Nipping At Spotify, Deezer Passes 5M Paying Subs, Adds ‘Hear This' And ‘Explore' For Music Discovery, Unveils New Mac App

Spotify may be the world's biggest music streaming company, but rival Deezer is inching closer to its terrain: today the company revealed that it now has 5 million paying users globally and 30 million tracks on its platform; and taking a page from Spotify's playbook, it also took the covers off two new discovery features to improve engagement on the platform. Going one step past Spotify, Deezer is also now previewing a new Mac app that will integrate the service with your offline music collection, starting first with what you keep in iTunes. Deezer claims that its 30 million track figure makes it currently the world's biggest music streaming provider. And to put the 5 million paying subscribers in context, this is more than double the 2 million that Deezer reported in October 2012, when it announced a monster round of $130 million in funding that the Paris-based streaming company raised to push into international markets. “Doubling the number of paid subscribers in 12 months sends a hugely encouraging signal that music streaming's time is now,” says Axel Dauchez, Deezer's CEO, in a statement. “One year ago we pledged to launch Deezer worldwide because we felt music deserved to be truly global. One year on, we are proud to say that we have over-delivered on our promises, with more than 5 million subscribers across more than 180 countries and a team of expert editors around the world sharing their love and passion for music. But we're not content to simply keep up with the world; we want to lead the charge.” Still, that 5 million is also almost certainly some way shy of what Spotify is pulling in with paid users right now. The last numbers we have for Deezer's Swedish rival are from March 2013, when it had 6 million - a figure that is almost certainly higher eight months on. Spotify is reportedly in the process of raising money at a $5.3 billion valuation, although the company is not commenting on this right now. Deezer typically charges the equivalent of about €9.99 per month for streaming, although it often discounts that to promote the service - for example right now in the UK users can take up the service for an introductory price of £4.99 per month. Dauchez told me today that the company is currently not profitable, but that is because it is in growth mode. Before raising the $130 million round, the company was profitable, he reminded me. Today's rush of news features getting announced today are signs that the company is once again pushing ahead with features that it hopes will not only get more people using its platform, but using it more regularly and in more scenarios. I'm at a press event that Deezer's holding in London to take us through these new services, and I've now interviewed Dauchez and will be updating this with his comments. Here are the details about the new features: Hear This. Think of this as Deezer's equivalent of Spotify's Discover feature, a way of helping users find tracks when they are on the go. Although Deezer is also available for desktop users, today some 75% of its base are accessing the service on mobile, so it makes sense for the company to figure out better ways of letting those with smaller touchscreens find new music. Hear This includes daily recommendations based on what you listen to, as well as a list of the latest releases from acts that you have favorited. There is also a social element, with the ability to access friends' playlists and those curated by Deezer's “music experts” (In this last area, you can see the influence not just of Spotify here, but of Songza as well.) Deezer says it has some 100 million playlists in all on its platform today. Explore. Following in the vein of Hear This, Explore is a new kind of search algorithm that lets users find music by region as well as genre. New Deezer Mac app. This is not actually getting launched today; rather Deezer is previewing it, and it's a great sign of how the company is trying not just to copy what its rivals are doing but also go one step past them. The main feature that stands out for me with the Mac app - apart from the fact that it exists at all, considering that Deezer positioned itself as web-first at a time when Spotify adhered initially to local clients - is that its idea is to become your single music dashboard. Not only does it give you access to Deezer's catalog and your own playlists and those of others, you can also integrate your iTunes collection so that you have a full spectrum of music that you might want to hear. The next 5 million: targeting late adopters with a new pricing tier in 2014 It's not clear whether other music libraries will also get incorporated, and whether Deezer ultimately will try to leverage this to replace iTunes for its users, but in any case it is a smart move for the company. The web app, of course, would only work for users who are online, so this gives the company a connection to those on desktop who may not be for whatever reason. And of course it helps the company better address the vast majority of consumers who have yet to stream music as part of their listening experience. This is an area where Deezer is likely to do to a lot more in the future. In an interview with TechCrunch at the event, Dauchez tells me that Deezer is now working on ways it can tackle the long tail of consumers who are not the early-adopter, avid music users. He says that Deezer is developing a paid - not free - service that it will launch next year that will sit alongside its existing subscription service, but aimed at less frequent music consumers. “Right now, we are the best service for people who are in ‘music collection mode,'” he told me. “But this is not all people. If you were a guy who used to, before 2000, buy two CDs per year you are not in ‘collection mode.' You won't contemplate a streaming service. We will adapt the service for these other users.” Alongside this, Deezer is also looking at ways of targeting segments of the market who may not be those who listen to the pop music that forms the majority of what is streamed and consumed today. Last month Deezer launched a new classical music discovery service along with a partnership with Deutsche Gramophone - the idea is that it can search not just by artist or genre, but instrument, as well as “contributors,” who might be composers or musicians or conductors, and so on. Dauchez says that right now Deezer's two biggest demographics are 20-25 year-old male, tech friendly types; and 35+ male music lovers. In that context, if you target a classical music lover with Deezer or any other streaming service that you can hear on a phone, “It's as weird as saying you can hear it on a pack of cigarettes,” he says, holding up his own pack of Marlborough Lights. “It's not relevant and it doesn't make sense.” Along with the product news and catalog/user milestones, Deezer also announced a total of 25 carrier partnerships bundling Deezer music subscriptions with mobile services, with the 11 newest announced today. Deezer was something of a trailblazer in aligning music streaming with mobile usage - with an early deal and investment from France Telecom as part of its first efforts to grow. It's something that Deezer credits with its wide usage in France and is also a trick that Spotify has used to replicate that success. Interestingly, it seems like Deezer is finally starting to outgrow that early iteration of its service: Dauchez today told me that the company has finally tipped the balance between having more users internationally than it does in its home market. The company is also announcing a few key hires, including Christopher Coonen as COO. Coonen founded PayPal in France and then Europe, and will be focused on helping Deezer pick up more subscribers and meeting revenue targets. And it appears to have poached Gerrit Schumann, co-founder of German rival streaming service Simfy, as its VP of Europe. He will be based in Berlin.

