Deezer Review - Should You Go for Spotify’s Rival

Deezer has risen from fairly inauspicious beginnings to become one of the best challenger platforms in the busy music streaming market. The service was initially founded by French developer Daniel Marhely founded under the name Blogmusik back in 2006. The company quickly ran into problems when non-profit agency SACEM sued it for copyright infringement in 2007.

The service relaunched as Deezer in August 2007, after the company agreed to a deal to pay copyright holders and began permitting users to download its songs from iTunes. In a short span of time Deezer has become the topmost choice for streaming songs online. Also you can download Deezer’s content with Deezloader and other music downloading applications.

If you are confused should you choose Deezer then we are here with the honest Deezer review to vanish your illusion.

Deezer Review

Price and availability

Deezer is available in a number of price plans with individual, student and family options. There’s also a limited ‘Free’ version that plays with ads.

The Premium tier unlocks all 73 million tracks on the service and ad-free listening. That’s priced at £9.99 / $9.99 / AUD$11.99 / €9.99 / CAD$9.99, and you get the first three months free. Annual premium costs £89.91 / $99.90 / CAD$99.90 / AUD$119.90 / €99.90.

If you choose to pay in one sum, you get 12 months for the price of 9. The Student plan is £4.99 / $4.99 / CAD$4.99 / AUD$5.99 / €4.99. The first month is free with this option.

The Family plan offers up to six accounts and costs £14.99 / $14.99 / CAD$14.99 / AUD$17.99 / €14.99. The first month is free. The Hi-Fi and Hi-Fi Family subscription plans offer music in lossless quality.

The Hi-Fi plan costs £14.99 /$14.99 / CAD$14.99 / AUD$17.99 / €14.99 and the Hi-Fi Family version costs £19.99 / $19.99 / CAD$19.99 / €19.99. The Hi-Fi Family plan is not yet available in Australia.

User Interface

Deezer’s user interface is minimal, with album artwork displayed as tiles on a plain white background. Compared to the likes of Spotify, and even Apple Music, Deezer looks almost sterile, although some users will enjoy the simplicity of its interface.

On the desktop app, you’ll get your favorite artists, daily mixes based on your listening habits, genre and mood playlists, chart playlists, and recommended radio stations. A sidebar on the left of the screen permits you to toggle between Music, Shows (podcasts and radio), Explore (which allows you to navigate music and podcasts by genre and category) and Favorites.

Beneath the Favorites tab you’ll get your Favorite Tracks (to add a track, just select the heart icon next to its title), Downloads, Playlists, Albums, Artists and Podcasts.

Deezer catalogue

Deezer says it has over 56 million tracks, podcasts and radio stations in its catalogue, which puts it in the ballpark with the industry’s biggest players – Apple Music and Tidal boast 60 million and Spotify promises “over 50 million”. Is the difference between them noticeable?

Not from my experience. Everything song, album or artist I searched for on Deezer, I found – even lesser known regional artists didn’t fluster its search functionality. The only thing worth considering is Spotify does have a huge catalogue of podcasts that are exclusive to its platform.

If you’re considering switching services and that’s important to you, it’d be worth checking that your favourite is on Deezer before you do (though they’re all available for free on Spotify anyway).

Depending on which package you subscribe to, Deezer has up to three different quality settings. Deezer Free, the company’s ad-supported tier, is limited to 128kbps, Deezer Premium (£9.99/month) matches Spotify at 320kbps, while the HiFi tier that streams in CD quality (16-bit/44kHz) has recently been dropped to beat Tidal and match Amazon Music HD, at £14.99 per month.

Sound Quality

Deezer gives you some really good options for taking control of your sound, with a small settings logo located on the apps of both the mobile and the desktop apps.

When you click the logo you’ll get two options to choose from if you’re on Deezer Premium: standard or better. Standard quality will stream your songs at 128kb/s while better quality will stream at 320kb/s which is exactly the same as Spotify.

If you want to pay the $14.99 per month to take advantage of their high quality FLAC library, then you can expect a bitrate of 1,411 kb/s. One caveat though is that the quality is only available via desktop. If you’re going to be listening on mobile you’re maxed out at 320 kb/s unless you pay for the HiFi subscription. Then you can stream to your mobile device assuming that it’s supported.

EndNote

In addition to a huge content library of both music and podcasts, Deezer also possesses a rich mix of features that offers a highly enjoyable user experience.

These include a wide range of ways for listeners to consume music, including listening to favorite artists, creating playlists, exploring new music, enjoying curated playlists, and taking advantage of the Flow feature. Deezer also covered musical connoisseurs with the impressive high-quality sound available through its HiFi package.

So Don’t think too much and stick to Deezer to listen to your favorite music online.