Recently we were pondering just how far exclusives with DSPs will go. It’s not quite back to the days of full albums, but the cases of both Coldplay and Justin Bieber with Apple Music in the past few weeks suggests there is a testing of the boundaries happening. So what about exclusive mixes? That’s what Deezer is now doing, with Oliver Heldens, Danny Howard, Above & Beyond and Fred V among the acts already signed up to deliver bespoke and exclusive mixes to the service.
Deezer is positioning this as an artist-centric move. “What makes these different is that we’ve made sure all artists involved receive their fair share of revenues,” it said in a statement. “This continues our commitment to make streaming fair.”
Deezer was already piloting this in late December, with Michael Mayer, Modeselektor, Mark Knight, Wil Saul, Sultan + Shepard and Makoto among the DJs taking part. Back then, however, the word “exclusive” was not being used. This time, the “E” word is most assuredly being used. “The sets are all exclusive to Deezer,” it says.
Each mix is an hour long and there is a concurrent playlist featuring all the individual tracks in the order as they appear in the mix. None of the tracks themselves are exclusive to Deezer, but each mix is. That said, it is really services like Mixcloud or SoundCloud that this could be seen as being in competition with rather than Apple Music or Spotify.
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