Deezer reported third-quarter revenue of €133.8 million on October 27, 2026, up 1.8% from €131.4 million a year earlier, and raised its outlook for the full year on the strength of subscribers who pay it directly. The Paris-listed music streaming service now expects 2026 revenue to grow slightly compared with 2025, where it had previously expected broadly stable revenue. It also put a number on its profitability for the first time this year: adjusted EBITDA is now expected to exceed €10 million, against a previous expectation that it would simply be positive.

The growth came from one place. Direct revenue, earned from subscribers who sign up with Deezer itself, rose 7.0% to €94.1 million. Revenue from distribution partnerships fell 6.2% and the line that holds advertising fell 19.5%, according to the company. It was the second consecutive quarter of revenue growth, according to Deezer, following a 2025 in which annual revenue fell 1.4%.

In Short

Deezer, the French music streaming app, made slightly more money between July and September than a year earlier, because more people paid it directly while deals that bundled Deezer with other companies' products kept shrinking. The company now expects to end 2026 with a little more revenue than in 2025 and with adjusted EBITDA, a measure of operating profit, above €10 million. Advertising remains a small part of the business, and the line that contains it brought in €6.4 million in the quarter, down by about a fifth.

Three revenue lines moving in different directions

Deezer reports revenue in three segments, and in the third quarter each moved differently.

Direct revenue amounted to €94.1 million, compared with €87.9 million in the third quarter of 2025. That is growth of 7.0% on a reported basis and 6.4% at constant currency, which strips out exchange-rate movements. According to Deezer, the increase reflected "a larger average subscriber base, driven by the success of Family offers in France and strong subscriber acquisition earlier in the year, together with recent improvements in retention, in RoW." RoW is Deezer's abbreviation for Rest of World, meaning every market outside France.

Partnerships revenue, which comes from subscriptions distributed through other companies, amounted to €33.4 million against €35.6 million a year earlier. That is a decline of 6.2%, or 7.5% at constant currency. Deezer attributed it to "the expected run-off of legacy distribution partnerships." Average revenue per user in the segment rose 16.7% to €3.7, "driven by a more favourable mix of offers," according to the company.

Other revenue, which Deezer defines as advertising and ancillary revenue, fell to €6.4 million from €7.9 million. That is down 19.5%, or 20.6% at constant currency. The company said the drop was "primarily due to the termination of a content licensing agreement in Q4 2025."

In euro terms, the arithmetic is straightforward. Direct added €6.2 million year over year, Partnerships lost €2.2 million and Other lost €1.5 million, leaving a net gain of €2.4 million, according to PPC Land's calculation from Deezer's figures. Direct now accounts for 70.3% of quarterly revenue, up from 66.9% a year earlier. Partnerships account for 25.0% and Other for 4.8%.

Currency helped. Group revenue rose 1.8% on a reported basis but only 1.0% at constant currency, so exchange rates contributed roughly 0.8 percentage points of the headline figure. The release does not say which currencies drove the difference.

Over nine months, consolidated revenue reached €402.0 million against €398.5 million in the same period of 2025, an increase of 0.9%, or 0.6% at constant currency. Direct grew 6.8% over the same period (6.7% at constant currency), "on the back of sustained momentum in France and RoW which more than offset the anticipated decline in Partnerships and Other revenue," according to the release.

The "second consecutive quarter" framing deserves a footnote. Deezer's half-year results, published on July 28, 2026, reported first-half revenue of €268.2 million, up 0.4% at both current and constant currency, but did not give a separate figure for the second quarter. The third-quarter announcement now describes the second quarter as the first of two growth quarters.

What the raised outlook actually requires

The new guidance is best read against what Deezer has already reported.

For the full year 2025, Deezer posted revenue of €534.0 million, down 1.4% from €541.7 million in 2024, according to its annual results published on March 18, 2026. Adjusted EBITDA was €9.7 million, against a loss of €4.0 million in 2024. Free cash flow was €10.1 million, and net income of €8.5 million was the company's first annual profit. In March, Deezer said it expected 2026 revenue in line with 2025, along with continued positive adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow. It held that stance in July, when it described revenue as stable and said it would increase selective investments in the second half.