Tesla Shares Drop On Smaller Than Predicted Loss, Company Cites Production Constraints

Tesla’s share price is higher than makes any logical sense, given the number of cars it makes and sells, but the stock value got a little bit of a real-world correction last night after hours as the car-maker’s quarterly results showed another quarterly loss – albeit one that still beat Wall Street analyst consensus. Tesla reported a loss of $38 million on total revenue of $431 million for the quarter, and its share price was down just over 10 percent in pre-market trading this morning. The losses were attributed to mostly positive causes by Tesla, however, if there can be said to be a positive reason for coming up short millions of dollars. Tesla cited its ongoing research and development spend regarding retail stores for selling Tesla vehicles, as well as for building battery stations that will pepper the globe with its Supercharger means of powering the Tesla S and other electric vehicles built by the automotive startup. And the R&D budget is getting bigger, not smaller, with plans to increase its development budget by 25 percent for the fourth quarter as it works to build the Model X sport utility and make improvements to the Model S. Tesla chairman and CEO Elon Musk also pointed out during a conference call to discuss the results that the company is “production constrained, not demand-constrained,” which means that it’s still raking in plenty of sales. It delivered a new record of 5,500 Model S cars during the quarter, and was limited only in terms of how many automobiles it could roll off the assembly line. For Tesla, there’s a dual challenge of delivering vehicles and building out a proper infrastructure to support them. Expanding across the globe isn’t just a case of opening a regional sales office and dealing with local regulators, though there is that, too; the company also has to make sure there’s a charging network in place adequate to the needs of its target market of drivers in each new geography. That means analyzing exactly where it needs to deploy Supercharger stations to make it so that drivers are covered for the trips they want to take, and then actually rolling out those locations, which means signing up partner sites to let them take over some parking spots and install chargers. Tesla’s next stop is Europe, after having opened the West Coast Supercharger network spanning the U.S. from San Diego to Vancouver in Canada last week. Europe growth of the Supercharger network is planned throughout 2014, so while production increases may help secure more revenue from car sales, don’t expect R&D spend to decrease in future quarters.

