Redefining the Rhythm: How Deezer Amplified User Engagement with InAppStory

Deezer, is a French online music streaming service, with a presence in more than 180 countries, reflecting a commitment to connecting music fans and artists alike. With over two million subscribers, Deezer's digital company is significant, demonstrating the importance of its mobile app in engaging audiences worldwide. 

The mobile app, serving as a central platform for music streaming and subscription sales, plays a vital role in Deezer's business model. In a highly competitive world of music streaming, maintaining user engagement through the mobile app becomes paramount for sustaining growth and fostering brand loyalty.
 

What Was the Challenge?

Deezer's app already delivered great audio content, but struggled to stand out through high-quality user experiences. Their key obstacles:

• Similarity across streaming services: Music discovery was viewed as interchangeable.
• Static discovery was weak: Playlists and banners weren’t compelling enough.
• Need for personalization: More than recommendation engines, Deezer needed interactive, discovery-driven formats.

To overcome this, they sought formats that drive active engagement — exploring, tapping, and interacting inside the app.

How Did Deezer Use Interactive Stories?

Deezer integrated InAppStory’s SDK to bring interactive storytelling into their mobile experience—without requiring developer support. Using the console, their content and marketing teams created, scheduled, and personalized stories directly in the app.

They applied this strategy across four key use cases:

This multi-format strategy helped Deezer address key challenges: low discovery engagement, underutilized features, and static promotional content. Instead of relying on banners or external push campaigns, Stories enabled native, visual, and emotionally engaging communication—all managed directly by the team. Here are some of the selected examples for implementing the Stories:

1. Music Discovery

Deezer's implementation of Stories has revitalized the way users discover new music. By highlighting thematic collections, editor's picks, artist interviews, and trends through an engaging story format, users can easily explore new playlists. This feature showcases carefully curated content, allowing music enthusiasts to find fresh tunes that align with their tastes, bridging the gap between content discovery and listening experience.

2. Interactive Stories

The introduction of interactive stories has added a new dimension to the Deezer app and made it more engaging but it has also created opportunities for cross-promotion with other projects. 

3. Product Features

Understanding the mobile app's functionalities is crucial for a rewarding user experience. Deezer has addressed this by offering a comprehensive overview of the app's new features through Stories. This in-app guide assists users in navigating the app's latest additions, encouraging deeper engagement, and more frequent use, and ensuring that users can make the most of the ever-evolving platform. This not only educates the users but also promotes feature adoption, playing a pivotal role in user retention.

4. Advent Calendar / Influence Marketing

In an innovative holiday campaign, Deezer launched an advent calendar through Stories, featuring a collaboration with a well-known French artist, Julien Granel. This unique blend of seasonal content and celebrity endorsement created a buzz, adding an engaging touch to holiday promotions. Whether it's unveiling daily surprises in an advent calendar or leveraging influencer marketing, this strategy has proven to amplify brand awareness and foster community engagement during a key sales period.
 

These four story formats helped Deezer solve key engagement challenges inside the app. Instead of relying on static banners or one-time campaigns, the team delivered dynamic, personalized content that users actually explored.

This approach created space for deeper interaction with the brand and laid the groundwork for future formats like seasonal recaps or year-end highlights which Deezer plans to explore as part of their ongoing story strategy.

Business Results

InAppStory analytics tracked key metrics indicating strong engagement:

• Total story interactions: Over 1 million per month.
• Average view time: 40 seconds per story.
• Deep engagement spike: An Ed Sheeran promo Story delivered “more than 6 minutes per viewing”.
• Content frequency: On average, users viewed 3.5 stories each month.

These results show interactive stories became a consistent, sticky channel inside Deezer.

Here’s why the Stories approach succeeded:

1. Native feel inside the app — Stories weren’t external or disruptive.
2. High-quality interactive elements — Embedded artist promos and quizzes encouraged tapping.
3. Clear pacing and structure — Short visual flows made interaction feel natural.
4. No-code management — The marketing team could create, schedule, and adjust Stories without developers.

What You Can Learn from Deezer

If you want similar impact in your app:

• Focus on discovery and onboarding, not just promos.
  Deezer used Stories to introduce users to both artists and new features.
• Pull in influencers for seasonal impact.
  Collaborations like their advent calendar with Julien Granel made content feel fresh and authentic.
• Track both depth and frequency of interaction.
  Go beyond views: measure average watch time and repeat visits.
• Enable your non-technical teams.
  Once the SDK is integrated, your marketing or editorial teams can manage Stories independently.