Muve Acquisition Makes Deezer #2 In Paid US Subscribers

Chances are if you ask a typical music lover if they know about the streaming platform Deezer they’ll reply, “Who?” Even though the French company seems to be the only service to seriously battle Spotify for streaming superiority in Europe, it’s still little known in the North America, although the fact is that it only launched here last September. 

That said, Deezer now becomes the #2 streaming platform in the US in terms of paid subscriptions with its recent acquisition of Muve Music from AT&T subsidiary Cricket for an undisclosed amount. Deezer will now add 2 million new paid subscribers to go along with the users in its Elite tier (although that number is undisclosed as well). As a reference point, Spotify currently has approximately 6 million paid US users.

What’s interesting is that Deezer actually seems to have a real market strategy in place, as opposed to most of its competitors. Muve now becomes the service’s entry-level tier at $6 per month, which is far enough below most other platform’s usual $9.95 to make a difference to a potential subscriber. If a customer wants talk radio or podcasts, the company offers a free app from Stitcher, other recent acquisition. Finally, Deezer offers high-resolution audio with its up-market $19.99 Elite tier, a distinct feature not found on most other platforms.

While Spotify has increased its paid subscriber base substantially in the last six months, much of that can be attributed to huge discounts in all of its paid tiers. Many analysts feel that its $0.99 Holiday promotion had the biggest impact on its subscriber surge, and wonder how sustainable those subscriber numbers actually are after the trial period has ended. A bigger question might be how many of them might be willing to try Deezer and if the difference between the services is sufficient enough to make a user want to jump from one to the other. Read more on Forbes.

The Music Subscription Music Service You Don't Know About

Subscription music services have been getting more and more press as the music business and their customers gradually adopt the concept, but we normally only hear about the higher profile services like Spotify and Pandora. It's true that they have the most subscribers at the moment, but did you know there's one service that's quietly crossed the million mark that very few have heard about?

Muve Music, which is a service of wireless carrier Cricket Wireless, has quietly surpassed 1.1 million subscribes less than 2 years after it was launched. It's basically an unlimited music service that's tied to a pay-as-you-go mobile phone service. It offers no apps for personal computers or tablets, and is only offered on Android phones.

What's particularly interesting is the demographic that Muve Music caters to. Most of its users don't own a computer or have a credit card. That means they'd never be a user of one of the other services anyway.

It just goes to show that there's always a sub-market to be served, even though it may not get much attention. That's pretty much the way music works these days. Even superstar artists have their own niche that they cater to, and any artist can have a career within a narrow category.

That's the key to being an artist in Music 3.0. Find your niche and play to it. It doesn't matter if you play something esoteric like Swahili polka or Manchurian jazz, there's a market out there for what you do. The trick is to find it. Luckily that's easer than ever thanks to social media. Stay tuned for more on how it's done.

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