It may be imperceptible, but the market audiostreaming at the moment there is a glut, offers more than demand, so the struggle is not a joke. Today I will try to look at one of the most dynamically developing companies in this industry, Deezer, from the point of view of a lover fighting to slide into audiophile.
Generally, all the streaming audio services can be divided into two types: those who have behind them are large companies (Apple, Google, Yandex), and independent. It is the latter and has to struggle to evolve, offering more to its users. It is not surprising that these services and serve as “engines of progress” in providing users with music at a higher quality (one of the main criteria for me).
It is this event that made me take a hard look at Deezer the French company existing since 2007, last fall launched streaming in FLAC (in addition to the existing two options broadcast in MP3). Increased interest the fact that Deezer is working actively with the Russian market, offering prices, much less the world, for example, the price of a regular subscription is only 169 rubles, family (up to 6 profiles) — 269 rubles, but for HiFi you have to pay 339 per month. Needless to say that this is a great price even for fans of pirated content (getting rid of need to download torrents, convert them and so on).
Of course, Deezer has the full “gentleman’s set” of streaming service: clients for mobile platforms (even including Windows Mobile, or whatever), the ability to listen in the browser and the desktop client (traditionally written using Electron). Mobile clients have support for offline mode, you can select the album or playlist available offline and the app will store them in the memory device (to be used in the compressed MP3 file). HiFi-subscription with streaming FLAC is only available for desktop clients, but in the future support of promise to expand and for mobile.
I think to paint the application interface especially makes no sense, it is obvious and very quickly mastered, there are collections by curators, and easy search, and various charts. Deezer is also quite socially oriented service, then you can follow somebody, to follow the playlists and favourites, for example, my profile.
Speaking subjectively, I like Deezer for several reasons. First, it is the speed of finding suitable music, I just think I would like to listen to, and literally in just a few seconds carry out this desire. Also it helps to find tracks for my reviews, allowing you to instantly find what you want.
Secondly, it is impossible not to note the economic component, I don’t use unlicensed music, so buy what you want to listen to, often translates to “expensive”, and here is a very small and fixed price acquired access to a huge (according to developers, 43 million songs) library.
And, thirdly, there is the Flow. Behind this name hides traditional for such services, the function of collection of tracks, taking into account your interests and geolocation, and listened to music. Initially, the work Flow was dominated by the geolocation, and I was thrown by the various stars of Balkan turbofolk (she has a tin) in all variations. Luckily, just a dozen clicks on the button “more to offer” allowed Deezer to consider my tastes, and from the Balkan I have only representatives of rock, jazz and classical music. After about three days of “training” I managed to train Flow on your preferences, and it should be noted that this function offers a perfect balance of “good old” and “something new” in my library.
Of the minuses I note Deezer that I came across a few songs in a very low quality, but it’s just a couple cases out of a thousand, and it was not the most famous performers, I suspect that their music simply was not available in lossless.
Perhaps it is no exaggeration to say that at the moment Deezer is mostly a streaming service for the afflicted audiophile. If you discard the services not offering lossless, there are two contenders, but Tidal is available literally a dozen other countries around the world (whereas Deezer is not available too in about a dozen countries), and bother VPN to overpay Tidal — meaning little. Of course, to remain Tidal Tidal Masters in MQA format, but these releases only a few hundred, so I can’t say that it’s worth the price. Plus have Tidal noticeably worse recommendation service, it is significantly inferior to the Flow.
In General, if you haven’t tried streaming at high quality — Deezer offers you this chance, and then you can decide how you need it. I personally — for the transition on the license side.
Streaming service Deezer is an overview of almost audiophile
Pavel Dmitriev