Music Streaming Platform Deezer Connects Remote Teams Using Zoom

Streaming service Deezer has become one of the largest music platforms with 14 million active users across 180 countries. Founded in 2007, Deezer provides users access to their favorite music and podcasts, and with features like Flow, Hear This, and Deezer’s live radio service supporting over 30,000 channels and over 56 million licensed tracks, there is always something for listeners to enjoy, online and offline.

While many companies have struggled to implement an effective work-from-home model during the COVID-19 pandemic, Deezer found that its investment in Zoom allowed the company and its workers to maintain operations and growth during a challenging time.

The interoperability challenge

With offices around the world, the teams at Deezer needed an effective means of collaborating and communicating digitally. The legacy video conferencing solution Deezer used, however, was short on functionality and heavy on management.

“Our previous solution was a little hard to manage,” said Nicolas Le Corno, Corporate Tools Administrator for Deezer. “Many of the people in the company are using Linux, and our legacy solution wasn’t available on Linux platforms, so we needed to find a solution that could work for them.”

Deezer’s legacy video conferencing solution also couldn’t easily interoperate with other video conferencing solutions, which caused delays in meetings with those using other services.

“With our previous video conferencing software, it was really difficult to bridge with other solutions,” said Frederic De Ascencao, Deezer’s Head of IT. “If you had a different solution on the other side like Skype or Polycom or another video conferencing solution, it was really hard to connect with them.”

Benefits of a consolidated platform

The teams at Deezer shortlisted Zoom and a few other solutions in their search for a more effective platform, and Zoom ultimately won out because of its flexibility and interoperability, among other things.

“The fact that Zoom works on multiple devices was really important to our decision,” de Ascencao said. “It’s also much easier to bridge Zoom with other video conferencing solutions, so we can easily connect with external organizations.”

Migrating to Zoom also consolidated Deezer’s management of its workplace solutions by providing its teams with a tool that could serve the business in numerous ways.

“Before we started using Zoom, we used a different solution for each use case, whether it was recording meetings or hosting webinars or hosting meetings,” de Ascencao said. “But now we can get all that functionality in one solution, so it’s easier for us to manage and it’s easier for the end users.”

Le Corno also mentioned one of his favorite features within the Zoom platform.

“Slack is one of my favorite integrations with Zoom,” he said. “It takes just a second to start a meeting with the ‘/zoom’ command. It’s really easy. And when you have Slack and Zoom, you are fully efficient at Deezer.”

Deezer is also using Zoom to maintain operations and the momentum of its growth during the COVID-19 pandemic. The teams at Deezer use Zoom’s extensive feature set to seamlessly collaborate with each other while working remotely.

“Every month, we host a company-wide town hall over Zoom Webinars,” Le Corno said. “Our CEO shares updates and news with the company and also hosts a Q&A so everyone can ask their questions. It’s been very useful for communicating with the entire company.”

“I’ve also been using Zoom to host a daily meeting with my team,” de Ascencao added. “It’s a 30-minute meeting. We use Trello for visual task management and screen-share those boards so people can stay up-to-date on what everyone else is doing.”

Essential platform for connecting teams

Zoom helps Deezer maintain the tight-knit communication and collaboration that’s been critical to the streaming platform’s success. As Deezer grows and expands its services, Zoom will continue to play a vital role in helping its employees coordinate their efforts and maintain productivity, no matter where they are working.

“We are using Zoom every day. Zoom is a central communication tool in the company,” Ascencao said. “We are really fortunate to have Zoom to help us work efficiently from home.”

Check out Deezer’s work-from-home playlist