Streaming music service Deezer buys Stitch and branches out into talk radio

The world of streaming music is dominated by just a few names. Deezer is a relatively new entrant to the US market, and it is now stretching its wings by purchasing Stitcher, the radio and podcasting service. Deezer currently has roughly 16 million users scattered across 180 countries, and this represents great growth potential for Stitcher.

The seven-year-old internet radio service carries content from 40 countries, giving it a catalog of more than 35,000 shows. Diversifying in this way could be Deezer's ticket to success in a somewhat crowded market, where a unique selling point is needed to stand out from the likes of Spotify.

Stitcher says that it is business as usual, but under Deezer, there is great scope for scaling up operations. Adding talk radio to an already vast music collection is seen as the catalyst to take the service to the next level:

We will continue to keep doing what we do best under the Deezer umbrella, and eventually provide even better listening experiences across the globe, combining music and talk. We’re extremely excited about this new adventure, and hope you are too.

In the blog entry announcing the purchase, the Stitcher team says that "we believe we’re just at the dawn of a Golden Age of on-demand spoken audio".

At the moment, there are no details about the amount of money that has changed hands, nor any information about when users will start to see changes to the service.