Deezer music streaming service: how is it?

Some time ago I've realised, that my dataplan and costs for a music streaming service started to be reasonable. So why not try it out. Instead of searching "alternative ways"...

So I've started to search what is available here around (Slovakia). Deezer was first here. Spotify with it's demo app p***ed me completely off. Google Music wasn't here. Grooveshark had troubles. Rdio doesn't work here still.

So there wasn't too much to speculate, I've chosen Deezer. How is it?

What does Deezer provide? 

For 6 Euro a month I have unlimited access to their music database. Including mobile app for music while driving, walking or whatever. There is a possibility to create playlists and sync them to your phone or computer.

Then the social stuff, you can make friends, look what they listen to etc.

For me an important thing is curated content - the system learns my taste and recommends music. I've already discovered some new interesting bands and artists. Not too much, but it's a promising start. There are also editors, living persons, sharing albums and playlists in a kind of feed. And the "Similar artist" feature is great. All three recommendation types are added value for me.

There are a couple of other functions, "charts" and "explore" which are too commercial for me. The "radio stations" are imho useless, there are tons of online radio systems, which are much better.

The music database, what to expect: 

The database is huge, they claim about 30 million tracks, not only pop, but also classic music.

However, this is a commercial services, oriented on sales, so there is a tendence not to care about minority music. So if you search for deep underground or experimental things, or very recent smaller releases, this is hard to find here. I was a bit sad not to find a couple of my crucial albums as well.

But in general, there is a lot of music to discover. Much more positives than negatives.

The mobile app for driving (Android): 

It's pretty basic, nothing special, but it does what it should. For driving it might be safer not to use the rather smaller buttons which you can see on my screenshots and jump a one step deeper. A small UX fix would do this. But otherwise it does smoothly what is expected.

If I would be Deezer, I would immediately license or acquire PowerAmp, which is by far the best Android based mobile mp3 player and use some of it's features. Also I would expect release years at album lists. There is space for that.

It works fine with my in-car Bluetooth streaming feature. It streams tags (artist, album, track) to the cars display and it is possible to jump with steering wheel controls between the tracks. Unfortunately not with my Saab (2007), which does not support this (it plays via AUX), but every modern bluetooth stream system should work fine.

I use Android, the latest version on HTC One. There are versions for iOS (iPhone, iPod Touch), Windows Phone 8 as well as Blackberry.

Conclusion: 

One and half year ago, to have this in my car was a wet dream. Now it's here and it works fine. Despite a small "things" here and there, I love it. It's definitely a try worth.