Kernic

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Music from Europe with Deezer

· by Kernic
Category: Multimedia

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

MEGA - Make Europe great again

Motivated by the political situation in the USA, I looked at my IT landscape and discovered more services from there than I’d like. I quickly decided to use services from the EU when possible. Not everything is perfect here 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 Constantin Graf has set up a website that shows 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. Until now, I’ve used YouTube Music. This had two advantages for me:

  • YouTube Music offers access to all audio content from YouTube. This means you also have access to many remixes and mashups that aren’t available with other providers.
  • YouTube Premium not only includes YouTube Music, but also makes YouTube ad-free.

Nevertheless, YouTube belongs to Alphabet (Google), which is part of one of the world’s largest tech giants - headquartered in the USA. Additionally, the company has courted 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 is not a music streaming service in the way I’m looking for. It mainly features self-uploaded music; major music labels are not represented there. So many well-known artists I still want to listen to are missing.

Spotify is certainly the most well-known music streaming service on the market and the pioneer. But behind Spotify are many investors from the USA, the service is still not financially viable², and it 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, while 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 its 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 the iPhone works flawlessly, and the Windows application doesn’t work at all. When I try to move the window, the application crashes without a word. But I simply use the website, which works perfectly.

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

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 it 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/