Kernic

Just my toughts.

Music from Europe with Deezer

· by Kernic
Category: Multimedia
Tags:#music, #streaming, #tech

I'm not a music enthusiast. In my entire life, I haven't bought a single cassette, CD, or MP3. Fortunately, music streaming services exist today. For the past six months, we've been testing Deezer instead of YouTube Music.

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MEGA - Make Europe Great Again

Motivated by the political situation in the USA, I reviewed my IT landscape and discovered more services from there than I’d like. I made a quick decision to use services from the EU when possible. Here, not everything is perfect either, but it’s significantly better than on the other side of the Atlantic.

But how do you find alternatives from Europe? It’s not that difficult, as several people have had the same thought and so Constantin Graf has set up a website showing European alternatives:
https://european-alternatives.eu/

Taking the First Step

Even though there are alternatives for almost everything, not everything can be migrated easily and quickly. But with music streaming, the providers are largely interchangeable. So far, I’ve been using YouTube Music. This had two advantages for me:

  • YouTube Music provides access to all audio content from YouTube. This means you also have access to many remixes and mashups that aren’t available from other providers.
  • With YouTube Premium, not only is YouTube Music included, but YouTube also becomes ad-free.

Nevertheless, YouTube is owned by Alphabet (Google), part of one of the world’s largest tech giants - headquartered in the USA. Additionally, the company has ingratiated itself with Donald Trump, putting profit over morals¹.

Selecting an Alternative

There are currently four alternatives: Spotify, Qobuz, Deezer, and Soundcloud. The title of this post already reveals my choice: Deezer. But why?

Soundcloud isn’t a music streaming service in the way I’m looking for. There’s mainly user-uploaded music, major music labels aren’t represented there. So many well-known artists I still want to listen to are missing.

Spotify is certainly the best-known music streaming service on the market and the pioneer. But Spotify is backed by many investors from the USA, the service still isn’t financially sustainable², and doesn’t pay artists well.

That leaves Qobuz and Deezer. Both services are from France. Qobuz focuses more on high-res music and has a smaller library, Deezer is more oriented toward Spotify but, unlike the market leader, also offers music in higher quality.

In the end, I chose Deezer, mainly because of the larger library and lower price.

My Impression

Basically, music streaming services work quite similarly. There are personal and public playlists, you can search for artists, and there are recommendations. The Deezer app on iPhone works flawlessly, and the Windows application doesn’t work at all. When I try to move the window, the application crashes silently. But I simply use the website, which works without problems.

The quiz function is entertaining for in-between. You can guess music titles with friends and see who knows more. Certainly not a main feature, but implemented amusingly. Deezer also offers audiobooks and podcasts. The former aren’t as comfortable to listen to since there are no bookmarks. And I haven’t been able to get excited about podcasts so far.

All in all, Deezer is solid. The music library leaves little to be desired, apart from the remixes. The apps are designed for music and do that well. Much is also available in high-res, and lyrics are integrated into the applications.

Sources

¹ https://time.com/7218225/google-maps-gulf-of-america-search-impeach-trump-calendar-holidays/
² https://www.techloy.com/despite-adding-over-8-million-premium-subscribers-spotify-ended-q2-2025-at-a-loss/