As we’ve got seen, Spotify was not the pioneer of music streaming. Different companies, resembling RealNetworks/Rhapsody or MOG, had been round for a very long time when Spotify arrived. The French music streaming service Deezer additionally went on-line earlier than Spotify and briefly labored its approach as much as change into the second largest music streaming service on this planet, however was solely in a position to set up itself because the market chief in France. This a part of the weblog sequence recounts the historical past of Deezer and analyses its position within the worldwide music streaming market.

The Music Streaming Economic system – Half 4: Deezer

In September 2006, nevertheless, Deezer was nonetheless referred to as BlogMusik.internet and was based by college dropout Daniel Marhely[1] as an internet platform the place customers may add their music MP3s for streaming.[2] BlogMusik.internet quickly got here to the eye of the French music gathering society SACEM as a result of the platform was not paying royalties for its repertoire. In February 2007, BlogMusik.internet went offline underneath strain from SACEM and started licensing negotiations. On 22 August 2007, BlogMusik.internet was renamed Deezer.com and a press launch introduced that, following profitable negotiations with SACEM, the world’s first on-demand music web site with out DRM restrictions can be obtainable without spending a dime and legally through an Web browser.[3] Deezer wished to make a “revolutionary” contribution to battle in opposition to unlawful music consumption, in response to its announcement. Deezer boasted that it was already obtainable in 16 totally different languages and in lots of international locations, the place customers may entry a whole bunch of hundreds of tracks without spending a dime due to promoting and handle their content material through playlists. The press launch additionally introduced that Deezer was already in negotiations with the music majors to make clear the grasp rights to the recordings.

Nevertheless it wasn’t as straightforward as Deezer founders Daniel Marhely and Jonathan Benassaya had imagined. Though they managed to strike licensing offers with digital music distributor Imagine and a few French indie labels, the majors have been nonetheless reluctant to present their blessing to the brand new on-line music service. Negotiations with Common, Sony, Warner and EMI dragged on till a suitable consequence was reached two years later.[4] In the meantime, Deezer was at risk of failing financially. The corporate’s restricted repertoire of indie music and the majors’ monetary calls for have been placing a pressure on its funds. French investor Xavier Niel kick-started the challenge in June 2007 with EUR 250,000 in seed funding, however the cash was rapidly used up. In January 2008, the Rosenblum brothers’ Dot Corp Fund purchased a 24 per cent stake within the firm for EUR 4.8 million, guaranteeing Deezer’s survival in the meanwhile.[5]

Nonetheless, even this funding was solely simply sufficient to pay the advances to the music majors for catalogue use within the quantity of EUR 2.5 to three million, as reported by the French newspaper Le Figaro in 2010. As well as, Deezer needed to pay a further 1 to 1.5 eurocents to the main labels for every music observe performed.[6] Considering the settlement with SACEM to pay 8 per cent of annual turnover in royalties, there was hardly any cash left over to run the enterprise, as Deezer co-founder Jonathan Benassaya admitted in an interview with Le Musicodrome in October 2009. The Deezer CEO complained that round EUR 6 million a yr was going to the rights holders alone.[7] Deezer additionally wanted to boost new enterprise capital rapidly as promoting revenues weren’t as robust as anticipated, regardless of the creation of its personal promoting company. In October 2009, the CM-CIC personal capital funds of the main French financial institution Credit score Mutuel and AGF Personal Fairness supplied EUR 6.5 million. A month later, Deezer additionally needed to abandon its free music technique and from November 2009 supplied a month-to-month subscription of EUR 4.99 for PCs with Deezer HQ and EUR 9.99 for smartphones with Deezer Premium. However with solely 14,000 paying subscribers within the first three months, the swap to a freemium mannequin value Deezer CEO Benassaya his job.[8]

Deezer’s lifeline was a cope with French cell operator Orange, introduced by the brand new administration in June 2010.[9] Accordingly, Orange acquired an 11 per cent stake in Deezer and merged it with its music service WorMee, which was based in 2009.[10] Orange bundled Deezer into its cell tariffs, which meant that as an alternative of some thousand extra subscriptions per 30 days, greater than 100,000 subscribed. In the summertime of 2011, Deezer surpassed 1 million paying customers for the primary time.[11] Very like Spotify, which was in a position to acquire a foothold available in the market by working with Scandinavian cell operators, Deezer was in a position to obtain a turnaround with the assistance of Orange.

With Orange as a associate, Deezer, which was solely obtainable in France, Belgium and the UK in 2011, now may broaden internationally. In November 2011, the corporate introduced its intention to function in 130 international locations – however not within the US.[12] In Could 2012, Deezer signed a licensing cope with indie label rights administration company MERLIN,[13] which meant that indie catalogues from outdoors France might be included within the streaming service. This made Deezer a completely licensed international music streaming service that might compete with Spotify and the tech corporations’ choices.

