Deezer Joins a Crowded Music Subscription Market, With a High-End Pitch

If you want to spend $10 a month on a music subscription service in the U.S., there are plenty of companies that are happy to take your money*.

Here comes one more: Meet Deezer, which has been around in Europe for a while but hasn’t come to America until this month. It opens for business on Monday.

The bad thing about launching a music subscription service in the U.S. is that there are plenty of competitors. The good thing is that none of them have really caught on. Even Spotify, the best-known service in the U.S., isn’t that well known, and likely has fewer than two million paid subscribers here.

Deezer’s initial attempt to distinguish itself will be with high-quality audio streams. It will offer “lossless” audio, streamed at a rate of 1,411 kilobits per second, while services like Spotify top out at 320 kilobits per second.

That offer comes with some caveats: The $10-a-month pricing is only available to people who sign up for a year of service; otherwise it is $15 a month. And for now, the high-quality streams will only work if you’ve got a Sonos home audio system; if you’re listening on a device like an Android phone or iPad, you’ll get a more conventional-sounding stream.

Deezer also won’t promise that the pricing will stay at the $10/$15 level. It says the service will normally be priced at a whopping $20 a month, but it’s unclear about when, if ever, it will head to that level. Recall that many smart people think music services need to be priced below $10 a month to really catch on.

The biggest issue is whether there’s a big audience that really cares about high-quality digital audio. Tyler Goldman, who is running U.S. operations for Deezer (you may remember him from his last gig, running what used to be called Buzz Media), says internal research says that’s the case.

The counterargument would be that aside from Beats headphones, no high-end digital audio product has taken off in the last couple decades. And many audiophiles argue that Beats are a fashion item, not a high-end audio item.

But if you don’t like Deezer’s high-end pitch, stick around — Goldman says he’ll bring other versions of the service, at different price points, to the U.S. in the next few months.

* I’m probably forgetting something, so let me know if that’s the case, but here’s the list I have in my head: Spotify, Rhapsody, Rdio, Beats, Xbox, Sony and Google Play Music. Coming up: A service from YouTube.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Will you support Vox’s explanatory journalism?

Most news outlets make their money through advertising or subscriptions. But when it comes to what we’re trying to do at Vox, there are a couple of big issues with relying on ads and subscriptions to keep the lights on:

First, advertising dollars go up and down with the economy. We often only know a few months out what our advertising revenue will be, which makes it hard to plan ahead.

Second, we’re not in the subscriptions business. Vox is here to help everyone understand the complex issues shaping the world — not just the people who can afford to pay for a subscription. We believe that’s an important part of building a more equal society. And we can’t do that if we have a paywall.

So even though advertising is still our biggest source of revenue, we also seek grants and reader support. (And no matter how our work is funded, we have strict guidelines on editorial independence.)

If you also believe that everyone deserves access to trusted high-quality information, will you make a gift to Vox today? Any amount helps.

One-Time Monthly Annual

$5/month

$10/month

$25/month

$50/month

Other

$

Yes, I'll give $5/month

Yes, I'll give $5/month

We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. You can also contribute via