As someone who values aesthetics a lot, I have to say I’m impressed by both Spotify and Deezer. Deezer has a bright user interface with lots of color, and a nice uniform font for everything. The Music page has different sections including “Your favorite artists,” “Recommended playlists,” “Music by genre,” “Popular playlists,” and “Made for you.”

 

Spotify’s interface is dark-themed and similarly very easy to navigate. Its “Home” page features recommended music for the current time of day, recently played music, new releases, and a “Made for You” section. When it comes to the actual music player, I think Spotify is a bit more attractive than Deezer, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Spotify also supports animated cover art, so sometimes you’ll see short videos to playing during certain songs. For example, Cornelia Street by Taylor Swift repeats a 5 second montage of pictures of her in nature.

 

 

Deezer Premium and Spotify both have a similar functionality within their interface; you can skip songs, like songs, add to queue, adjust the playback mode, and with Spotify in particular you can select which device to stream from. Some songs on Spotify have a “Behind the Lyrics” feature, which comes from Spotify’s partnership with Genius, and explains certain parts of a song based on things the artist has said about it. Deezer Premium has a feature that lets you view the lyrics of a song as they’re being sung.

 

Both Deezer Premium and Spotify allow you to dislike songs on some of their algorithmically-designed playlists, and you can specify if it’s the song you don’t like—or the artist in particular. Once you like a song on either streaming service, it gets added to a playlist. On Deezer, the “Favorites” tab keeps track of everything you’ve saved and downloaded along with any playlists you’ve made, and it keeps track of your top tracks and MP3s you’ve uploaded for local file playback (“My MP3s”). On Spotify, “Your Library” works the same way, and you can enable local files to be visible from your account settings.

 

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Unfortunately, Deezer Premium could use some development love, as there are a few gremlins in its app. In his quest for a new music streaming service after Google Play Music died, Chris has reported that every time he tried to make a playlist in Deezer the app would crash, and there have been plenty of similar complaints on Deezer’s forums. These issues seem to strike rather unlucky individuals, as there hasn’t been a mass exodus from the service just yet. Just be aware that you may run into issues from time to time.

 

 

Spotify vs. Deezer Premium : Music discovery

 

 

Spotify has the infamous “Discover Weekly” playlist which updates every Monday with new songs Spotify’s algorithm thinks you will like. In addition, it has the “Release Radar” playlist which updates weekly with newly released songs from the artists you follow, and “Daily Mix” playlists. Spotify regularly recommends additional playlists, albums, and radios based on your listening history. Besides personalized algorithmically designed playlists, Spotify has an extensive catalog of editorial playlists categorized by mood, genre, activity, culture, and more.

 

The “Made for You” section of Deezer includes several different daily mixes created by the Deezer personalized algorithm. It also recommends playlists and stations based on mood, what’s currently popular, and what Deezer thinks you will like. Deezer’s main discovery feature is “Flow,” which is a never-ending playlist that can be modified in real time by blacklisting tracks and/or artists. Flow is built based on all of your music tastes—at least, the ones you’ve shared with the service, anyway. Deezer also has a weekly “Discovery” playlist, a “New Releases” playlist, and a “Chill” playlist all based on your preferences.

 

Both Spotify and Deezer create Radios or Mixes of related songs based on songs and artists. Spotify also creates them for playlists that you make. All in all, the discovery features of Spotify vs. Deezer are very similar.

 

 

Spotify vs. Deezer Premium : Available content

 

Music

 

When it comes to their respective music catalogs, there aren’t too many differences between Spotify and Deezer Premium . They both have upwards of 50 million songs and all the underground music you could wish for. Both streaming services accept submissions from unsigned artists and signed artists alike. Deezer Premium , however, is available in many more countries across the world than Spotify.

 

Both streaming services allow you to upload your own files for local media playback, and both services allow you to download songs for offline listening.

 

Podcasts

 

 

Deezer Premium has more podcasts than almost any other service, but Deezer is continuing to add shows to its catalog. Deezer Premium Shows tab allows you to browse podcasts by their duration, which is a cool feature that Deezer Premium doesn’t have. On either streaming service, you can browse podcasts by topic, popularity, network, and more. Spotify and Deezer both have original podcasts and Spotify has quite a few exclusive deals with shows, such as The Michelle Obama Podcast.

 

Exclusive artist content

 

Deezer Originals include Live EPs which artists record in Deezer’s studios and are exclusively available on Deezer Premium . Spotify Singles is pretty much the exact same thing—but for Spotify. In addition, artists can publish an “About” page on their profile, and Spotify’s artist profiles allow artists to make their personal playlists available for fans to listen to.

 

 

When it comes to how much each streaming service pays their artists, Deezer comes out on top (at least, by a per-stream revenue of a single artist reported by The Trichordist), but not by a huge amount. Of course, take this chart with a heaping helping of salt, because the payouts change all the time, and vary based on revenues for each service.