Orange launches Deezer music service in Poland and Africa

Mobile carrier Orange has extended its partnership with on-demand music service Deezer to its operations in a number of African countries and in Poland.

Deezer’s Premium+ service provides access to 18 million songs to PCs, mobile handsets, Wi-Fi walkmans, IP channels, IP TV and tablets. The operator has already successfully launched the first internet and mobile offers integrating Deezer Premium+ in France in 2010 and then in the UK at the end of 2011.

The new launches mark a new phase in the Orange/Deezer partnership, according to Laurence Le Ny, director of music for the Orange Group. He added that the partnership has already proven successful in France and the United Kingdom.

Guillermo Escofet, senior analyst and a member of Informa’s Mobile Content and Applications (MCA) team explained that bundling an unlimited music offering with data plans is something that was pioneered by TDC in Denmark, with great success. The Danish carrier saw a 60 per cent reduction in churn among broadband subscribers.

“Music in this context is used as a loss leader by the operator to reduce churn and attract new customers. This more than pays off if the operator launches the bundled offering in a market where none of the operators offer a similar deal, thus acting as a key differentiator,” he said.

He added that encouraging subscribers to stream unlimited amounts of music also provides operators with the opportunity to up-sell them to higher capacity data plans.

“Deezer will be getting less than they do from going direct to consumers. If they charge €10 a month for their mobile-access subscription, they’ll be getting a lower wholesale price from Orange. But they gain scale and greater reach in markets where they might never have trodden on their own.”

Orange is currently the only operator to offer the unlimited music streaming service with its internet packages in Mauritius and Ivory Coast. In France, the Deezer Premium+ service is included in Orange’s “Deezer premium music” offer for many of its internet and mobile offers.