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Deezer on the stock market: everything for music

Audio 04:09

Deezer aims to double its turnover within two years.

© AFP/Martin Office

By: Dominique Baillard Follow

3 mins

Deezer, the tricolor champion of music

, which was born in 2007, is listed on the Paris Stock Exchange.

A consecration for this unicorn.

A company that is still a pioneer in its field, but not yet profitable.

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's concert at the Marseille velodrome stadium

on Deezer in

.

This format was a world first.

Since its inception, the platform has always been at the technological and commercial forefront.

It is the first to sign an agreement with Sacem, the authors' society, and especially with Universal, the heavyweight in the industry.

It will then be the first to sign a contract with a telecommunications company, Orange.

This partnership ensures a vast promotional campaign and a captive audience.

The first to offer sound in CD quality.

All these innovations have been systematically adopted by competitors.

On the commercial level, the French unicorn is very quickly overtaken by its rivals

This French

, decked out with an English name to better break through internationally, has not however succeeded in leaving the national market.

It is in France that it achieves 60% of its turnover.

Its presence in the world is still anecdotal.

It captures only 2% of the global market while Spotify, created a year later, claims 30% of the audience.

The Swede, who came second in the race, immediately bet on the international and quickly won the bet.

Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube are the other powerful players in music streaming.

Why didn't Deezer know how to change dimensions?

The

was created by a genius coder, David Marhely.

But it is above all thanks to the financial support of Xavier Niel that the business will be launched.

The godfathers who will follow insist on the hexagonal development to recover their bet.

Deezer will therefore cultivate its model before thinking about exporting it.

► Also to listen:

Spotify now weighs 20 billion euros, twenty times more than the French unicorn.

Despite this difference in size, the two platforms face the same problem: their business is still not profitable.

The platforms are subject to the law of the music industry, the majors holding the rights like Universal capture the biggest part of the value and the advertisements on the free subscriptions are not enough to bring in cash.

How can listing on the Paris Stock Exchange change the situation?

Deezer needs fresh money to continue its development.

The company gave up listing in 2015 because of the launch of Apple Music.

This year, the business environment is not very buoyant either: inflation could compromise the activity of online services and the tech giants are all battered on the stock market at the moment.

But Deezer has guarded against these risks by partnering with a Spac, an investment vehicle launched by the financier Matthieu Pigasse and François Pinault, the champion of luxury.

Despite the uncertainties about the economic context, the CEO of Deezer believes that there is a large margin of progress for the online music market to be seized as soon as possible.

This market jumped 20% last year.

Today 8% of the inhabitants of the planet are subscribers, this rate could almost double by 2025. Doubling its turnover is also Deezer's objective within two years. 

► IN BRIEF

China ready to inject 75 billion dollars to support its economy.

According to Reuters, Beijing could launch a new fund dedicated to infrastructure.

It will be endowed with 500 billion yuan, or about 75 billion dollars.

This revival would make it possible to maintain a growth rate in line with the objectives set by the Communist Party.

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