Deezer’s monetary state of affairs improved additional in 2012 when the business and expertise conglomerate Entry Industries, which was additionally the bulk proprietor of the Warner Music Group, invested US $130 million in Deezer in October.[14] In 2012, Deezer was in a position to look again on a profitable yr through which it additionally managed to realize greater than 3 million paying customers for its streaming service.[15] And the success continued the next yr, when 5 million subscribers have been reported.[16] Using this wave of success, Deezer entered right into a strategic alliance with German personal broadcaster ProSiebenSat1 in June 2014, through which Deezer acquired the streaming service Ampya, which had been based solely a yr earlier, and ProSiebenSat1 acquired a stake in Deezer. Deezer additionally teamed up with cell phone large Vodafone in an in the end unsuccessful bid to overhaul market chief Spotify in Germany.[17]

After Germany, Deezer’s focus turned to the US market, the place the streaming service was launched in September 2014.[18] To strengthen its market place in North America, Deezer purchased music streaming supplier Muve from US cell phone firm Cricket, a part of the AT&T group, in early 2015. Muve customers’ knowledge was taken over and, after a free trial interval, the useres may determine whether or not to change into Deezer prospects. With its growth into the US, Deezer turned the second largest music streaming service on this planet, behind Spotify, and introduced its IPO on Euronext in Paris in October 2015. It got here as an enormous shock when officers cancelled the IPO three days earlier than its scheduled launch on 28 October, which might have raised an estimated EUR 300-400 million for the corporate.[19] The financial state of affairs and the poor inventory market setting have been cited as unconvincing causes for the withdrawal. Tim Ingham from Music Enterprise Worldwide, however, noticed different causes for the failed IPO:[20] Within the first quarter of 2015, Deezer needed to report a lower of the variety of subscribers by greater than 500,000 to six.34 million customers, greater than half of whom weren’t paying customers however had solely signed up without spending a dime trials. Ingham calculated that the variety of paying subscribers in 2015 was 3.79 million, 90,000 fewer than within the earlier yr. It was additionally important that Deezer had solely been making losses since 2012, and was once more within the crimson within the first half of 2015 with round €9 million. This was on account of extraordinarily excessive advance funds to rights holders for the usage of their music catalogues. Within the first half of 2014, these prices accounted for 86 p.c of whole revenues, and one yr later they nonetheless accounted for 76 p.c. Most of Deezer’s income from streaming music needed to be paid on to the labels. To make issues worse, Orange France stopped bundling Deezer with its cell companies in 2014, which most likely additionally explains the decline within the variety of paying subscribers. With Orange’s contract on account of be renewed in 2016, there was additionally a threat that the cell operator would pull out of its alliance with Deezer altogether, which might have been disastrous for Deezer. In these circumstances, Ingham concluded, the IPO was just too dangerous.[21]

As an alternative of the IPO, house owners Entry Industries and Orange needed to help Deezer with a EUR 100 million money injection in January 2016, with Entry offering the majority of the funds.[22] In consequence, Entry held greater than 50 per cent of Deezer in September of the identical yr and Orange’s share shrank to 10 per cent.[23] This made Entry Industries not solely the bulk proprietor of Warner Music Group, but in addition the world’s second largest music streaming supplier. In 2018, a consortium led by Entry Industries and Orange, with companions from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Emirate of Dubai, invested an extra EUR 160 million, rising Deezer’s worth to EUR 1 billion.[24] Nonetheless, this laid the muse for a second try at an IPO, which lastly passed off on 5 July 2022 on Euronext Paris with the assistance of the Particular Acquisition Firm (SPAC) I2PO. Surrounded by his fellow board members, Deezer CEO Jeronimo Folgueira rang the opening bell at the beginning of the buying and selling day, as seen within the press images.[25] The IPO additionally revealed Deezer’s possession construction. Unsurprisingly, the most important shareholders have been Entry Industrie with 38.1 per cent and Orange with 8.1 per cent, adopted by funding funds from Saudi Arabia and Dubai with simply over 5 per cent every. A shock, nevertheless, was that Warner Music Group, by means of its subsidiary WEA Worldwide, additionally held 3.2 per cent of Deezer shares.[26] This meant that Deezer, like Spotify, was additionally owned by a music main, albeit to a lesser extent.

