Long-time Spotify Premium user - why should I move to Deezer?

Hi there @hpguru 

It is with great sadness that I read all you've said above. I'd like to address some of the things mentioned above, not only by you but also by @Placido09 and @dgoorevitch. I'm not new to this type of feedback and I understand where you're coming from. I've taken the time to properly reply because positive or negative, feedback is paramount to how I see my role at Deezer.

We are Deezer and we are pretty much awake. We know that our service has shortcomings and that it can be frustrating to our users at given times. We're aware of the level of this demand, but we're also aware of our capabilities as a smaller player on the market. These days we're all used to fast improvements and new things at an incredibly crazy pace. This is because most tech markets are controlled by giants. Name Google, Apple, Amazon and Spotify.

These companies have hundreds of more employees than Deezer, especially developers and engineers. They have teams for what we have one single person, so the proportion and expected results are completely different. As loyal community users, I need you to understand that!

But the truth is that Deezer is good, it is appealing and we're blessed to have so many users as a result of our daily hard work as a company. In some ways, as a community manager, I feel that we're the own victims of our success. Because we've tried so hard to exceed expectations, to innovate, to be ahead (UCPS is one example, and also no player was interested in HiFi for several years, another example of how Deezer pioneers in this industry), we've got caught with the increased demand for a better and more reliable service. We partnered with so many other companies and with that, more challenges have risen. Ultimately, and based on my industry experience, I can tell you that no other company has their users at the heart of what they do, as much as Deezer has.

We have bugs. Not a few. But what sometimes seems simple to fix, is definitely not. Certain bugs affect other parts of the app, third party devices and services, so there's plenty of work to be done in order to sort something "easy".

We also have a huge catalogue. In the end, we can't say no to our users when they ask for more and more music. We don't want to stay behind, we're here to please and exceed your expectations. But managing that is a huge task as well.

It's important to note that as a Deezer Legend, your contribution to this community has been no short of amazing. And I'm grateful for every single reply you've posted here. This is why it is with great upset that I take on your words, as other Legends like @Noam Asulin and @bluezzbastardzz can testify the improvement of Deezer over the years. I hope you understand the value you have for us. The moments we shared, the laughter. I'm pretty sure this is because of how Deezer wants to be closer to their fans, what the giants in the industry don't really care about.

You do not have to pay for Deezer, that's correct. One of the many perks of being a Legend is the ability to choose a subscription from us for free. That's because as a Legend, your Deezer knowledge and experience is very valuable and your feedback extremely helpful.

Another perk is to be able to forward your feedback on a direct line to me, and to know first-hand what our plans are for the immediate and long-term future, among other cool things.

So while it's sad to see you go, we're talking about music and a music streaming service who's trying to be different and cannot be compared to any other. It's ultimately your choice and all I can do is to wish you the best in your endeavours, with or without Deezer.

@Logan_A @GropplerZorn 

You haven't been here for long and I appreciate you can see that some requests have been made a few years ago. But please bear in mind that we have also delivered numerous requests over the years. In this community alone we have delivered 84 user ideas since 2018. All we did was to tackle them one by one, as our resources and time allowed, so that the service got better and better.

It's been a short but nevertheless enjoyable journey with you two here in the community. Thank you for your valuable contributions.

One more note for all is that I knew how 2021 would be difficult for the community. What you may not know is that this is the year (as I've said many times) to improve reliability and performance. So despite the bugs you see, in the background we are developing a whole new player, a new public API and SDKs (for our current and future integrations) plus continuing to bring new features. This work takes several months to be done, so what we're discussing now will certainly be history in 2022.

Look at our TV apps, for example. Users have waited for almost 2 years and we're now finally releasing updates. Made from scratch, no blueprints. Just because you asked and because you deserve it.

So in sum, your feedback is always heard loud and clear - we're always nudging our teams - and your contributions are very important. But the speed in what we can achieve things doesn't match that, and there's no point to hide behind it. This is the core of what we want to improve. And I'm pretty sure we'll get there someday.

We'll continue to follow our mission and work hard to create the best alternative streaming platform we can ever be. One day, when we can sit on the same table as those giants you tirelessly compare us to, we'll be able to look back and appreciate the bumpy journey which took us there and the hardcore fans who followed the path alongside us.

Your community manager,

Rudi

Well said @Rudi 

First the good news, @Rudi. I decided to renew my Hi-Fi subscription today and wait the few months you’ve said will bring gapless play to me so I can listen to long classical pieces without the interruptions.

After reading what you’ve said,, I have a few comments.

First, kudos for your frankness. It’s hard not to want to support a company that bares its heart like you’ve done and to be patient. Second, I could have done without the “tirelessly” in “One day, when we can sit on the same table as those giants you tirelessly compare us to, we'll be able to look back and appreciate the bumpy journey which took us there and the hardcore fans who followed the path alongside us.” I had no idea of the size of your company before I read this and had no way to know until you told me. I had no idea of the size of your staff (for all I knew, you could have been the size of VLC which is actually mass-developed as open source). Thirdly, I have to ask, why not just hire more people to bring the improvements along a little faster.