Instagram Competitor Mobli Gets $60M From Carlos Slim To Build A Visual Search Engine

Mobile picture and video sharing platform Mobli, a competitor to other image-sharing services like Instagram, is today announcing a strategic investment that it hopes will help it catapult itself into the big leagues of mobile apps. Today, it is announcing that América Móvil, the Latin American telco giant led by billionaire Carlos Slim, is leading a new $60 million round in the company. As part of that, Mobli will get distribution with América Móvil's millions of mobile users. It's an interesting turn for Israel's Mobli, which has had a ton of celebrity endorsement that some might say has been disproportionate to how much it has been used. Before today's news, Mobli had raised approximately $28 million, $22 million of which came from private investor Kenges Rakishev. Approximately $6.5 million has come from the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire and Serena Williams. Mobli works across Android, Windows and iPhone but not poor old BlackBerry. Mobli want to use the cash to launch and expand its visual search engine enabling its users to “see the world through other people's eyes”, and to scroll back in time through previous images. “Mobli has developed a remarkable technology and this strategic alliance will allow América Móvil to bring value added experiences for its users throughout the Americas,” Carlos Slim, the Mexican tycoon behind América Móvil, said in a statement. Slim has been ranked as the richest person in the world, swapping places with Bill Gates as few times for that accolade. He's worth a paltry $66 billion or so. This investment will push Mobli's valuation to around the $1 billion mark, although the company is not disclosing any figures. Moshe Hogeg, founder and CEO of Mobli, says the deal will mean the startup reaching “millions of users in Latin America.” And it will. América Móvil is the fourth largest mobile network operator in the world with revenues of $59.3 billion last year and services over 246 million mobile subscribers in 18 countries. Originally launched in 2011, Mobli is a sort of ‘Instagram on uppers' allowing users to connect around common interests via other users, hashtags and locations in their feed. Is has a lot of features that latter app does not. Unlike Instagram, when a user wants to post a photo, the Mobli app immediately offers the latest three images added to the gallery. No need to click into it to select which is very convenient. Leonardo DiCaprio said in a canned statement that he has “always been excited by Mobli's mission to connect people around the world through shared visual images. Today's announcement means that a massive new community of users will be introduced to an incredible experience of discovery and sharing.” With another $60 million they should add caring as well as social sharing…

Yahoo Refreshes Its Finance Service With Updated iOS Apps And A New Website

Today Yahoo refreshed the iOS application and website of its Finance service. The updates are worthy, and will help Yahoo remain relevant in the financial space, and perhaps support the continued growth of its mobile userbase. If you think that the 5 year forward PE of a company can be a one word joke, you probably use Yahoo Finance. As far as online financial sites go, it’s among the best and most used. Yahoo’s update to Finance’s Web interface and companion application is therefore a decent way to grok the company’s design vision, and vet its improving mobile chops. Briefly, the new Web interface of Finance has been dramatically cleaned up, and set up to allow users to more quickly track their personal portfolio, and drill into market movement across asset categories. Here is a screenshot I took this evening of the now prior Yahoo finance page: Not the prettiest thing. Yahoo Finance was never prized for its beauty, or layout. I personally use it because of its informational density. In the age of flat design and simpler color schemes (iOS 7 aside) Yahoo has now attached itself to market trend of simple design. At least in this product refresh. Its other properties – try to figure out what is going on here – remain aimed at other demographics. Now, to the new design. The following image is a Yahoo-provided screenshot, as I did not have access to the new website post-meeting:

