Deezer Music Streaming Service

Back in 2008 I reviewed a small application to download music from Deezer, a popular free music streaming service at that time.

The application reviewed back then has not been updated since that day and is no longer working with the latest public version of Deezer.

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.

Update: Things have changed again. Some of the features described in the review are no longer valid or have changed. The homepage is available in various languages now but you cannot listen to music anymore without creating an account first on the site.

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.

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