As for the last bit, I have no idea what your revenue stream looks like, your cashflow, or anything else about your company. But I will say that I wish you well and that I intend to stay, hoping this (Deezer) will become the kind of home stereo library with the kind of variety and depth of music that I could only dream of owning (I’m retired now and on a pension) but which I will be happy to rent.

Of course, my dream is in my head, and the only way you can know it is if I tell it to you. So I’ll be patient if you’ll be patient. I know what it’s like to work on a problem and have it in my head until a solution comes to me.

Lastly, I’m sorry I made you sad. One forgets, with all the bots one communicated through, that there are real live human beings with dreams of their own at the other end. I’m sorry, Rudi, personally, for that. Here’s to hoping our mutual dreams can come true and we can help each other to make them real.

It’s very good for you. Try it out by all means.

I stayed with Deezer, annually as I paid, I did regret it at one point. But on the other hand I supported them and saw the Deezer after curtains. They are driven by music which I like. They want to improve. It’s just that they do not have resources to grow big as fast ast competition. Like I said, for me, it is needed to have just one player I can trust. Sadly Deezer does not fit my need. Even if I get Deezer the rest of a year for FREE, I do not see any point to use it as I have my music elsewhere.

I actually found TIDAL too buggy and it pushes too much of R&B and their owners music. When I do appreciate what they do, I am searching neutral place. On Deezer there was one day LGBT everything on main page and woman only other day. I was not happy with that, and did want to leave then even.

I care for LGBT and stuff. I am myself gay guy and proud of it.

I just do not care to see LGBT stuff that wide as Deezer did. I hope they learned something from it.

I think @Placido09 was annoyed by them as well.

As what I’ve seen just reading this community, many ideas user really want are not done yet. They did some and it’s great, don’t get me wrong. I just don’t see myself using Deezer waiting them to come. For example my main problems with Deezer Hifi were these and I think you can have the same:

1. Search is really bad. You typo, it finds nothing.
2. You can not make a playlist for podcasts.
3. You can not queue episodes how you want or between tracks.
4. I was frustrated first day when I couldn’t QUEUE between radios and mixes, still to this day, even if that was asked by community years. Still can not do. Was able on Spotify.
5. Too messy UI in web app, profile is just too cluttered. Recent tracks is 40 on web and 80 or more on mobile. It should be equivalent. same with bell icon, it has slightly more content on phone.
6. Bell icon does not work. I followed same artists on Spotify and it gives me new releases all the time. On Deezer is few a week if even that, I think it’s broken. You need to refresh page to get bell note. It does not bell when you are on page already. Frustrating.
7. Sync problem between apps. You can refresh swiping down lists twice to show them correct tracklist or track counts etc.
8. Offline sync problem on Android. for three months. If not more. Still not fixed. Delayed download or you need to swipe down on lists to get them load. Frustrating. On other apps it goes background, you don’t need to do a thing.
9. Poor flow. It plays recently almost like 90% tracks I already liked. No discovery. it is being improved but it’s not improving the way I want him to improve. Can’t tell more about it.
10. Poor track mixes. If udnerground music, it starts to play perhaps from 0-to3 related songs and then goes charts. I reported this like when first day on it 1,5 year ago and NOTHING has been done about it. On Spotify there’s decent radio on even most underground hard dance.
11. Mobile app UI is generally fine, but the app is too buggy sometimes. Bugs are worked, and it did improve, but still I do not see it be ready anytime soon.
12. Mobile vs. web app not equivalent in features. iPhone always getting first.
13. Web app settings too frustrating to use with different tabs with little to see on each.
14. Various “Content does not play, try again”, “Error” on web app, which I can not get rid of. It shouldn’t be this way when you listen you are clearing cache or closing these bug pop ups. I’ve been using competition with no bug pop up for week now.
15. Android widget is broken. Either it does not show cover image or there’s blank picture. As well it can not be resized if your screen has more than 4 icons one row.
16. Mass deletion on web app does not work if you try let’s say to empty the whole liked tracks with over 2000 tracks. You need to go one by one. You click delete and it does nothing. None of the tracks are deleted. You need to unheart one by one.

I’d probably miss few, but here’s a good lunch.

It’s just not what I want to use Daily .

Yes, I really encourage you to stay and see yourself. I am over a year customer and it did improve, but not always the fast way, and not on all issues. They need still much work regards bug fixing.

My brother got to trial Deezer from my Hifi pool of 6 and he didn’t like it.

He said too much bugs and not very intuitive to use. He pays for Spotify even if he could get free Deezer. I understand him, because these are the same reasons I am going to pay for Spotify.

After my 3mo Samsung trial runs out.

I again do not have anything against anyone. Rudi is greatest person I’ve met ever.

He is honourable person and I wish him all the good in journey he will soon take!

I am sure to trial Deezer again in few years to see what’s improved 

Namaskaram.

