Samsung interested in a stake in Deezer

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Published 15 Jan 2014

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deezer

You’ve heard of Spotify and you’ve heard of Google Play Music All Access, but have you heard of Deezer? The French service is pretty much the same as the other two. Best of all, it’s actually doing well. You can get Deezer in over 180 different countries, over five million people are paying for a premium account, and there are over 12 million subscribers overall.

According to Reuters, Samsung is interested in partnering with Deezer, and may even go so far as to buy a stake in the company. Why? Like I said earlier, Deezer is available in a huge number of countries, whereas Google Play Music All Access isn’t. Why not invest in Spotify instead? That I can’t answer. Me and several of my friends have Spotify accounts that we’re happily paying for, and I’ve never even heard of Deezer until this story was published.

Stepping back a little, we’re seeing Samsung sniffing around content companies because you need content to have a viable ecosystem. Apple has iTunes. Google has the Play Store. Microsoft has the Windows Store. What exactly does a Samsung device offer that makes you want to buy another Samsung product? Except for “design”, there’s absolutely nothing.

Should Google be scared that Samsung wants to compete with them? Probably not. Google treats Google Music like something they need to offer to stay competitive, versus Spotify and Deezer, which are built from the ground up to do one thing.

In other words, Google isn’t hungry enough.