The revenue bar

With €402.0 million booked after nine months, Deezer needs €132.0 million in the fourth quarter to match 2025. The fourth quarter of 2025 produced €135.5 million, the difference between the 2025 annual total and the nine-month figure. Both of those numbers are PPC Land's calculation from Deezer's published results. Fourth-quarter revenue could therefore fall by about 2.6% year over year and the full year would still equal 2025.

Deezer's guidance goes further than that. It says the upgrade builds "on its nine-month performance and expected continued revenue growth in Q4." If the fourth quarter grew at the same 1.8% reported rate as the third, full-year revenue would come to about €539.9 million, roughly 1.1% above 2025, according to PPC Land's calculation. "Grow slightly" is an accurate description of that range.

The profitability floor

The adjusted EBITDA target is more revealing. Deezer reported adjusted EBITDA of €8.5 million for the first half of 2026, up from €2.1 million a year earlier, a margin of 3.2%. A full-year figure above €10 million therefore requires at least €1.5 million in the second half. In the second half of 2025, Deezer generated €7.6 million of adjusted EBITDA (€9.7 million for the year minus €2.1 million in the first half). Both of those second-half numbers are PPC Land's calculation.

The upgraded guidance is therefore a floor, not a point forecast, and it sits only just above the €9.7 million reported for 2025. It leaves room for the "selective investments" the company says it will continue to make. Deezer did not publish adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter, because the October update covers revenue only. The release notes that adjusted EBITDA is a non-IFRS measure, which means it is calculated by the company rather than defined by international accounting standards.

Alexis Lanternier, Deezer's chief executive, framed the change as a matter of confidence. "Our continued operational progress and disciplined execution give us the confidence to raise our full-year revenue outlook and strengthen our profitability outlook, with adjusted EBITDA now expected to exceed €10 million in 2026," he said. "We continue to invest selectively in future growth and remain on track to generate positive free cash flow for the third consecutive year."

Cash

Deezer defines free cash flow as adjusted EBITDA minus the change in working capital, capital expenditure, leases and net interest. It reported €6.6 million of free cash flow in 2024 and €10.1 million in 2025. The first half of 2026 alone produced €37.4 million, against €1.0 million a year earlier, which Deezer attributed in part to a significant one-off advance payment received under a partnership agreement. The company did not name the partner. A third consecutive positive year looks less demanding after that first-half figure. Because an advance payment is cash received before the corresponding service is delivered, it lifts free cash flow in the period it arrives rather than spreading evenly across the contract.

Subscribers: direct up, bundles running off

Deezer's third-quarter release gives growth rates for its Direct subscriber base but not absolute numbers. Direct subscribers grew 6.5% in France, "supported by Family offers," and 4.0% in the Rest of World, "supported by improved retention despite a strong prior-year comparison base."

Both rates are slower than earlier in the year. At the end of June, Deezer reported Direct subscribers up 8.4% in France to 3.9 million and up 9.2% in the Rest of World to 1.9 million, for a Direct total of 5.8 million. A year earlier, in the third quarter of 2025, French Direct subscribers had been growing 11.7% on a like-for-like basis. Rest of World growth was 6.1% at that point. Subscription businesses grow either by adding customers or by losing fewer of them, and Deezer credits lower churn, in the form of improved retention, for part of its growth outside France.

The Partnerships base is moving the other way. It stood at 2.9 million at the end of September, down 17.1% year over year. It had been 3.5 million in the third quarter of 2025, when Deezer attributed much of the decline to the lingering effect of a change in its arrangement with Mercado Libre, and 3.1 million at the end of June 2026. Because average revenue per Partnerships user rose from €3.2 a year earlier to €3.7, the segment's revenue fell far less steeply than its subscriber count. That pattern, fewer users paying more on average, is consistent with low-priced legacy bundles dropping out of the mix.

Deezer did not state a total subscriber figure for the quarter. Music Business Worldwide reported a total of 8.7 million at the end of September, down 3.2% from 9.0 million, which matches the sum of 5.8 million Direct and 2.9 million Partnerships subscribers. In 2022, when Deezer prepared to list in Paris through a merger with the SPAC I2PO, it reported 9.6 million subscribers and set a target of €1 billion in revenue by 2025. Revenue in 2025 came to €534.0 million.

The company has also become smaller. Deezer describes a team of 530 people across France, Germany, the UK, Brazil and the US. When it made Azerion its exclusive audio and video advertising partner in Brazil in 2025, it had about 550 employees. At the time of its direct integration with Hawk DSP in October 2024, it described a workforce of more than 600.

