Just over a month after launching Milk Music, an ad-free radio service distributed exclusively on Galaxy devices in the U.S., Samsung has entered the international streaming market by signing a partnership with Deezer for Galaxy S5 smartphones, MusicWeek reports.
According to the terms of the deal — which has possibly been in the works since January when rumors surfaced of talks of a partnership and/or Samsung taking a stake in Deezer — Galaxy S5 users get six months free usage of Deezer’s Premium+ service, which includes more than 30 million tracks they can listen to free of ads (usually, the service costs £60).
“This is a momentous collaboration,” said Axel Dauchez, CEO of Deezer, said. “Samsung is creating some of the most innovative devices around at the moment, while we’re offering the most intuitive and personalised music service there is. Together we are in a position to offer people the best music experience available.”
With this partnership, Deezer will be able to take advantage of Samsung’s dominant share of the global smartphone market (the company has a 30% share compared to Apple’s 17.6%). Nearly a third of those international smartphone users access on-demand streaming services via their mobile devices.
“The digital music market is evolving at a phenomenal pace, with people placing less importance on physical ownership and caring more about the availability of music and its accessibility,” said Lee Epting, VP of Samsung Electronics Media Solution Center, Europe. “Our partnership with Deezer offers consumers instant access to a rich and diverse catalogue of content that can be streamed over Samsung’s growing range of connected devices.”
News of the partnership comes just a few days after it was reported that Samsung’s profits had fallen due to several factors, such as competition from Lenovo, which manufactures cheaper handsets more popular with Chinese consumers. But with the Galaxy S5’s lower price point, on top of such a hard-to-resist deal with Deezer, it seems like Samsung is making another bid for those potential customers.
Though Dauchez alluded to the possibility of a U.S. launch of Deezer sometime this year, the streaming service has yet to make tangible moves in that direction.
