Our music collection had been getting a bit dusty as we let it slip into disrepair, but we're back showing it some love again with Deezer
Recently, we've found ourselves neglecting our music collection. We used to spend hours sorting our CDs, burning them on to our computer or recording them onto mini discs, surfing MySpace for new bands that we didn't know and listening to a few tracks trying to decide if we liked them or not. All of this required time and effort, and instilled a passion in us.
Over time, that passion has slightly waned. Of course, that could be because we've gotten old, and uncool, and what the kids listen to nowadays scares us. Or perhaps our we have less time to dedicate to what was once our obsession.
Thanks to Deezer though, we've been looking back on bands we used to love and catching up with their newest albums, as well as discovering some new music to keep us entertained, and that passion is coming back. We have the app in the palm of our hands, or we can listen on our tablet or in work on our computer, and pretty much anywhere we want to.
Music streaming makes it much easier to get our hands on music we know, music we already love, and stuff wen want to learn more about, dipping our toe into the album and getting a feel for it before we decide on it. While it might cost us a few quid to do this, we've got a clear conscience since it's all legal and above board.
Deezer also has a great social aspect. You can give it access to your Twitter to let people know what you're listening to, and the lads at Soundwave have assured us that it won't be long before the two apps are working together to let people on there know what tunes you've had on your headphones recently. That also helps you discover great new music too, and can get you interacting with fans of the bands across social networks. Of course, there's also the Facebook connection which you can use too.
When it comes to music, there's a massive selection on Deezer that's being added to all the time. We found it difficult to come across an artist where they had absolutely nothing (pretty much impossible, in fact), and even when it comes to notoriously difficult artists like Led Zeppelin and The Beatles, there were some 'Best Of' albums or live performances to choose from, although there
Gym playlists also become really handy and easy to put together by just favouriting a few tracks, and they will all appear in the same playlist for your listening pleasure when you're on the treadmill or pumping some iron. One of our pet peeves with the Samsung S3 has been its inexplicable desire to completely erase everything off our playlist at completely random times, but having a backup of a load of different tracks on Deezer means we weren't stuck for a workout soundtrack.
When it comes to plans, the Premium + plan (€9.99 a month) allows you access to your music offline, which is a pretty great feature for the days when you have no internet access or you're out of credit and haven't bought any yet and it's right before payday. This plan gives you Deezer picks, exclusive content (competitions, previews of albums before they're out etc.) as well as no ads and unlimited streaming across platforms, and we think it's worth the extra few quid. Plus you get the great mixing desk feature, which allows you to try your hand at DJing. We're obviously brilliant at that. The Premium plan is just €4.99 too if that suits your budget better, or you can sign up for the Discovery plan.
If we had one slight criticism, it's that there can sometimes be a bit of a lag, which leads to the track skipping a beat within the opening 20 seconds or so. It's not a huge deal, but it's a little niggle that did irk us slightly. That said, we've become pretty much dependent on it for all our music by this stage, and while we still buy CDs and albums that we really love, this is a great way to have access to loads of music whenever you want it.
Plus, Deezer started out in France, which gives it that certain
je ne sais quoi, don't you think?
