At the time, the telco-led model was the best way to penetrate the African market, which had low purchasing power, an addiction to downloads, expensive internet and crooked consumer behavior.
But over the next two years, Deezer moved to be independent of Orange and expanded its operations.
It officially launched operations in Nigeria around 2013 with lofty pricing and limited number of operable banks, through which payment can be made.
Until March 2020, Deezer was charging Nigerians in dollars. The individual plan went for around $6.99 while the family pricing cost around $9.99. As at Q4 2020, that equaled around N5,000 and N2,000.
In contrast, Apple Music and YouTube Music were charging N900 for individual premium plans and N1400 for premium family plans. Audiomack and Boomplay charged around N500 and TIDAL charged around N600.
While Deezer’s pricing was quite steep for Nigerians, it was quite reasonable for Deezer.
How does the plan make sense for Deezer?
The Nigerian market had over 200 million people and a reported 70+ people that enjoy downloading music.
Naijaloaded, West Africa’s largest music blog, also hit over two billion unique hits in 2020.
Streaming was and is also too expensive from a standpoint of expensive data subscription and even monthly purchasing power for monthly premium plans.
Earlier in 2021, GetDotAfrica reported that Nigeria and Senegal had the most expensive internet in Africa by weighing purchasing power against reported daily minimum living wage.
In 2020, Deezer’s Global Director of Communication, Anton Gourman had a conversation with artist Manager Jordan Williams and Sam Hysell of NOX, the hosts of Music Business Podcast.
During the episode, he revealed that the company still had less than 500 employees. For this reason, one can assume that Deezer has always operated a lean model, through which it expands, affords opportunities and concessions as it grows.
Unlike big hitters like Spotify and Apple Music, it can’t afford to throw the kitchen sink at risks, come what may.
As of 2018, Apple Music had started charging Nigerians N900 for individual premium plans and N1400 for family plans while Deezer was still charging Nigerian users in dollars.
Like Deezer, Apple Music also ran its African operations from South Africa – like most streaming platforms. Some also run their operations from Dubai, UAE.
Despite the expensive service, Deezer’s sound quality, playlists and ‘flow’ feature have always been up there with the best.
So on March 2, 2021, when Deezer announced that it had finally reduced its pricing to N900 for individual premium plans and N1400 for family plans, it came as a shocking concession to many.
One can assume that Spotify’s pricing left Deezer as the ‘awkward expensive outlier’ in a band of conformists, so it had no choice. Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube Music were charging around the same price range while Audiomack, TIDAL and Boomplay charge even lower.
It was the first time in around eight years that Deezer would reduce its price for premium subscription. That moment naturally brought on questions around whether Deezer were scared to lose even more grounds and whether the move was too late for Deezer.
Was the fee concession too late for Deezer?
In some ways, it’s understandable why Deezer’s Africa-Nigeria drive never really felt as immersive and some of them were highlighted earlier in this article. However, Deezer’s ‘safe’ approach arguably caused some harm.
First, Deezer was here four-five years before Apple Music, three years before Boomplay, seven years before YouTube Music, TIDAL, Audiomack and MusicTime, and eight years before Spotify.
While the African-Nigerian landscape in 2013 was way more crooked for a streaming platform and Deezer deserves some praise for having enough bravery to even attempt operating in Nigeria, but it took too long to make itself an immersive brand.
Until March 2021, pricing made the Deezer seem like an aloof brand that was just here for the sake of positioning, and didn’t care enough to immerse itself into the landscape. This became an even greater brand perception when Apple Music and then YouTube Music entered the fray.
Moreover, as more new platforms started in Nigeria – especially – with cheaper offerings, Deezer lost some customers, even though some customers like this writer stayed with Deezer for a little while longer. Within five months of Spotify’s arrival in Nigeria, the platform acquired a reported 80,000 subscribers.
Reason suggests that some of those people will be Deezer users. Deezer doesn’t even have up to 80,000 premium subscribers in Nigeria. Yes, it doesn’t come with the muscle and established capitalist might of Spotify, but eight years was a long to gain something with a more immersive brand and cheaper pricing.
