French music-streaming service Deezer SA has filed for an initial public offering to raise funds as it seeks to challenge Spotify and Apple.
The IPO is set to take place toward the end of the year on the Paris exchange, Chief Executive Officer Hans-Holger Albrecht said on a conference call Tuesday. Deezer is seeking funds from investors in a transaction that could value the music service at about 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion), according to unnamed sources quoted by Bloomberg.
Started in 2007, Deezer had 6.3 million subscribers at the end of June, according to the IPO filing. That compares with more than 20 million subscribers for Spotify, the Swedish rival that was said to be valued at $8.5 billion in its most recent financing round. Competition has intensified after Apple introduced its music-streaming offering in June. Deezer also competes with Pandora.
Deezer has teamed up with phone companies to sell its premium subscriptions coupled with mobile-phone packages and, when it did launch in the U.S. about a year ago, it partnered with speaker maker Sonos and later with Bose.