A Deezer user, a Spotify user and an Apple Music user walk into a bar... sounds like the start of a bad joke right? But what if I tell you that they could all actually be listening to the same song on the same platform even without subscribing to it?
Deezer has had a bit of a makeover recently but aside from the new look, I'm most excited about a feature that has to power to bring music fans together for the first time since Live Aid. Its new Shaker feature can make collaborative playlists between users across a variety of the leading music streaming services, including Spotify and Apple Music.
Shaker takes a sample of 70 songs from a group of people across platforms and performs something similar to one of my favourite features Spotify Blend to share some of the favourite songs of each person (and some that you have in common). I tried a pre-release version with a colleague who subscribes to Spotify and another who has Apple Music, and they had differing experiences.
Connecting through Spotify was pretty much seamless, selecting songs on the playlist gave a choice of playback services with the option to either listen through Spotify or Deezer (albeit on the free version). Connecting via Apple Music was a bit more painful and playback was only limited to Deezer (again with limited functionality) but at least all three of us had our songs in the playlist.
I wish it functioned a bit more like the new Spotify Jam feature where you can actually listen to the same song at the same time but the cross-service element is a brilliant idea from Deezer.
The main benefit I see for this is if one person who either has Deezer or Spotify uses one phone via a speaker or car to play out loud to the whole group.
