Spotify competitor Deezer sees 60% of UK sign-ups arrive from mobile

At the Financial Times’ (FT) Digital Media Conference in London today, France-based music service announced Deezer announced that 60% of its UK signups are coming from mobile, thanks in part to its partnership with mobile operator Orange.

Back in August, we first reported that Deezer was planning to hit the UK and it eventually revealed its pricing structure there prior to launch in September. This was followed quickly by the announcement of its partnership with Orange which was a key part of its strategy to gain traction in the country. As part of the plan, Deezer was made available on Orange’s Panther plan, whilst customers on other tariffs would pay £9.99 a month to get access.

Spotify may be the darling of the online music-streaming sphere in some countries, but Deezer is doing all it can to ensure competition remains healthy around the world. The UK Managing Director at Deezer, Mark Foster, outlined its international plans, three months after it announced at LeWeb that it was to begin roll-out in 200 countries, but not the USA. Foster said today that Deezer had just completed its rights negotiations with all major music rights owners, and it was actively seeking distribution partners.

Deezer was launched in France in August 2007, and it reached agreements with the French copyright societies, major and independent labels between 2007 and 2009. Today, the music-streaming service has somewhere in the regions of 20m users, with 6 million unique visitors per month.

Both Spotify and Deezer were announced as platform partners with Facebook at its f8 Conference last year, and it’s clear that strategic partnerships are the way forward for many emerging platforms. With this latest Deezer announcement, this not only helps to demonstrate just how much consumers are turning on to mobile music, but it also shows just how much clout mobile operators have.