European music streaming service Deezer recently announced that they are going to expand to Asian territories. They already started their expansion with Thailand last week, but more countries such as Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, and Indonesia are expected to get it in the coming weeks. Their premium service is also available separately for those countries when it comes there, but mobile data use will be free. They are partnered with dTac for the Thailand launch in particular since they are a leading telecommunications operator over there. Similar partnerships to this one at Europe are T-Mobile, Belgacom, and telos Orange. Deezer’s announcement of expansion does put them ahead of rival Spotify, one of the leading music streaming services over here in the United States. Spotify still has expansion plans for Asia sometime soon.

Deezer has iOS, Android, and Blackberry apps along with a browser version that works pretty well on laptops and tablets. 18 million tracks are already in the service with more to come as it expands to Asian countries. There is even an open API for developers to mess around with its features. The countries that Deezer that chose to expand to are quite an interesting bunch because of broadband penetration and high smartphone adoption. Since those countries do indeed have a high mobile presence, it is smart of them to go there first and worry about other countries later since music can be played anywhere with these devices. The piracy issue at Asia might be a concern, but that does not seem to worry Deezer. With the amount of Asian countries under their belt, Deezer is available at 91 countries now with a big presence at Latin America and Africa even though they wanted to be at 200 countries at this time of this year. They have no plans currently of expanding to the U.S. where Spotify and Pandora are the dominating music streaming services, but India would be an ideal place to go next. Deezer’s globalization plans for Asia are definitely off to a good start and hopefully other services can follow suit in the near future.