This is a distinct improvement. It would have been far better to have screenshots of the same moment in time of the site to compare the versions, but this is the best I can do. The most important change that Yahoo has implemented both in the new Web interface and the updated iOS applications is personalized content. As you can see in the upper left of the new design, stocks that you are following are displayed. You can select and remove stocks from that list. The content in the middle tracks your interests, which is useful. If you look at the upper right corner of the new design, you’ll see a simple, visual explanation of the strongest and worst of your personal portfolio performers. This fits into Yahoo’s larger goal of creating Internet-based experiences that help you with your repeated tasks. You care about your money, so you check its performance. So to help you quickly eyeball the dollar flux, Yahoo has built the new widget. The site’s other pages have been updated as well. What you need to know is that it is now easier to track your own investments, along with commodities, currencies, and markets than it was before on the site. On a personal note, I spend a decent amount of time tracking upcoming earnings from bellwether companies, and market expectations thereof. Yahoo has put together a new tool that tracks both pieces of information for you. Yes. The desktop Web, however, isn’t Yahoo’s new direction, so we need to rummage up a smartphone and go mobile. On The Go Yahoo currently has 390 million monthly active mobile users. That’s a number that it has managed to sequentially increase. Given the relative short time in which Yahoo has lived as a mobile-first company, or at least a company first about becoming a mobile-first company, it has performed impressively. While revenue questions persist, the company’s strategy to grow its mobile userbase is working. That in mind, the update to its Finance applications is component to a larger strategy. I’ve been critical of Yahoo before for failing to end its revenue malaise through expanding mobile usage, but must admit in this case that financial quibbles aside, I like the new iOS experience it has built. Android and Windows Phone users need not apply – Yahoo, like many smaller technology companies in Silicon Valley is a touch Apple-centric, at least when its Finance products are concerned. It’s not by accident, I don’t think, that its new desktop Web Finance site is likely far easier to touch than its predecessor. Hello, tablets. What’s new for Finance on iOS? Similar personalization to what we saw in the Web refresh, the same market information, the same data across asset classes, push notifications for information that fits your financial interest, and the best charts I’ve ever seen on a phone. Here are a few shots taken from my personal cell:

I used the app today and found it responsive, and attractive. And for the first time in memory I have a Yahoo mobile application installed on my phone. It may be a first, actually. – Taken together, Yahoo has managed a strong, and functional refresh of the Web interface of its Finance service, and refresh its iOS experience in a way that easily bests its previous versions. If you can’t live without an IV of market data, each is worth taking for a spin.

Samsung Murders Language With “Fonblet” Name, Promises Displays For Those With Superhuman Vision

Samsung is doing all kinds of crazy things just to get kudos for being ‘First!’ these days, and now it’s added two more “achievements” to that list: coining the terrible term “fonblet” and promising displays that are way, way beyond the capabilities of human eyeballs. During its analyst day in Seoul, South Korea, it’s being far more candid about future plans than is normal, in the hopes of reassuring investors that it continues to expand and rack up growth. Among its revelations, the company now lays claim to the creation of a “fonblet” market (the term was rumored earlier in the year for a new Samsung device), which is known to most others as the ‘Phablet’ category, or to even more normal people as just ‘large phones.’ The fonblet is a unique and special bird, however, combining not just a huge display with (relative) portability, but also with handwriting recognition – the element which perhaps distinguishes it from mere phablets, and which allows Samsung to lay claim to its creation via the Galaxy Note line of devices. Leaving aside that fonblet hits the ears with all the sonorous pleasure of a cat falling down the side of a skyscraper clad in chalkboard, it also combines the word “tablet” with the word “fone,” which as most will be aware, doesn’t actually exist. Maybe the “f” stands for pen. Samsung is also letting on that it plans to increase the resolution of smartphone displays considerably over the next couple of years – first, with WQHD resolution (2560 x 1440) displays next year, and then with 3840 x 2106 screens (aka Ultra HD) sometime in 2015. It sounds nice, but remember these resolutions are planned for devices with roughly 5-inch screens (or slightly larger, if we’re talking fonblets here). As explained by someone much smarter than me (scientist and photographer Bryan Jones) in this article, Apple essentially topped what the average human eye is capable of distinguishing on a smartphone screen at regular use distance with its 326ppi Retina display on the iPhone 4. In other words, pixel density of 500 or higher starts to enter into “but why?” category, providing advancement for advancement’s sake. If you hold your eyeball right up to the screen, it’s likely going to make a difference, but otherwise, any perceived improvement in quality is likely to be imagined, rather than actual. The real improvement is on the spec sheet, which is where Samsung is hoping consumers are paying attention. Samsung also said it plans to essentially go back to the drawing board on software and do better, which is something that actually matters, so there’s that. Displays for Superman and terrible neologisms, we could probably do without.

