Deezer Adds 20,000 Podcasts, Downplays Importance Of Free Music
[UPDATED] Everyone seems to be trying to find new ways to stand out ahead of Apple Music's relaunch. Today music streamer Deezer added podcasts to its offering, and more interestingly, downplayed just how important free music is to its own growth.
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Deezer is adding 20,000 podcasts and radio shows to its streaming music service in the UK, France and Sweden. The feature will roll out in the other territories in the coming months. The launch follows Deezer’s purchase of Stitcher’s talk radio and podcast app in October of 2014.
[MORE: Deezer Exec Outlines Global Strategy]
In an interview with Music Ally, Deezer CEO Hans-Holger Albrecht addressed label and artist concerns that too much free music was bad for the industry, striking a conciliatory chord"
“Our main model is subscription: we drive direct subscriptions as much as possible. We are not building our model on freemium, although we do have freemium as well. We are a bit more open and flexible.
There are two things we have to warn people about though. If we talk about freemium, we have to talk about free music in general: that’s the competition. Let’s make sure there’s not any other free, on-demand music like YouTube if we’re going to remove freemium. It shouldn’t just be about Spotify and its free tier.
“The big elephant in the room is YouTube, we all know that. That’s what the music industry has to come to a conclusion with."
