French streaming music service Deezer, which arrived in the UK a couple of months back of course, has now announced plans to expand its operations into “over 200 countries” by June of next year.
And that plan begins today with launches in Ireland and The Netherlands, and a promise to be live in the rest of Europe by the end of the month. It will then hit another 79 countries, including Canada and much of Latin America, Australasia and Africa by the end of February. Plans are then a bit sketchy, though there’s a pledge to add another 115 countries to the pile by the end of June 2012.
Perhaps more interesting, in its announcement yesterday the company said that it “had chosen not to focus on the USA and Japan, which only represent 25% of global music consumption, due to market saturation and low growth forecasts”.
Which is a slightly odd thing to say, given that a 25% share for just two countries is significant, and demonstrates that these are actually two very valuable markets. Possibly Deezer realises its slightly disappointing product would struggle to compete against superior services already live in these territories, particularly the US with the likes of Spotify, Rdio, MOG and Rhapsody.
Deezer’s announcement also informs us that it’s now four years since the company “invented music streaming”. Given that it was founded the same year a five year old Last.fm was sold to CBS, a year after the Spotify company was incorporated, and many years after the likes of LAUNCHcast and Pandora first began to popularise streaming music, that claim is laughably wrong in several ways.
Also, even if you count all disputed territories as stand alone nations, it’s very hard to identify more than 198 countries in the world.
Sections: Digital | Tags: Deezer
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