Appboy Raises $7.6M Series A To Bring Marketing Automation Tools To Mobile Apps

Appboy, a company that helps mobile app marketers better retain users and keep them engaged, is today announcing $7.6 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Icon Venture Partners, and saw participation from new investors IDG Ventures, and Mike Lazerow, founder of Buddy Media. Existing seed investors, including Blumberg Capital, Accelerator Ventures, Bullpen Capital and T5 Capital, also participated. The company has raised a total of $7.6 million. However, in addition to the $5.1 million in Series A funding, Appboy previously raised $2.5 million via convertible note seed financings, which have now converted. While a number of companies from the earlier days of the mobile app ecosystem have focused on helping app developers acquire new users, Appboy is about taking the next step. It helps companies keep their users by offering a suite of tools that enable companies to better understand their user demographics, so they can engage them in a timely fashion through in-app messages, push notifications and even email. “It's not an acquisition game anymore. I really believe 2014 will be about user engagement, retention – those kind of numbers – rather than how many downloads you had,” says Appboy co-founder and CEO Mark Ghermezian. Once integrated into an app, Appboy's platform immediately begins creating a rich profile on all the app's users. Ghermezian explains that it's not really an analytics platform, despite some similarities, but a mobile user management platform. “If you want all the different, crazy charts, we're not that,” he says. “But if you want to understand your users down to a per-user level, and manage all your communication with them…that's what we are.” The company has already found traction with some well-known app publishers on the App Store, including textPlus, Pic Stitch, GSN (Game Show Network), Urban Outfitters, and a variety of digital magazines through a channel partnership with Mag+. After user profiles are created, Appboy offers multi-messaging marketing tools that let its customers choose how and when specific groups of users are contacted through push notifications, messages within the app, or via emails. The company also provides a “news feed”-like product that developers can place in their apps, too, which allows them to keep users updated on things like new friends or comments, new features, new activity, and other alerts. Though a relatively new product at Appboy, app makers are already seeing 25-30 percent clickthrough rates in the news feed, says Ghermezian. The founder believes that Appboy is the next evolution in marketing automation tools. He references companies like Buddy Media (whose founder has now invested in Appboy), ExactTarget, Radian6 and Marketo as examples of companies (several acquired by Salesforce) that focus on various aspects of online marketing, but points out that none offer a mobile solution. Appboy, meanwhile, is designed not for the developers or the data scientists who pore over the charts and graphs from analytics providers, but for the marketing crowd. The dashboard lets its customers create campaigns using simple tools that slice and dice a larger audience into specific groups based on several factors, including demographics, social profile data, in-app behaviors, in-app purchases and more. That way, app marketers can target groups like “recently lapsed” users or “high spenders” or “passionate fans” in personalized, unique ways. The suite also offers tools that help keep an app's bugs and glitches from tanking App Store rankings, by redirecting potentially negative app reviews to in-app feedback forms instead, and integrating with other systems like Zendesk, desk.com, and UserVoice. Appboy will use the new funding to grow its sales and marketing teams, as well as get more aggressive with its own marketing, and it will begin to look into internationalization efforts, too. The now 30-person company has already doubled in size from the beginning of the year. Along with the funding announcement, Appboy relaunched its website with a refreshed look and new brand, and adjusted pricing so it's now 1 cent per user profile for companies with up to 100,000 app users, then custom pricing for larger publishers. Also with the new investment, the plan is to continue to improve upon Appboy's various tools. For example, the company added location to its segmentation product last week. Soon, it will be doing more with the news feed, too, by offering a variety of templated “cards” (calls to action) for things like feedback, surveys, increasing purchases and more. And longer-term, Appboy could take advice offered by its “Success Squad” staff, who help Appboy's bigger clients, and turn that into actionable tips and advice and even automation within the core product itself. “I want my Success Squad to be living inside the dashboard,” says Ghermezian. “Whoever automates this is going to win.”

