me to Spotizr, a service that pulls your Spotify playlists into Deezer (there is a similar service, that allows you to do the same thing). There were two assumptions that I had initially made and planned on assessing, that turned out to be wrong. Nota bene: it’s easy to switch & the music’s not all the same I had thought about trying Rdio and other services however, when Rdio announced in November that they were laying off 30+ employees, I realized that this three-horse race had just become a two-horse race, and decided to just try Deezer vs. I took the time to think about my personal habits, likes/dislikes, and needs when it came to music (and specifically, Spotify), and I decided to look at 5 key areas that could be isolated and assessed: Product Design, Music Discovery, the Mobile experience, the Offline experience and the App Store. These five areas corresponded well to how I experience music today, and while I wasn’t going to give specific weight to any of them, they gave me a basis to judge the two services. In early November I set out to switch from Spotify to Deezer, but first I had to define a set of criteria on which I could compare the two services. Habitually running into founder Daniel Marhely, I never lied – “I’m a premium Spotify user, and I don’t plan on changing.” – but earlier this year, when Deezer announced a re-vamp of their newsfeed (dubbed ‘Hear This’) as well as some impressive subscriber numbers, I realized that I didn’t have a reason why I didn’t use Deezer that didn’t date back to my 2010 experiences with the service. I rarely give favor to local versions of products that I use, when I feel they are ‘me-toos’ – I use Eventbrite, and not Weezevent or Amiando, I use LinkedIn and not Viadeo – and this became particularly evident as I began visiting Deezer more frequently this year. I’m a pretty ardent believer in the idea that it is better to use the best products than local products.
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