Well, for the time being, I’m looking forward to gapless play, then mass delete. As for search, it is a little strange sometimes. An album I think ought to be there can’t be found by the obvious method but, sure enough, it shows up over there when you get lost. It’s like Paris that way. You have to get lost to find some things. I don’t use the frontpage features. I think they’re designed for young people and, since we’re still in business, I suppose it must work to some degree. It’s just not my thing but I realize it can’t ALL be my thing. I just excited about gapless play coming by year’s end. Until then, I have a lot of Grant Green, Sarah Vaughan, Sonny Criss, and mant others in Jazz to discover, Lefty Frizzell and Carl Smith in Country, the whole Baroque catalog, and I’ll wait ‘til the new year for the Opera, except excerpts. I think it’s a good deal for me. The bugs make it a daytime app for my home, and I’ll use VLC with my own library at night. After setting up night play and perfecting it, I find I just want to sleep most nights, LOL! But it’s there when I need it. I have a VERY buggy Chi-Com designed Pioneer DVR Jukebox that has ONE, yes, ONE suffle play list… in the SAME ORDER. But I beat it because it plays forever. I just had to set the Logitech remote to keep the machine on all the time. That means I’ll have a different place in the list when I come onboard. Anyway probably too much information. I guess I’m saying is that sometimes you just have to be creative and work around limitarions.

I realized yesterday that I had to import tracks from operas to Audacity to make an opera in Acts without gaps in VLC. Sorry Rudi. Deezer will be  better than VLC very soon in this respect.

In conclusion, we can’t expect the world to read our minds. We have to meet it half way. Does Deezer meet my needs halfway? Yes. Soon they will surpass it. I’m in.

I think what matters is that different people have wildly different needs, demands and priorities. Deezer is the third streaming service that I’ve tried so far, and I can say that the company punches waaay above its weight in some aspects. Like, the first service I tried was Apple Music, and, while the sound quality, music selection and playlists were fine, music recommendations were embarrassingly bad. I dutifully tried to make it work - for nine months - but often enjoyed only 1 recommended track out of 20.    When I wanted to get into K-pop, I ended up having to add up many of their K-pop playlists together, and just do a quick listen, skipping everything I didn’t like. Ended up enjoying about 20 tracks out of 400 - so the same 1 of 20.

Maybe Apple’s recommendations have improved by now, but Deezer started giving me good recommendations in two days. I surely didn’t expect this from a smaller company. On the other hand, yes, there are weak spots - and you can see how some of that from not having as much resources. But even bigger companies with seemingly unlimited resources have weak spots too. So it’s no tragedy that a particular service doesn’t meet all your needs.

Honestly, the bigger worry for me is that success might not be determined primarily by the quality of the service, but the name recognition, deals with telecom/electronics companies, and ecosystem advantages, where music is just one part of the package. I think, for many people, Deezer would be number 3 or 4 on the list, at most. The reason I decided to try it was that it’s ahead of the curve on lossless music. But maybe other people have other reasons.

The reason I decided to try it was that it’s ahead of the curve on lossless music. But maybe other people have other reasons.

They no more have that value. Tidal not either.

Qobuz, Tidal and Deezer had that opportunity to be selected over sound, but nowadays you can find lossless from Apple Music for less price and Spotify is coming with their plans too… wow.

It doesn’t mean that God’s gift to us. They are no more that only gift.

When let’s say Spotify arrive with Hifi at Deezer price, Tidal, Qobuz and Deezer they all will be.

In trouble. The lossless is no more a key benefit exclusively to them.

Are they providing something more for people to stay?

In this section they might be losing their game. Do they have a game plan?

It’s not like the services are completely interchangeable in other aspects. For example, Apple Music doesn’t offer lossless on PC at this point - which is crucial as sound fidelity is more important at home, where you can use better equipment and the environment is quieter. Plus, like I said, I really didn’t like their recommendations, to the point that I’d be extremely wary to try AM again. Tidal and Qobuz are unavailable in some countries, etc.

Most importantly, it’s not like anyone expected lossless to stay exclusive to Deezer and a few others. So of course the Deezer guys have a game plan. I think their biggest enemy is “good enough” - when you find a service that’s good enough for you, you’re less likely to try others, and Deezer is less likely to be the first/second service people try.

I wonder, if Spotify comes with Hifi at the same price as Deezer, what benefit will remain here? Deezer is stagnating, he really has many faults and shortcomings, I don't see any progression. My reason for going to Deezer was the quality of the stream, Hifi is a condition for me. I liked Deezer and he saw improvement in many things. Unfortunately, for a long time now, from my point of view as a user, I see no progress in improving and eliminating errors.

You have a right to feel this way .

Once you pay, monthly, or in your case annually you should wait progress. In other words it may feel like you are stuck paying for nothing. When I registered to Deezer, I converted myself to annual to save money before even seeing how things are getting done here. Before it expired, I was thinknig to leave, but Rudi asked to Legends, and gave me 6 mo free because of that to extend that.

Like I said, I was at the point, I am not intrested to use it even for free anymore.

Like you, I didn’t see any progress in apps development and it feels much like for you, train is staying at it’s place for months. You can be patient yes, but for how much longer? This is question I asked myself obviously before I finally announced my travel elsewhere. Thanks a lot :)