Deezer has announced that it is acquiring Stitcher, the leading provider of personalized internet talk radio and award-winning mobile products. Presumably this will help Deezerapidly step up their presence in the highly competitive US market, which is a new and top priority market for them. With this move they can now offer consumers access to 35k radio shows and podcasts, allowing Deezer to become a truly global on-demand audio provider.
Not only does acquiring Stitcher give Deezer access to a wide breadth of radio and podcasts, but also impressive depth in terms of quality of content. Most notably, Stitcher currently carries 8 of the 10 top US terrestrial radio shows and offers content from over 12k global content providers including NPR, Fox News, BBC, Wall Street Journal, This American Life and many more.
Looking to reach consumers at points where they most often listen to music, Deezer aims to expand its distribution in the automotive entertainment market where Stitcher is already accessible in 50+ models, including BMW, Ford, GM, Jaguar and Mazda, which was an Apple CarPlay and Android Audio launch partner. Linking up with Stitcher to tap into the automotive music space looks to be a very smart way of quickly increasing Deezer’s presence and share, particularly in the US market.
In speaking about the acquisition, Deezer founder Daniel Marhely adds “Almost every music listener listens to some form of talk radio, whether it is news, entertainment or sports. We see the ability to deliver better talk streaming solutions in the same way that we are doing in music to super serve the needs of our global audience of 16 million users and growing. The acquisition of Stitcher helps us realise this opportunity.”
Although there has been some upheaval at Deezer in recent months with the surprising departure of their CEO Axel Dauchez (who left to Publicis), it looks like there’s no slowing in their strategy to gain substantial foothold in the fast-growing, but highly competitive US streaming and on-demand music market.