Music streaming service Deezer (Blogmusik S.A.) is said to be looking to raise funds on a €$1 billion ($1.1 billion) valuation, a report claimed Monday.

Bloomberg Business quoted sources that the fund raising, still in its early stages, could involve a new venture capital round, or even the French-based music site going public with an initial public offering (IPO.)

Founded in 2006, Deezer, like its primary rival Spotify AG, offers a streaming music service with a free tier along with a paid tier. On top of the more traditional services, the company also offers an “elite” paid service that offers high-resolution lossless CD quality music at 16bit/44.1 kHz.

Deezer isn’t particularly well known in North America having primarily focused on global markets for many years (it’s available in 180 countries) through tailoring content available in each territory, causing it be referred to at one stage the as “biggest music streaming service you’ve never heard off.”

The company did enter the United States market in September 2014, although given the already competitive marketplace has yet to make its presence felt locally.

Although significantly smaller than Spotify, Deezer’s numbers, given their global focus and only relatively recent entry into the North American market, are impressive: 16 million active users a month with a solid 6 million of those users paying for the service.

Invasion Française

Any new capital raising by Deezer, be it venture capital or IPO, will have one main purpose: a serious play at taking on Spotify, and even the still questionable Apple Music, in the United States market.

The French invasion of American shores is a terribly hard ask given the already highly competitive nature of the market, but it’s also not impossible; Deezer’s higher quality streaming service is competitively priced, be it currently only available to Sonos device owners, but presuming it was made more widely available it would offer a point of differentiation in the market.

Streaming music, as a market, is still said to be immature as well, so although Spotify and Apple Music may get the majority of headlines, there’s still hundreds of millions in the United States alone who have yet to sign up for a music streaming service; if Deezer can carve out a niche of even 5 or 10 million users locally, with somewhere between 25-50 percent signing up for the paid version, that’s a good business, even if it isn’t market leading.

Deezer has raised $149.3 million to-date over 3 rounds. Investors include CM-CIC Capital Prive, Idinvest Partners, Dotcorp Asset Management, Xavier Niel, and Access Industries.

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