Reason enough to look a second time at the music portal to see what has changed and if there is still an option to download music to the local computer system.

Deezer.com is a French music streaming service, which becomes obvious when you look at the artists and descriptions on the website. Most of the menus are available in English as well, but there are certain elements like the information about Deezer Premium on the startpage that are in French.

Deezer has come to an agreement with the rights holders and pays part of its advertising revenue to those organizations.

Deezer Features

Guests can play music on Deezer just fine. This includes songs from individual artists or tuning in into one of the web radio stations. Some songs may be restricted based on the visitor’s country of origin though, this is indicated by a gray play icon. Users who hover over the icon see the message “sorry you do not have access to this track from your country of residence”.

Deezer.com guests can use the search to find music and play it right in the browser, with an option to launch a custom radio station that is playing the search results; Again without registration.

The music player sits at the top of the website and plays the music continuously even while navigating the site. It offers the usual controls like pausing, skipping or changing the volume.

Registered Deezer users get additional features on top of the freely available ones. They can create playlists, favorite songs, comment on tracks and interact with other users of the music streaming service.

Deezer Music Availability

I have already mentioned that Deezer concentrates on French music and France. If you are looking for the latest US or UK hits then you will largely be disappointed. Still, there are songs by Cheryl Cole, Rihanna, Nelly or Kings of Leon available on Deezer but usually only in the search results and listed as tribute to, as made famous by and a different artist. Still, it seems to be the real deal. Not sure if this is a loophole that is used by Deezer members or by Deezer itself.

Music is also available in different genres including pop, RnB and Soul, Rock or Jazz. Generally speaking, Deezer offers music for all tastes, and lots of it. The owners claim that Deezer offers more than 7 million music tracks on their site. Deezer is an excellent service to discover lesser known artists, especially if you are not living in France.

Deezer Downloads

I have tried several free tools and none of them worked at this point in time. Some have downloaded samples of the selected songs (400 Kilobytes, 25 seconds) while others refused to work outright. Deezer seems to stream the music in 400 KB chunks, that’s at least what the browser cache shows when it is opened.

Let me know if you know of a way to download music from Deezer.

Verdict

Deezer offers an interesting service that reminds me a lot of Jamendo, another great music streaming and discovery website. The main difference is that Deezer offers signed artists with a larger catalog of music available.

The proxy setting has to be configured in the web browser so that all http traffic is routed through the localhost proxy at port 8800. Firefox users would click on Tools > Options > Advanced > Network > Settings to open the proxy configuration.

They would then select the manual proxy configuration and enter localhost and port 8800 under HTTP Proxy. They should make sure to revert the settings to No Proxy again when they stop using Freezer.

The program requires the user’s presence because the download dialog will pop up whenever the user clicks on play on any of the supported music portals. This works nicely with the various radio stations at Deezer and playlists in general.

Downloads are pretty fast, they never took more than a few seconds during tests. Freezer is probably best for users who like to download a few selected songs from those music portals. Should work nicely with an instant proxy changer or autoscripts that automatically save the files.

The author explicitly states that the software is not intended to download copyrighted music but only music that is freely available.

The most obvious difference is that everyone has access to the service called Deezer which does not only provide custom radio stations with music that you (could) like but also ways to search for bands or songs and play them right in the browser. All of that is possible without creating an account at Deezer.

You will need an account however if you want to create playlists, upload an unlimited amount of mp3 that you can listen to online or participate in community matters.

Information are easily accessible. While listening to the Smart Radio feature you can open a band’s discography page which does not interrupt the music. There you have access to information about albums, related artists and community members who share your taste. Only albums with tracks available will be shown.

I had troubles creating a playlist though. The system accepted my input but did not add the playlist to the menu. Deezer is nevertheless a brilliant better Pandora.