Advertising: a small line, and shrinking

For advertisers, the most relevant figure in the release is also the smallest. Other revenue, which combines advertising with ancillary income, fell to €6.4 million and made up less than 5% of the quarter's revenue. Deezer does not split advertising from the ancillary items, so the size of its ad business on its own cannot be read from the release. Over the first half of 2026, the same line fell 27.5% to €12.3 million, according to Deezer's half-year results.

Part of the decline is an accounting comparison rather than a collapse in ad demand. A year earlier, Other revenue had grown 17.4% to €7.9 million, and the content licensing agreement that ended in the fourth quarter of 2025 had been part of that base. Without a split between advertising and licensing, it is not possible to tell from Deezer's figures whether advertising itself grew or shrank.

Deezer has spent the past two years trying to make its inventory easier to buy. In October 2024, it described itself as the first music platform to connect its own ad exchange directly to a demand-side platform, through the integration with Hawk DSP, which opened its audio and video inventory to buyers, including programmatic guaranteed deals. In 2025, it granted Azerion exclusive audio and video ad monetisation in Brazil, running through Hawk. Its freemium tier has carried audio ads since well before then, including on smart speakers, after Deezer Free arrived on Google Home with ads in 2021.

The scale gap with the market leader is large. Spotify reported ad-supported revenue of €482 million for the third quarter of 2026, a quarter in which its direct ad sales fell €53 million. That is about 75 times Deezer's entire Other line, and Spotify's total quarterly revenue of €4,969 million is about 37 times Deezer's, according to PPC Land's calculation. Deezer's third-quarter release does not mention advertising products, ad-supported users or monthly active users at all.

AI detection moves from policy to product

The non-financial part of the announcement centres on artificial intelligence. Deezer said it has detected and excluded more than 42 million AI-generated tracks from recommendations since January 2025, and has tagged more than 14 million albums. A new feature, expected before the end of 2026, will let users exclude AI-generated music from search results. Deezer already keeps fully AI-generated tracks out of algorithmic recommendations and editorial playlists, so the toggle extends user control to search.

The volumes have risen quickly. Deezer received about 10,000 fully AI-generated tracks a day in January 2025 and more than 30,000 a day, or 28% of daily deliveries, by September 2025. By June 2026 it was receiving nearly 75,000 a day, more than 44% of all daily deliveries, when it made its AI music detector free across 20 streaming platforms. At that point Deezer said fully AI-generated music accounted for between 1% and 3% of actual streams, and that up to 85% of streams on those tracks in 2025 were manipulated. Its earlier disclosures counted 13.4 million AI tracks tagged during 2025. The October figure counts albums rather than tracks, so the two numbers cannot be compared directly.

Deezer's detection tool was named to TIME's list of the Best Inventions of 2026 and received Billboard France's Innovation Award, according to the release. Lanternier was also recognised by Billboard as one of the most influential figures in the French music industry. "We are convinced that sharing our distinctive capabilities - including our AI detection technology, recently recognised by Billboard and TIME - will help build a fairer and more diverse music ecosystem," he said.

The major services have each settled on different rules. Apple's Transparency Tags for Apple Music, set out in March 2026, are optional and supplied by labels, with no cross-check in the published specification. Spotify said in August that it would exclude profiles carrying an AI Persona badge from editorial and algorithmic recommendations by default from mid-September. YouTube Music began labelling songs made primarily with generative AI on October 14, 2026, without publishing an accuracy rate. Deezer's approach rests on its own detection rather than on declarations by uploaders, which are the starting point for Apple and, in part, for Spotify.

The legal backdrop is shifting at the same time. A Munich court ruled against Suno in GEMA's copyright case in July 2026. On October 21, Reservoir Media sued Suno for up to $157.5 million over 1,050 songs, with a complaint alleging that Suno scraped songs and lyrics from YouTube Music, Deezer and Genius.

Deezer for Business: SACEM Play and Winamp

Deezer is increasingly selling its technology to other companies under the Deezer for Business banner. The most concrete example in the release is SACEM Play, a professional music service offered under the brand of SACEM, the French authors' society, and powered by Deezer's technology. It is designed for independent businesses that want to play music on their premises, and its gradual launch is planned by early 2027. The arrangement is, in effect, a white-label product: SACEM's name on the front, Deezer's system underneath. It builds on an existing relationship. Deezer licensed its AI detection technology to SACEM in January 2026.

