Deezer Free Music Streaming to Launch in All of Europe by the End of the Month

The music streaming business may not be the most profitable one, but the demand is there and the potential is huge. It just takes someone to find out how to make money from it.

Several companies are focusing on the US first, but the French Deezer has another idea. For it, not focusing on the US is actually an advantage.

The music streaming service has announced that it wants to launch in more than 200 countries in a manner of months. It's going to be available in all of Europe by the end of the year and in much of the rest of the world by February.

- December 8th, 2011: Ireland, The Netherlands
 - By December 31st, 2011: Rest of Europe: 45 countries including Spain (Dec. 13th), Italy
 - (Dec. 14th), Germany (Dec. 15th) & Russia (Dec.16th)
 - By January 31st, 2012: Canada and Latin America (38 countries)
 - By February 28th, 2012: Australasia and Africa (41 countries)
 - By June 30th, 2012: Rest of the world (115 countries)

The secret to expanding so fast is simple, Deezer has ignored both the US and Japan, the two largest markets for the music industry.

To access these countries, licensing negotiations can last for years, as both Google and Spotify found out, and the fees are enough to cripple any startup.

Nevertheless, with everyone fighting it out over the US and a few European countries, there's no one interested in the rest of the world. This presented Deezer with a great opportunity.

On the one hand, it was able to license music for all of these places relatively cheap and for several countries at a time. On the other hand, music lovers in those countries have few alternatives to piracy.

Deezer has another ace up its sleeve, partnerships with carriers. It got together with Orange in France, thanks to an investment from Orange parent company France Telecom, and its subscriber numbers shot up dramatically.

The company plans to do the same in other countries, bundling the music service with phone contracts. It may prove a winning strategy. Despite people in most of the world not being used to pay for music, they will if the service is convenient enough.

One of the biggest misunderstandings about piracy is that it's all about price, i.e. being free, when, for many if not most 'pirates' the main issue is convenience, it's simply easier to pirate music, movies or games than to buy them.