Meet Deezer, iTunes threat or failure?

David Swan
Tuesday, 28 July 2009 10:24

Your IT - Entertainment

The site's design is a big winner, playlists play in the same window as the site itself. it's remarkably simple, click a song and it will play within seconds in the same browser window, without popups or load times. If you thought Facebook was a time waster, just wait until you find yourself browsing African Samba or French Europop artists. The vast, largely unknown world of music is too large and enjoyable to ignore. Even simple browsing through various artists is good fun.

Internet usage is a big factor that needs to be carefully remembered, particularly in terms of mobile data usage. As Deezer's a streaming site, every song played needs to be downloaded from the central server, and as no data is saved on the user's computer, the song will need to be redownloaded again if played in a different browsing session. As most users have limited mobile data usage, too, this needs to be taken into consideration when playing streaming radio.

With Deezer, I was enticed by promises of wonder but the end result is slightly disappointing given its potential. This is quite possibly the way of the future, however, and Deezer hints at world in which no-one owns music, but instead shares it in a collective database. A large proportion of people download music freely and without any regard for legality anyway, so I can see something like this being the standard in five to ten years, particularly given the rise of 3G and declining album sales. It's an interesting proposition, but we're not there yet.

The English version of Deezer can be found at http://www-v3.deezer.com/en/