Mixed fortunes for Deezer this week, as it revealed new investment from German media group ProSiebenSat.1 – and a merger with its Ampya streaming service – but also had to reassure users that a pair of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks over the weekend hadn’t compromised their data.
First, the deal: ProSiebenSat.1 is acquiring an undisclosed stake in Deezer, blending Ampya – which launched in June 2013 – into the service.
One of Ampya’s standout features was its inclusion of music videos, and that will continue within Deezer under the sub-brand of MyVideo. Deezer will also take over Ampya’s deal with Vodafone in Germany, and has hired its managing director Michael Krause as its MD for German-speaking countries.
“Deezer’s many years of expertise combined with the marketing power of our TV group provide the best prerequisites for reaching the number one position in Germany,” suggested ProSiebenSat.1 board member Christian Wegner.
A big deal for Germany, then, which after a slow start – and loud complaints about the licensing policies of local collecting society GEMA – has become one of the most competitive markets for streaming. Ampya, Google Play Music All Access and Vevo all launched there in 2013, a year when recorded music industry income rose 1%.
The weekend’s hack attack was less positive news for Deezer: the company said yesterday that it had faced two DDoS attacks on Friday and Saturday, with the second one taking Deezer offline.
“The first small attack was detected on Friday morning, but it did not impact the service,” explained Deezer in an email to users. “On Saturday 7th June, at 4pm GMT a large scale attack via a botnet (a group of compromised computers controlled by the attacker) resulted in a downtime of several hours.”
The company says that user information was not compromised, but it’s a reminder that big streaming services are targets for these attacks.
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