Despite a few companies falling by the wayside in recent years, the streaming music field remains highly competitive. Music-focused companies such as LiveOne and Spotify are vying for your ear alongside tech giants like Amazon, Apple, and Google. In the face of such competition, a streaming music service needs unique features to stand out from the pack. French company Deezer doesn’t do anything revolutionary, but its blend of traditional streaming music, live radio, podcasts, and exclusive video makes it worth your consideration.Platforms and PlansDeezer is available on pretty much every platform. You can download it as a macOS or Windows desktop app, access it via a web browser, or check it out using an Xbox, Roku, smart speaker, smart TV, or smartwatch. Deezer is available for Android Auto and other car tech, too. You can sign up using a Google or Facebook account, or create a dedicated Deezer account from scratch.
(Credit: Deezer)
Deezer’s pricing falls in line with what’s offered by competing services. Deezer Free is an ad-supported plan designed for mobile devices. If you listen to Deezer Free on your phone or mobile device, you’ll enjoy numerous playlists (with lyrics support for most tracks). However, if you listen to Deezer Free on your browser or desktop app, you’ll only hear 30-second song snippets. You can subscribe to a premium account to remove this 30-second limit, but if you stick to the free music tier, Deezer is largely useless for computer-based listening.On mobile, Deezer Free lacks offline downloads and limits you to six skips per hour and 128kbps compressed MP3 streams. These are decent offerings, not unlike what you would experience with a free Spotify account.
Next up the ladder is the ad-free Deezer Premium, which costs $11.99 per month. You get a 25% discount for an annual commitment, which drops the price to $107.99 for the year. Premium grants unlimited listening on all devices, unlimited song skips, full lyrics, and offline downloads. A Duo plan gives you two accounts with all of these features for $15.99 per month. Like Apple Music, Spotify, and a few other music services, Deezer has a $19.99-per-month family plan that grants six people with Deezer Premium access. A $5.99 student plan is available for college students who are 18 to 25 years old. Deezer HiFi is included with all paid plans. This means Deezer’s entire music catalog can be enjoyed with CD-quality sound. Some HiFi tracks support 360 Reality Audio, which is a nice touch. That said, Deezer doesn’t offer anything above CD quality, so you must look elsewhere if you want truly hi-res audio. Amazon Music Unlimited, Qobuz, and Tidal feature hi-res audio tiers.Deezer on MobileFree listeners on Deezer’s mobile apps (available for Android and iOS) can stream audio at 64Kbps or 128Kbps. The sound quality climbs to lossless format (16-bit, 1,411 Kbps) if you subscribe to Premium.
(Credit: Deezer)
The mobile app has a cool notification system that alerts you to important music happenings. When we logged into Deezer for Android, the notifications section contained alerts about new album releases and my subscription information.Deezer lets you upload and stream your MP3 files, with caveats. You can only do this from web and desktop versions; you cannot upload from a mobile device. You also cannot upload FLAC files, but any MP3s up to 200MB are fair game. The audio files are all stored in a dedicated playlist for easy access.Copious ContentIf you’ve used LiveOne or Spotify, you know roughly what to expect from Deezer. You get a panel-driven interface that lets you explore music by genre (Rock, Soul & Funk, Pop, and so on) or playlist (Acoustic Soul, Blues Women, Rock Workout, and the like). Both categories are populated by a mix of songs from the genres you select when you set up your account.Deezer also features extensive selection and recommendation categories, all of which are worth perusing. It devotes a section of these to international charts, with 100 top tracks from across the globe, including Brazil, Jamaica, Mexico, and the UK. Fresh Picks of the Week presents robust collections of the hottest trending music, divided into various playlist categories like New Dance, Fresh Rap, and Radar Weekly. Deezer’s podcast library is impressive, with hundreds of shows across many topics, including true crime, politics, comedy, and lifestyle. The coolest original content lives in Deezer Sessions, which are EPs recorded in front of a live audience. The artists who have participated in Deezer Sessions include Dua Lipa and George Ezra. Deezer Sessions recalls MTV Unplugged, and you can either listen to the music in audio form or watch the performances in video form. Sessions are found in the Deezer Originals section, which also features exclusive podcasts and eclectic, curated playlists. This may not quite challenge LiveOne’s extensive video streams, Stories, and informative Artist DNA shows, but it’s a step in the right direction, giving you something beyond basic music streaming. Like iHeartRadio, Deezer has a significant number of live radio stations—hundreds from all over the world. These include jazz, news, pop, and decade-centric tunes from around the globe. Due to the nature of live radio, you can’t skip tracks. You’ll also hear ads, because they’re broadcast by the station, not Deezer. Still, we wish Deezer could rewind live radio—a powerful feature you get in SiriusXM Internet Radio.The Tune My Music feature acts as a library importer that lets you transfer songs and playlists from other services to Deezer. These include Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal, YouTube Music, and many more. This is a handy tool that makes transitioning to Deezer a cinch when migrating from a different streaming music service. The Listening PartyShaker is Deezer’s most recent addition, which is a shared playlist between you and friends. You create a group, invite people, and co-create playlists. In fact, your friends don’t even need Deezer to share music. During testing, we created a group and shared a QR code provided by the app with non-Deezer subscribing friends. You can import tunes from Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube Music, and other services. It’s a wonderful way to share music or expose yourself to unfamiliar tunes.
(Credit: Deezer)
On a related note, Deezer continues to expand and improve its recommendation systems. The service retired the Hear This section, which highlighted albums tailored to your tastes, in favor of a system called Flow. Functionally, Flow is an algorithm-based recommendation system, similar to what Spotify or YouTube Music offers. You customize your Flow based on mood or genre, and whether you want more music discovery or more of your favorites to appear in the recommendations. This algorithm has seen further AI enhancements recently, enabling more specialized recommendation lists. Our Flow streams contained many disco, funk, alt-rock, classic rock, and 1980s-era tracks—exactly how we want it.We fired up Beck’s Modern Guilt on desktop and mobile using a free Deezer account and listened through a pair of headphones. Like Deezer’s live radio streams, the default curated streams sounded tinny. Naturally, a Deezer Premium subscription offers much better audio quality than the base streams. Thanks to Deezer HiFi, there’s greater audio richness, especially if you listen with quality headphones. The Dirtbombs’ Ultraglide In Black sounded extremely fresh and lively. The extra audio data makes a notable difference.
(Credit: Deezer)
Verdict: Deezer Is Worth a ListenDeezer is a great place for streaming music, live radio, and podcasts. The service stumbles in a few areas, as it lacks many of the fun and informative extras that the competition offers, and the free browser version is essentially a glorified sampler. Still, the excellent selection of international music, MP3 compatibility, lyrics, and other features make it an attractive service. That said, Sirius XM Internet Radio is our top pick for live shows, Tidal is our go-to for hi-res audio, and Spotify is the most well-rounded streaming music service.
Pros
Useful free tier on mobile
Good crop of original content, including video
Live radio and podcasts
Lyrics support
Lets you upload MP3 files on desktop
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Cons
Free tier on PC is limited to 30-second snippets
Mobile apps lack MP3 upload
Can’t rewind live radio streams
Lacks hi-res audio
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The Bottom Line
Featuring numerous playlists and original video, Deezer is a great middle ground between Spotify’s music curation and Tidal’s high-fidelity streams.
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