Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Spotify vs Deezer: Overwhelming Favorites Compared


Written by DSK Reporter — Music streaming is the future of accessing top hits and indie wonders with a click, and it is a service that has been growing exponentially and inexorably. Two household names are Spotify and Deezer. A poll by PC Advisor found that among all streaming services, these two are the most popular, with Spotify and Deezer each racking up 43 percent and 45 percent of votes respectively. How do they compare to one another?

In terms of selection, it would be surprising to a number of people that Deezer provides a broader and deeper catalog. While Spotify holds over 30 million songs with a reach that covers 58 countries, Deezer has 35 million in its library that extends to over 180 countries.

Deezer’s ‘Hear This’ music discovery feature also trumps Spotify’s ‘Discover’ function by providing better recommendations based on the user’s listening habits and patterns. However, Spotify has ‘Discover Weekly’ which as its name implies provides weekly playlists of song recommendations based on what its algorithms identify as suitable for the listener.

Spotify has an interface that can be a little difficult to figure out compared to Deezer, which is very minimalist in its design; it’s probably because its brighter than Spotify’s layout, which is pretty similar in look to Tidal, another streaming service.

In spite of the initial hurdle to figure its interface out, the layout of Spotify’s ‘Browse’ section is very well-organized. The way Spotify compiles playlists based on occasion, time of day, and mood is quite spot on as well.

Both feature free versions, but the one on Spotify is superior in that access is less limited than on Deezer. They both nevertheless have the same low quality audio which prompts users to subscribe to the paid versions.