Zen by Deezer: The new Deezer service exploits the wealth of flexible resources offered by Google Cloud
About Zen by Deezer
Deezer is one of the leading independent music streaming services in the world, offering a catalog of over 90 million tracks, available in 180 countries. Founded in Paris in 2007, Deezer is now a global company with a team of over 600 people. "Zen by Deezer" by Deezer is a new service that offers over 2,000 well-being programs and exercises.
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Contact usDeezer relied on the wealth of flexible and easy-to-use resources offered by Google Cloud's services to accelerate development and facilitate the work of its teams, so they were able to rapidly release a new, innovative application targeted at the well-being market.
Google Cloud results
- Standardized deployments facilitated by the integration of Terraform
- Implementation accelerated by managed services
- Boosted the team's responsiveness to change
- Encouraged developer autonomy
Zen by Deezer is the first holistic application dedicated to wellbeing
Founded in 2007, the French startup Deezer has gradually become one of the first French "unicorns," as well as the second-largest independent music streaming platform in the world. With over 90 million HiFi tracks available, the company now has over 9 million subscribers. In order to ensure its growth and offer new experiences to its users, it decided to tackle new markets. "Zen by Deezer," an application dedicated to physical and mental wellbeing, was born out of this desire to diversify. Created with the help of over 50 renowned experts (sports coaches, psychologists, naturopaths, dieticians, etc.), this new service offers over 2,000 well-being programs and exercises, as well as immersive audio and musical experiences to aid sleep and relaxation. It was entirely designed using Google Cloud's services.
Cloud Run making the most out of the cloud's flexibility
"With Zen by Deezer, our aim is to bring more peace of mind to the daily lives of millions of people," explains Arnaud Duranton, VP Innovation and New Business at Deezer. "Needs related to both mental and physical health have continued to increase in recent years. Wellbeing is a priority for all, and the digitization of uses is underway. Zen by Deezer is a service we offer via direct distribution to users, but also through partnerships to support brands and companies in the well-being market. With Zen by Deezer, our partners can provide a wellbeing solution that responds to their clients' and employees' needs and expectations, as well as to the challenges of acquiring and retaining new clients, encouraging commitment to their brand, and retaining talent within the business."
"Our ambition is to develop new services in order to diversify the company's activity. Well-being is now a priority for everyone. Zen by Deezer is a service that we offer through direct distribution and through partnerships, brands and companies, to help them provide a concrete response to their customers and employees needs."
—Arnaud Duranton, VP Innovation and New Business at DeezerDeezer decided to rely on Google Cloud's infrastructure and managed services to develop this new offering. The company already uses Google Cloud to host part of its IT system. However, as highlighted by Alexandre Gravel-Raymond, Head of Engineering at the company, "Zen by Deezer is our first real native application designed to exploit the flexibility offered by the cloud in its entirety. Each component of the application is more modular, with a standardized approach to managing the infrastructure via software."
In practice, the application was developed using container technology. It's executed by Cloud Run, a managed service that allows the execution of serverless containerized processing, an implementation optimized by Google Cloud. Ideal for guaranteeing a reliable and high-performance user experience, Cloud Run also simplifies the scalability and, more generally, the development of the application. This is a particularly important point for Deezer, as the company also has the flexibility needed to support the success of its new service in terms of adding new well-being programs and increasing the number of users.
Managed services for increased speed and autonomy
As a dynamic company, Deezer never stops innovating. When the idea of designing this new service was born, Deezer sought to establish a team capable of quickly adapting to change. "In the first few months, the design changed a lot in response to user testing, progressively leading to the development of the service," explains Alexandre Gravel-Raymond. "The team had to be able to keep up with the pace by making good technological choices and quickly applying all the modifications to the architecture and infrastructure. Thanks to Google Cloud, our responsiveness wasn't hindered by these contingencies."
"With managed services, we don't need specialist knowledge about the inner workings of each infrastructure component to be able to use it. This meant that we didn't need to call on external skills; the team was not only autonomous, but also very responsive."
—Alexandre Gravel-Raymond, Head of Engineering at DeezerZen by Deezer is a complex application which uses features, such as storage, databases, video and audio transcoding, performance optimization, and fast and reliable content distribution, to name just a few. Google Cloud services, including Cloud SQL, Cloud Storage, Cloud Run, Cloud CDN, and Memorystore, boosted the acceleration of developments and deployments, allowing the team to concentrate on business value by investing less time and energy in configuration and maintenance. They also limited the need for specialized technical skills within the team, while allowing them to exploit the best possible technology to design an innovative and high-performance application.
"My team is made up of developers, not system administrators," emphasizes Alexandre Gravel-Raymond. "With managed services, we don't need specialist knowledge about the inner workings of each infrastructure component to be able to use it. This meant that we didn't need to call on external skills to implement Zen by Deezer; the team was not only autonomous, but also very responsive thanks to the wealth of easy-to-use resources offered by Google Cloud."
A trusted partner who is there through every stage of development
The agile team's deployment speed was further increased by the integration of Terraform with Google Cloud. "At Deezer, we use the Infrastructure as Code approach. In other words, the developers manage the entire cycle, from design to deployment, with scripts that allow the management of the infrastructure to be standardized and automated. This results in huge time savings, and the deployments are more secure," states Alexandre Gravel-Raymond. "In particular, we benefited from excellent support from Google Cloud, which allowed the team to quickly grow in expertise, as well as take advantage of the advanced nuances that the services offered in their entirety."
"With Zen by Deezer, we want to become the top well-being destination on the market. In that respect, Google Cloud offers a competitive advantage, as it gives us the flexibility and implementation speed that we need to continue to innovate."
—Arnaud Duranton, VP Innovation and New Business at DeezerReady for launch, Deezer released its new service on June 1, 2023.
"Our goal is for Zen by Deezer to become the number one well-being destination, with the most complete catalog on the market, offering a holistic and personalized journey. In that respect, Google Cloud offers a competitive advantage, as it gives us the flexibility and implementation speed that we need to continue to innovate," concludes Arnaud Duranton.
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About Zen by Deezer
Deezer is one of the leading independent music streaming services in the world, offering a catalog of over 90 million tracks, available in 180 countries. Founded in Paris in 2007, Deezer is now a global company with a team of over 600 people. "Zen by Deezer" by Deezer is a new service that offers over 2,000 well-being programs and exercises.