Deezer has quietly stopped accepting new signups for its £4.99-a-month Premium subscription tier, which covered web-only streaming. The service now offers a choice of Free or Premium+ – the latter being the full web and mobile subscription option. “Until recently Deezer offered a Premium service – ad free listening on the Web app. We no longer offer this as our listeners needs have changed… We feel the demand for a Web-only premium service is no longer required,” a spokesperson told TheNextWeb yesterday, while confirming that people already on the £4.99 plan won’t be forced to change. The move matches rivals like Spotify, which has already axed its own £4.99 web-only ‘Unlimited’ plan for new signups. But it’s interesting: at a time when a growing number of people within the music industry are talking about the need for new kinds of subscription music service plugging the gap between free and £9.99 a month, the big services are removing their options priced exactly between the two. It’s not that mid-tier isn’t an important area for innovation: just that web-only access to the big services isn’t it.
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