It’s subsequently no shock that the previous long-term CEO of Warner Music Worldwide, Stu Bergen, was elected Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Deezer on the finish of February 2023. This most likely additionally has to do with the truth that though Deezer has been in a position to enhance its income since its IPO, it’s nonetheless working at a loss and needed to report a unfavorable consequence from working actions (EBIT) of EUR 166.7 million for 2022.[27] Nonetheless, the variety of subscribers fell by 2.1 per cent to 9.3 million in March 2023, which is especially on account of an erosion of person numbers outdoors of France. And that is exactly the issue for Deezer, which is the undisputed market chief in its residence market of France and generates 61 per cent of its whole income there, however lags far behind its opponents outdoors the nation.[28] This pattern continued in 2023, when the annual report for the primary half of the yr recorded an extra decline in subscribers outdoors France to 2 million, whereas the variety of paying customers in France elevated from 3.3 million to three.6 million. This lowered the half-year loss to EUR 42.5 million, however that is nonetheless a excessive determine, primarily because of the excessive value of income, which amounted to 88 per cent of whole revenues.[29] We are going to see that this can be a structural downside for the music streaming companies, which need to pay excessive upfront charges to the labels to realize entry to the music catalogues within the first place, which shall be analysed intimately in a later a part of this sequence.

Endnotes

[1] Wikipedia, “Daniel Marhely”, model of March 3, 2021, accessed: 2024-07-07.

[2] TechCrunch, “Unique: BlogMusik To Go Legit; Launches Free & Authorized Music On Demand”, August 22, 2007, accessed: 2024-07-07.

[3] Deezer.com press launch, “Deezer.com libere enfin toutes les musiques”, August 22, 2007, accessed: 2024-07-07.

[4] INA World, “Deezer: Profitability Down the Line?”, August 18, 2011, accessed: 2024-07-07.

[5] The Wall Road Journal, “Deezer’s Growth Plans Get a Enhance”, October 8, 2012, accessed: 2024-07-07.

[6] Le Figaro, “Musique: les websites de streaming menaces”, March 4, 2010, accessed: 2024-07-07.

[7] INA World, “Deezer: Profitability Down the Line?”, August 18, 2011, accessed: 2024-07-07.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Billboard, “Orange Companions With Streaming Service Deezer”, July 23, 2010, accessed: 2024-07-07.

[10] L’Categorical, “Musique: Deezer va fusionner avec WorMee d’Orange”, July 21, 2010, accessed: 2024-07-07.

[11] ZDNet, “Axel Dauchez, Deezer : ‘Le cap du million d’abonnés payants sera passé cet été’”, March 9, 2011, accessed: 2024-07-07.

[12] Billboard, “Deezer To Launch In 130 Worldwide Markets, U.S. No Time Quickly”, November 3, 2011, accessed: 2024-07-07.

[13] Music Enterprise Worldwide, “Merlin licenses Deezer throughout the globe”, Could 10, 2012, accessed: 2024-07-07.

[14] Billboard, “Deezer Raises $130 Million: Report”, October 6, 2012, accessed: 2024-07-07.

[15] Billboard, “Deezer Reaches 3 Million Subscribers, Launches Free Service, Provides Options”, December 19, 2012, accessed: 2024-07-07.

[17] Wirtschaftswoche, “Ampya und Deezer schmieden Allianz gegen Spotify”, June 10, 2014, accessed: 2024-07-07.

[18] Billboard, “Deezer Lastly Coming to America on Sept. 15”, September 10, 2014, accessed: 2024-07-07.

[19] New York Occasions, “Deezer, French Music Streaming Service, Postpones I.P.O.”, October 27, 2015, accessed: 2024-07-07.

[20] Music Enterprise Worldwide, “Deezer scraps IPO that might have raised $400m – right here’s 5 the explanation why”, October 28, 2015, accessed: 2024-07-07.

[21] Ibid.

[22] Music Enterprise Worldwide, “Deezer absorbs €100m funding from Orange and Entry Industries”, January 20, 2016, accessed: 2024-07-07.

[23] Music Enterprise Worldwide, “Len Blavatnik’s Entry Industries takes ‘unique management’ of Deezer”, September 7, 2016, accessed: 2024-07-07.

[24] Music Enterprise Worldwide, “Deezer raises $185m as new funding values firm at over $1bn”, August 2, 2018, accessed: 2024-07-07.

[25] Music Enterprise Worldwide, “Deezer goes public: Spotify rival makes inventory market debut on Euronext Paris”, July 5, 2022, accessed: 2024-07-07.

[26] Ibid.

[27] Music Enterprise Worldwide, “Deezer generated over $470m in 2022, with a $175m working loss, and simply named Stu Bergen as a Director on its Board”, February 28, 2023, accessed: 2024-07-07.

[28] Music Enterprise Worldwide, “Deezer’s revenues grew 6.2% YoY in Q1, however its whole subscribers fell 2.1% to 9.3m”, April 24, 2023, accessed: 2024-07-07.

[29] Ibid.