Deezer: Music Player, Podcast

What it does

Deezer is a comprehensive audio streaming platform that provides access to a massive library of music, podcasts, and radio stations. It aims to deliver a highly personalized listening experience through its dynamic 'Flow' feature, which adapts to user tastes and moods. Beyond standard playback, Deezer incorporates interactive elements like music quizzes and collaborative playlists to create a more engaging and social experience.

Where it shines

Deezer stands out with its highly interactive features. The 'Flow' mood wheel (05:49) is a prime example, allowing users to instantly shift their music queue's vibe with a satisfying, color-changing interface. Another highlight is the 'SongCatcher' feature (19:08), a music identification tool that not only listens to the environment but also allows users to sing or hum a tune for recognition. Finally, the app successfully gamifies listening with Music Quizzes (13:06), turning its catalog into a fun trivia game complete with scoring and leaderboards.

UX highlights

Intuitive Player Controls: The music player is rich with features, offering easy access to lyrics, a sleep timer, and an equalizer (04:14) without feeling cluttered.
Visual Personalization: Selecting favorite artists during onboarding (01:50) is an engaging, visual task that immediately populates the home screen with relevant content, demonstrating value right away.
Collaborative 'Shaker': The 'Shaker' feature (11:34) allows users to create joint playlists with friends, even if they use competing services like Spotify. This is a clever social hook that promotes sharing.
Clear Content Organization: The app neatly separates music, podcasts, and other audio content. The 'Explore' tab (09:23) uses large, colorful cards to guide users to different genres, charts, and categories, making discovery straightforward.
Granular Settings: Users have a high degree of control over their experience, with detailed settings for audio quality, notifications, and data storage (21:07).

Monetization & growth

Deezer employs a hard paywall strategy, requiring users to sign up for a free trial of a premium plan before accessing the app's core features (00:48). The subscription screen clearly presents multiple tiers (Premium, Duo, Family) and highlights annual discounts to encourage longer-term commitment. A feature comparison table (00:58) helps justify the cost by outlining the benefits of a paid plan. The 'Shaker' feature serves as a built-in growth loop, encouraging users to invite friends from other platforms to join a shared experience on Deezer.

Who it’s for

Deezer is for music and podcast lovers who want more than just a passive listening experience. It's well-suited for users who enjoy deep personalization and appreciate having fine-tuned control over their audio through features like an equalizer. The interactive quizzes and collaborative playlists also make it a great choice for users looking for a more social and engaging way to discover and share music with friends.

Notes & opportunities

The initial onboarding process is quite long, with five separate screens for account creation before the paywall is even shown (00:15 - 00:47). This creates significant friction and could be a drop-off point for some users. Consolidating these steps or deferring some data collection until after the user has experienced the app could improve activation rates. Additionally, the app showed a few network error pop-ups during the recording (05:57), which could be handled more gracefully with inline messages or automatic retries to avoid interrupting the user's flow.