SA to get another music streamer

France’s Deezer is the third online music streaming service to be launched in South Africa. And there's a potential tie-up with Orange in the works. By Duncan McLeod.

Added by Duncan McLeod on 18 January 2013.
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Screenshot of the Deezer website

Screenshot of the Deezer website

South Africa’s online streaming music market has gone from nowhere to crowded in a matter of months. This week, another online music service, France’s Deezer, has been launched — or “soft-launched”, according to a company source.

France’s Deezer, which enjoys a close business relationship with France Telecom/Orange in Europe, is the third music streaming service to arrive on South African shores, following the entrance in 2012 of Germany’s Simfy — launched with Primedia’s eXactmobile and the UK’s rara.com.

In France, Orange reached an agreement with Deezer in 2010 to package its top streaming product with some of its consumer telecommunications packages. The deal proved a huge success and was expanded a year later to the UK.

Orange international business development deployment and coordination director Laura Bokobza says she is unable to say yet whether her company will work with Deezer in supporting and marketing a full commercial service in South Africa.

Orange has said it plans to launch a full-service mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) in the country, piggybacking off the infrastructure of one of the network providers. However, it’s not known when it will launch the MVNO and it hasn’t signed any agreements yet.

Deezer offers South African music lovers 20m tracks for R79,99/month, with no commitment to a contract. The fee allows users to stream music to their PCs, mobile phones and tablets and includes a mode for offline listening. A cheaper, R39,99 product offers streaming on PCs but excludes playback on mobiles or tablets and offers no offline support. Both products are available on a free, 15-day trial.

Prices and song availability compare favourably to what’s on offer from Simfy and rara.com. A big differentiator in Deezer’s favour could follow later if it partners with Orange in South Africa and if Orange launches an MVNO, bundling the music streaming service into its products. But if that’s to happen, it’s still some time off — an Orange MVNO in 2013 looks unlikely.

Although Deezer’s entry into the market is on a “soft-launch” basis for now, the move means South Africans are now served by three online music streaming providers, with a fourth — from software giant Microsoft — set to launch in the form of Xbox Music soon. Microsoft had hoped to launch Xbox Music before the end of 2012 but missed this deadline because it is still ironing out final “technical challenges”, according to the company’s South African MD, Mteto Nyati.  — (c) 2013 NewsCentral Media

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  • http://twitter.com/delanostockhoff Delano Stockhoff

    All I want is Spotify and Netflix.

  • fyad

    This is Africa, buddy. We’ll have to make do with second-rate knockoff services that are not what we want.

  • http://www.facebook.com/NirreNitro5000 Rehan Pretorius

    Duncan McLeod of the clan McLeod, There can be only one highlander.

  • http://twitter.com/delanostockhoff Delano Stockhoff

    Hehe, yeah.

    Simfy is fine for now – just want a Netflix knockoff ;)

  • http://twitter.com/rossiza Ross Clarke

    I am busy testing Deezer right now, I have no cooking clue what I am listening to, but it does not match the band it says it is.

  • Greg Mahlknecht

    I’d love to know what Microsoft’s “technical challenges” are … because technically, it all works in South Africa – set your region to USA on WP7/8/Win8 and it’ll work just fine; it’ll give you a free month of Xbox Music Pass on WP8.

    Duncan, any idea if we’ll get the 6-month free Xbox Music Pass with Win8 purchases? That’s a good deal, and pretty much makes the R299 win8 upgrade “free”.

  • http://www.hostinsight.com/ hostinsight.com

    I just use Grooveshark…

  • macboer

    All means nothing without bandwidth. What is the number of uncapped users in ZA? 200 000?

  • McTSA

    For the time being, I use Rara, but will check this out.

  • paul@mymultimediatv.co.za

    Your wish is our command My Multimedia TV “simular to netflix” is coming this year improved for sure we have eliminated data usage for the consumers to view movies, our catalogue is just as appealing and will start at R59
    A set top box is required but not to worry as from 2015 each home requires one to view SABC and ours has alot of value added to make your Tv a smart TV and bring you VOD

  • paul@mymultimediatv.co.za

    Rather ask how many users have DSL well 10% of SA and uncapped is always throttled the fair use policy, so for a streaming movie service ull need a business uncapped that is not shaped at almost a R1000pm

  • sarah

    when is it hitting gh ie ghana?

