France-headquartered music streaming service Deezer has reported its Q1 earnings and reiterated its expectation that it’s going to attain optimistic EBITDA this fiscal yr.
The corporate reported a complete of 9.4 million subscribers in Q1, down 5.4% YoY on a like-for-like foundation from 10 million in the identical quarter a yr earlier. Deezer counted 5.3 million direct subscribers to its service, up 3.3% YoY.
In its key market of France, Deezer recorded 3.5 million direct subscribers, up 6.3% YoY, whereas direct subscriptions on the earth exterior France fell 2.1% YoY to 1.8 million.
Apart from direct subscriptions, Deezer has additionally constructed a person base by means of partnerships with broadcasters, on-line marketplaces and different music-related companies. The corporate’s “partnerships” section reported 4.1 million subscribers, down 14.6% YoY.
Deezer attributed the decline to a conversion of promo subscribers to MeLi+ (its partnership in Brazil with Mercado Libre) to premium subscribers “with larger ARPU and margins.”
The corporate’s consolidated income for Q1 2025 got here in at EUR €134.0 million, or USD $141.0 million on the common alternate charge for Q1. That’s a rise of 1.1% YoY, or 2.5% YoY at fixed foreign money.
The corporate’s “direct section” recorded income of €86.6 million ($91.2 million), a slight improve from €86.0 million in the identical quarter final yr.
The “partnerships” section introduced in €39.2 million ($41.3 million), down 9.4% YoY or down 5.7% YoY at fixed foreign money. The decline in partnership income from the conversion of MeLi+ customers was partly offset by the ramp-up of Deezer’s partnership with German broadcaster RTL.
The corporate additionally famous in its newest earnings assertion, issued on Tuesday (April 29), that it had renewed its partnerships with French telcos Orange and Bouygues.
Revenues within the “different” section jumped 155.0% YoY to €8.3 million ($8.7 million), pushed by Deezer’s white-label options for {hardware} and media companions.
The corporate didn’t present EBITDA numbers for the quarter however reiterated its earlier steerage that it expects to succeed in optimistic EBITDA within the present fiscal yr.
In fiscal 2024, Deezer narrowed its EBITDA loss to -€4.0 million (-$4.3 million on the common alternate charge for the yr), from -€28.8 million in 2023, and reported a optimistic EBITDA for H2 2024.
“We began the yr with optimistic momentum, delivering income progress in keeping with our expectations and additional growing our direct subscriber base in France,” Deezer CEO Alexis Lanternier mentioned in a word to traders.
“As beforehand introduced, we’re absolutely targeted on executing our new strategic path, introducing daring and modern music experiences designed to create lengthy lasting worth for followers, artists and our companions,” Lanternier continued.
“New options are already reside, with intuitive personalization and common sharing, setting the tone for what we proceed to construct — a subsequent stage music expertise primarily based on the expectations of music followers of immediately and tomorrow. With confidence, we affirm our 2025 steerage and our goal of reaching profitability this yr.”
“We’re absolutely targeted on executing our new strategic path, introducing daring and modern music experiences designed to create lengthy lasting worth for followers, artists and our companions.”
Alexis Lanternier, Deezer
Whereas its progress has lagged that of rivals like Spotify and Apple Music, Deezer has developed a popularity for innovation within the music streaming area. In partnership with Common Music Group, it launched the business’s first artist-centric remuneration mannequin in 2023, increasing it by means of offers with Warner Music Group, Merlin, and Sacem.
It has additionally been on the forefront of the combat in opposition to streaming fraud and junk music recordsdata, significantly the AI-generated sort.
Earlier this month, the corporate reported that it’s detecting some 20,000 AI-generated music tracks being uploaded to its platform day by day, amounting to 18% of all of the tracks uploaded. In January, Deezer filed two patent purposes on applied sciences designed to detect AI-generated music.
In March 2024, the streaming service mentioned it had deleted 26 million “ineffective” tracks, content material that then-CEO Jeronimo Folgueira described as “noise, mono-track albums [albums made of copies of a single track], pretend artists and tracks that haven’t been listened to prior to now 12 months.”Music Enterprise Worldwide