The second partner named is Winamp. "Through Deezer for Business, we are putting our technology to work for partners such as SACEM, Europe's largest authors' society, and Winamp, whose desktop player is still actively used by more than 40 million users worldwide," Lanternier said. The release does not describe what Winamp is building with Deezer's technology, and gives no financial terms for either partnership. Nor does it say how much revenue Deezer for Business generates, or in which segment that revenue is reported.

According to Deezer, the business-to-business arm already works with partners in telecommunications, media, audio hardware and retail.

Deezer Club reaches Brazil

Deezer Club, a membership programme for premium subscribers that launched in France in 2024, went live in Brazil in August 2026. It offers access to concert tickets, VIP access, album listening sessions, exclusive events, merchandise and remix contests, according to the company. A recent Club offer to see Celine Dion in Paris generated interest from nearly 100,000 people, Deezer said, though it did not say how many places were available.

Brazil has long been one of Deezer's largest markets outside France. The company counted 2.7 million subscribers there at the end of 2021, and in 2025 chose Azerion as its exclusive advertising partner in the country. Lanternier tied the quarter's initiatives to keeping subscribers: "We are focused on building lasting connections between artists and fans, giving listeners more reasons to choose Deezer and stay with us."

Why this matters for the marketing community

Three points stand out for advertisers, agencies and publishers.

First, Deezer is a subscription business that has returned to profit on the back of subscriptions rather than advertising. Revenue growth now depends almost entirely on Direct subscribers, and the line that holds advertising is shrinking as a share of revenue. For audio buyers who reach Deezer listeners through Hawk DSP or Azerion, the ad business sits inside a line that fell to less than 5% of revenue. Deezer published no audience or ad metrics with these results, so buyers have little public data to work from. Elsewhere in audio, profit guidance is also rising: Audioboom lifted its 2026 adjusted EBITDA forecast to at least $7.7 million on October 14, but on the back of podcast advertising rather than subscriptions.

Second, the treatment of AI-generated content is becoming a product feature that platforms compete on, with real differences between services. For advertisers already wary of AI slop on video and the open web, music streaming now has four distinct regimes. Deezer detects and excludes, Spotify demotes badged personas, YouTube labels, and Apple relies on what labels choose to declare. Deezer's release does not say whether its AI filters affect where ads run.

Third, Deezer's ambitions for growth lie partly outside its consumer app. Licensing its AI detector, powering SACEM Play and working with Winamp turn the company's technology into a product sold to other brands. Whether that becomes a meaningful revenue stream cannot yet be judged, because the release gives no figures for it.

Is a 1.8% quarter, flattered by currency, a turnaround? Deezer's own numbers suggest a narrower reading. The subscription business is growing at a single-digit rate, the legacy partnerships are still shrinking, and the profitability target sits barely above last year's result. Investors will get full-year figures on March 17, 2027, when Deezer publishes its 2026 results after the market close.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Deezer, the Paris-based music streaming service listed on Euronext Paris, and its chief executive Alexis Lanternier, along with partners SACEM and Winamp.

What: Third-quarter 2026 revenue rose 1.8% to €133.8 million (1.0% at constant currency), driven by a 7.0% rise in Direct revenue to €94.1 million. Partnerships revenue fell 6.2% as the partner subscriber base dropped 17.1% to 2.9 million, and advertising and ancillary revenue fell 19.5% to €6.4 million. Deezer raised its 2026 outlook to slight revenue growth and adjusted EBITDA above €10 million, and said it expects positive free cash flow for a third year. It also announced an AI toggle for search, SACEM Play and the expansion of Deezer Club to Brazil.

When: The results were published on October 27, 2026, at 17:45 CET, for the quarter ended September 30, 2026. Full-year results are scheduled for March 17, 2027.

Where: Paris, with subscriber growth reported in France and the Rest of World, Deezer Club live in Brazil, and the company available in 180 countries.

Why: Direct subscriptions, supported by Family offers in France and better retention elsewhere, now outweigh the decline in legacy distribution partnerships and the end of a content licensing deal. With €8.5 million of adjusted EBITDA already earned in the first half, the new €10 million floor requires little from the second half, and the advertising line that matters most to marketers continues to shrink as a share of the business.