Why I’m using Deezer

Season-appropriate greetings everyone! 

So I’ve survived a year on Deezer. The platform didn’t improve at all over the year but I’ve come to rely upon a set of features not available on Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play Music or Amazon Music Unlimited (yeah, they’re into that now too):

• collaborative playlists with comments 
• LastFM scrobbling

The ex-Lala/MOG/Lala new-release hunter-gatherer tribe remaining on Deezer has dwindled down to just a few souls and has continued the tradition of unearthing the best of new and unknown artists. However, we are missing obscure selections made by the most erudite folks of the Lala era. C’est dommage. 

As such my ritual of compiling a best-of-year playlist has endured. Predictably, it eschews established artists (exception: Bowie) and is bent to my aging tastes, mostly soft-ish pop/rock with a few instrumental pieces thrown in. I’ve published it on Deezer and Spotify. Obviously, there is no obligation to listen, but if you know any musical directors looking for navel-gazing, dramatic audio material on likely favorable terms, please share. 🙂

In other news, in January, Pandora will be launching its premium subscription Spotify/Apple/Google/Amazon on-demand competitor (news via Forbes and Verge). Early indications are the only DNA scraped from the carcass of Rdio is it’s slick UI design. The industry press is saying “too-little, too-late”, but I believe they have some capital in the form of it’s long-time users who have ever pressed the thumbs-up button [I could be wrong, but I believe the Pandora thumbs-up predates Facebook Like]. Imagine one button to play a stream of everything you liked from an era. Could be either glorious or scary!

Anyway, thanks for reading and I love you.