Things are looking up at Deezer, the European music streamer locked in a battle with Spotify and Apple Music, to win the hearts and minds of music lovers and help support artists globally.
The company's latest financials show that profits and subscribers are up and while the growth in their home territory of France is particularly impressive (up 4.5%) the company has bold intentions everywhere else too.
The company made €134 million in the first quarter of 2025 - numbers that are up 1.1% on last year – and the service now has over 9.4 million subscribers.
Deezer, of course, is famously on the side of the musician, working hard to spread the word that more of your subscription cash reaches the pockets of your favourite artists than is the case with their big-name rivals.
Spotify has been increasingly under pressure from artists to liberate more of their money in the direction of the people who make the music they sell, and are now regularly on the warpath to point out the blame elsewhere.
Legally obliged to pay rights holders rather than artists, Spotify points out that it's the rights holders who are withholding cash due to the poor deals the artists signed, rather than it being the fault of Spotiy themselves.
Nevertheless, Deezer still claim a win here with their “artist centric model” and in January of this year Deezer signed a major contract with SACEM, the Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers of Music and announced the adoption of the artist centric payment system (ACPS) for publishing rights on Deezer in France.
Their new way to calculate and deliver payments is, they claim, the world’s first update to the remuneration model for publishing since streaming was introduced over a decade and a half ago.
New features = new users?
Similarly, Deezer is at the forefront of the battle against AI music, another contentious issue that’s much in musicians' minds, placing them as the only streamer to actively take a stance against AI-generated musical ‘spam’ and actively working hard to keep real music by real artists front and centre.
Deezer’s proprietary AI detection now blocks and deletes 10,000 new AI-generated tracks being uploaded to the service every day.
And alongside the new numbers come innovative new features for the service, designed to let users see and hear the Deezer difference.
Recognising that each music lover is uniquely passionate about their taste and choices Deezer will shortly be updating their app with new customisation features allowing users to alter and re-order the look of the app and workings of its suggestion algorithm to create their own more personalised player.
And by solving one of music streaming’s biggest problems – the ‘lock-in’ of song and playlist sharing between friends – Deezer hopes to break down streamer’s ‘walled gardens’, remove a potential barrier to entry for new users and “set their music free”.
Now, when sharing a track or playlist from Deezer with friends, Deezer users are able to share it in Spotify- or Apple Music-compatible form. Get the link, click the link and the music will play in your chosen service, whether you’re a Deezer subscriber or not.
"We are fully focused on executing our new strategic direction, introducing bold and innovative music experiences designed to create long lasting value for fans, artists and our partners," says Deezer CEO Alexis Lanternier.
"New features are already live, with intuitive personalization and universal sharing, setting the tone for what we continue to build."
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