Deezer’s March 2021 change in price structure means that it lost its chance to immerse itself into Africa-Nigeria much earlier. It also lost a chance at larger customer acquisition. Deezer’s operations were so aloof that a lot of people didn’t even know that they could pay for the platform with their cards.
“I didn’t even know that I could pay with my GTBank card until 2017 and they had been here since like 2013 or 2014,” says Mosope Adeniji, an Advertising Executive and loyal Deezer user since 2017.
Yes, they were not making a killing in this market and it makes business sense to remain aloof, but now, their positioning doesn’t seem like it was worth it. Bigger platforms with greater visibility, greater budget, more desirable brand equity, bigger hiring capability and greater marketing budgets have entered the market.
Yes, they are benefitting from Africa’s growing purchasing power and evolving consumer behaviour – that is still not comparatively great – but Deezer could have benefitted from this on a greater spectrum. It feels like the company wasn’t calculative enough.
After Apple Music disrupted the landscape with its pricing, Deezer should have changed its model to reposition itself. But instead, it succeeded in projecting itself as an ‘elitist, distant brand’ that doesn’t care enough to immerse itself – even though that might not have been the case.
Deezer missed a window, and now it’s part of a chasing pack and competing for market share against competitors that it could have gained a headstart on. That’s either poor vision, poor calculation and strategy and/or perception/anticipation.
Less than 100,000 Nigerian users in eight years isn’t great numbers, especially if companies that got to Nigeria four years after Deezer now have two or three times that number. A lot of that has to do with pricing, its aloof brand and non-immersive strategy.
The other perspective
The perspective above is just one point of view though. The other perspective is that Deezer couldn’t afford to lose money like Spotify and Apple Music can. Neither does it have their resources. So, instead of pioneering and losing, confirming that Spotify was ready to also slash its price for Nigeria-Africa is a safer business strategy.
It also means that Deezer is still in the race and not out.
There is no price for wasting the time that could have been used. Yes, gaining a headstart doesn’t mean that Deezer still couldn’t have lost the market share and its place to bigger resources and more desirable brand equity to the new arrivals in Africa’s music streaming wars, but a headstart is better than fighting from a deficit.
It’s like watching Nice try to play against a marauding, fully fit Bayern Munich at the Allianz Arena that has a point to prove after bottling a 3-0 lead and with a two-man deficit.
Except of course, Africa has never really been a desirable market for Deezer.
Deezer now
These days, Deezer is fighting a daily messy fight with charm offensive against Spotify and even Soundcloud. Part of its marketing strategy is to gain market share by attacking the competition, talking down on them and elevating itself.
An interesting pro-Deezer article on Forbes had this title, “Spotify prices are going up: Should you join Deezer?’”
That’s rich, considering how Deezer ran a service that cost twice the amount of Spotify’s current Nigerian subscription for over five years till March 2021 – after Spotify launched. It’s just a questionable marketing strategy.
First off, as much as the unrepentant offensive approach is great entertainment for neutrals like this journalist, it probably does more harm than good to its brand. It’s also not great for brand perception.
If this was Hip-Hop, Deezer would be branded a ‘hater’ right now. Most onlookers are know that Deezer could have been a leader in the African market by a landslide or at least a brand with a greater head start, but it chose not to be as immersive.
Going forward: Solutions
Now, it needs to position its brand as more ‘accessible’ and friendly, not confrontational. Positioning yourself as being better than other brands fosters an ‘elitist’ brand that Deezer doesn’t need. The competition is already too entrenched and desirable with greater brand equity.
A social media ‘war of words’ would do nothing but harm Deezer even further – it’s a fool’s errand. Even if Spotify might be using its muscle and leverage to hurt the competition behind closed doors, the public spat isn’t going to help Deezer’s cause. There has to be a better way to fight and be able to favorably compete than a media offensive.
Talking down on the competition to market your brand is also a weird strategy, especially when you’re Deezer.
*Pulse Editor’s Opinion is the viewpoint of an Editor at Pulse. It does not represent the opinion of the Organisation Pulse.
