Music streaming app Deezer set to launch IPO by the year end

French music streaming app Deezer, which rivals Swedish-based Spotify and Apple Music, has announced its plans to go public at the Paris-based stock exchange Euronext. The company did not divulge the amount it planned to raise from the initial public offering, at the end of the year.

Bloomberg has valued the services of the company at £723m (€1bn, $1.1bn). The largest single shareholder in the company is Access Industries, owned by Len Blavatnik, which has a 36% stake, followed by Orange which has a 15% stake. Founder Daniel Marhley holds an undisclosed stake in the company.

Chief executive officer of the company Hans-Holger Albrecht told journalists, "We are just at the beginning of a strong development that will include expansion in emerging markets."

Deezer founded by Marhely in 2007 is a live music-streaming app that can be availed on a desktop, Android, BlackBerry, iOS, Windows Phone and Symbian. It started its services exclusively in France, but later expanded to Europe, and Latin America.

The US, Asia, Africa and the Middle East were added to its reach in January 2013, when Deezer announced that its coverage panned a total of 182 countries. The app can be accessed with a free ad-supported version online but not offline.

There are two types of paid versions for the app – Premium+ and Elite. While Premuim+ comes for a monthly subscription of £6.4, the Elite version can be availed for £10.8 per month.

The company recently acquired Stitcher, an online radio service for people to listen to news, podcasts and other content. Currently the apps main competition is Spotify which leads the music live-streaming market and has 70 million active users with 20 million who use the paid monthly service. Deezer as of now has only 16 million total subscribers in comparison with 6 million paid subscribers.

In the first half of 2015 Deezer's sales witnessed a 41% jump to £67.2m, led by France, other European markets and Latin America. The company which has had bad quarters in the recent past, fared much better as its losses narrowed to £6.5m from £9.2m a year earlier.