  • Greg Mahlknecht

    Actually, the consumer uncapped accounts work fine with the streaming tv/movie services – just check out discussion on other threads; many people describe their first-hand experiences of Netflix/iTunes/etc tv/movies working 100% with the non-business uncapped.

  • http://www.clickclickboom.co.za Alan Benington

    Online streaming still does not beat having a high quality mp3 – I have tested the service and there is audible clipping – of course you’re not going to hear this difference over built in PC speakers, but even with a moderate desktop sound system or earphones the quality is degraded.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Paul-Jaco-Slabbert/100000253739401 Paul-Jaco Slabbert

    Do you have1st hand experience in this streaming succesfully all month with a uncapped? In my opinion people love to say things just for the pure joy of it, we have trialed and tested bandwidth and various ISP’s to establish streaming,downloading
    One example for many years discussions will have people telling me their friends download legally from itunes in SA i knew its not true today they all must feel rather silly with itunes only launching a SA service now, well the same goes for people telling me they seamingly stream 24/7 on uncapped and for capped user who tell me they download 24/7 movies at 2/3 movies a day show me real proof someone please i really want to see those stats
    Ooo i missed a point those threats on consumers claiming standard internet speeds are fine for netflix all live in the USA you cannot access netflix from a SA network

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Paul-Jaco-Slabbert/100000253739401 Paul-Jaco Slabbert

    Im not sure if you reffered to my post but we are scheduling a launch into Africa within early 2014 with any further VC we could launch sooner

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Paul-Jaco-Slabbert/100000253739401 Paul-Jaco Slabbert

    I do agree the quality is usualy due to bandwith inteference etc

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Paul-Jaco-Slabbert/100000253739401 Paul-Jaco Slabbert

    Sensus 2012 reckon 10% of SA households have fixed line internet not sure how many have uncapped personally probly 1-2%

  • macboer

    Which means it’s more like 20 000? :P

  • Greg Mahlknecht

    >Do you have1st hand experience in this streaming succesfully all month with a uncapped

    Yup, I watch tons of podcasts, usually on video feeds. No issues. All month, all times. Movie streaming usually works better than podcasts, in fact, because they’re not live events and can pre-buffer portions of the stream, if not the entire thing.

    >One example for many years discussions will have people telling me their friends download legally from itunes in SA

    Well, using the iTunes region workaround isn’t _illegal_ – it’d be dead easy for Apple to enforce it if it were an issue, and if it were a major legal issue for the owners of the music, I’m pretty sure they’d have approached Apple by now about it. The big advantage of iTunes being local is that it’s a lot easier to use and being easily able to pay in local currency, it’s not really about the legality.

    >Ooo i missed a point those threats on consumers claiming standard internet speeds are fine for netflix all live in the USA you cannot access netflix from a SA network

    There are numerous VPN services that allow Netflix to be viewed from outside USA – Netflix isn’t in many markets, and we’re not alone in requiring these workarounds. Google “Netflix vpn”. There’s an entire little industry that’s sprung up around this.

    Now I see you’re punting as new VOD service, and I wish you success, and would love more info, but if your business model is based on the misconceptions you’ve stated here, and your knowledge of the existing services and technicalities is so limited, I would suggest you do a little more research!

  • Greg Mahlknecht

    With a bit of googling (seriously, have you ever heard of that site … it’s great, you can search for things on the internet instead of taking wild guesses) there was an article on this very site about Mweb uncapped, where they say:

    “Customers on the 384kbit/s and 1Mbit/s products make up about 50% of MWeb’s total customer base of more than 300 000. Hershaw says MWeb has “well over” 200 000 DSL customers on its network.”

    And with uncapped prices dropping, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume this penetration has increased. In that time, Mweb’s ADSL network has improved substantially as well. Also remember that now, 1mbit is the slowest speed you can get. More than enough to stream SD.

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