Amazon Source Audaciously Courts Indie Bookstores As The Next Kindle Retail Outlets

Amazon has not been seen as a fast friend of the brick-and-mortar bookstore business. The rise of discounted books sold online often undercuts what traditional retailers have been able to offer, leading to the death of those local businesses - a trend that has been accentuated with the rise of e-books that do away with the idea of anything paper-based altogether. Now, somewhat improbably, Amazon is launching Amazon Source, a new program where it hopes to work with independent booksellers to sell Kindle e-readers and Kindle Fire tablets. Amazon Source builds on a groundbreaking deal that Amazon cut with Waterstones in the UK in 2012. That deal saw the latter company jump into bed with Amazon to resell Kindle devices in its stores, after months of speculation that Waterstones would team up with Barnes & Noble instead to resell its Nook devices, with the head of the UK bookseller publicly slamming Amazon in the lead-up to the deal. Because of all this, at the time, Amazon's deal with Waterstones was seen as an aggressive, typically Amazonian, coup. While we have seen various moves to counterbalance the effect that Amazon has had on independent booksellers (the French government being a big force here) some beg to differ about claims that independent bookstores have been impacted by the rise if Amazon - specifically, it's the biggies that have been hardest hit, the argument goes. Indeed, a lot of indie bookstores have made the move even to selling directly on Amazon as part of its marketplace. With Amazon Source, Amazon is building on the latter argument and business model, with the idea being that independent bookstores have customers who want to buy e-books as much as they want to buy physical copies, and this gives those shops a route to offering the most popular device in this category. "We believe that retailers, online or offline, small or large, should be striving to offer customers what they want-and many customers want to read both digital and print books," said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President, Amazon Kindle, in a statement. "For many years, bookstores have successfully sold print books on Amazon - now Amazon Source extends this opportunity to digital. With Amazon Source, customers don't have to choose between e-books and their favorite neighborhood bookstore-they can have both." The program will see Amazon offering bookstores the chance to sell Kindles (which they buy wholesale at between 6% and 9% discount from the Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price, Amazon says), and to share in some of the benefits of doing so - for a limited time, at least. For every Kindle book that a user buys after purchasing the e-reader or tablet, the bookseller gets a 10% cut for the first two years of ownership. Booksellers also get a discount on buying Kindle accessories wholesale (at a 35% discount from the Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price). Amazon says the discounts on Kindles can be bigger if booksellers choose to forego the 10% cut on e-book sales. And there is an insurance policy of sorts: after the first order from Amazon Source, the company says, “if a retailer decides they no longer want to sell Kindle, Amazon will buy back the inventory for up to six months after their first order, with no questions asked.” As someone who lives in London and is a regular visitor to Waterstones, it's interesting to see the Kindle displays in the stores. They always have people converged around them, often children who have been dragged into the shops by their parents. Waterstones also has made a point of offering other devices as well to give users a full choice. "We are committed to offering the best possible book buying experience. It is a truly exciting prospect to harness the respective strengths of Waterstones and Amazon to provide a dramatically better digital reading experience for our customers,” notes James Daunt, MD of Waterstones, in a statement. “Alongside Amazon, we have married the best digital readers, the Kindle family, to the singular pleasures of browsing a curated bookshop. With the combination of our talents we are on our way to offering the exceptional customer proposition to which we both aspire.” In Waterstones' flagship store in the city, it puts the Kindle stand very close to check-out, meaning that users will may only visit it after they've done their browsing for physical devices. Smaller bookstores may not have the luxury of creating layouts that lead users in such a way. It will be interesting to see whether other booksellers take the plunge to offer a similar kind of choice to users. Maybe it's common sense and inevitable for physical booksellers to make sure they offer their customers as much choice as they can, and maybe there really are people who are walking into these shops looking for e-books and e-book readers rather than printed volumes. Still, I can't help but think that this is a little like punching a guy after you've already knocked him down, and the guy (if bookstores say yes) more or less saying, please, punch me more!