Though the French media stole some of the thunder from Deezer's planned announcement today (see RAIN here), revealing its $130 million in new funding over the weekend, there was plenty of bang left for today's reveal.
The on-demand music service today announced it will expand to 76 additional countries throughout Africa, the Middle East and Asia (what TechCrunch calls the "everywhere but the U.S." strategy), and will add a "marketing-driven free version of the service" while "ramping up its social features significantly."
The global expansion will bring Deezer’s geographical reach to 160 countries worldwide. Deezer has no plans for the U.S. market, where "customer acquisition costs are high and market conditions do not currently allow for sustainable expansion."
Deezer CEO Axel Dauchez revealed the details at a press conference held at Abbey Road Studios in London earlier today.
The new Deezer free service "will be a recruitment channel to encourage users to convert to a paid subscription ('rather than a model in of itself,' says the company). Furthermore, it will be tailored for each individual country 'according to the competition,' presumably in terms of number of listening hours permitted and that type of thing," TechCrunch reports.
Deezer is also the newest client for music intelligence service The Echo Nest. Deezer will use The Echo Nest's Rosetta Stone 30-million song dataset. Hypebot describes Rosetta Stone as "a data translator for music services that allows developers to summon elements from a variety of sources to include in their apps."
Read more in TechCrunch here; MusicWeek here; and HypeBot here.
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