Two non-U.S. music services make gains

Bloom.fm, a British subscription music service that launched almost exactly a year ago, reached 500,000 registered users. Bloom operates a freemium model with a no-charge service supported by three subscription levels, the least expensive of which costs one British pound per month. Users pay more for additional “borrowing” (downloading for offline listening) privileges, up to 10 pounds a month.

Bloom.fm houses a music library of 22-million tracks. It is a mobile-only service for now, with apps for Apple and Android devices, and a web app on the way according to the site FAQ. Bloom apps live up to the service name with music genres represented as flower petals.

Meanwhile, Paris-based service Deezer announced today having acquired five-million paying subscribers. Deezer’s music library has grown to 30-million tracks. Deezer is not available in the U.S. but competes with Spotify in Europe.

TechCrunch notes that Deezer was at the two-million subscriber level a year ago, so has more than doubled is paid usage. Spotify disclosed six-million paying subscribers in March of this year. Alongside the subscriber growth announcement, Deezer is releasing an app upgrade that includes a new music discovery feature that bears some similarity to Spotify.