—The free, ad-funded Deezer.com will remain.
—But users can now pay €4.99 (£4.48) a month to kill the ads and get better online sound quality (a stream of up to 320Kbps).
—If you really want to splash out, the €9.99-a-month (£8.97) premium version comes with an Adobe (NSDQ: ADBE) AIR-powered desktop client and mobile streaming via Android, BlackBerry and the iPhone.

SEE ALSO: French Music Streamer Deezer Raises €6.5 Million Second Round

The paid-for services are launching in France first, with other countries coming soon. Release.

Will it work? Since its launch two years ago Deezer, owned by newly formed Odyssey Music Group, claims 16 million casual monthly users and 11 million registered members—that’s far more than Spotify’s claimed six million users but it means they have more people to convince to pay.

Spotify marketed its premium service since the start—it’s now commissioned TV ads to boost subscription numbers and still uses its own 30-second ad spots for Jonathan, Roberta and co to plug the paid option, so Deezer has a big task ahead to convince its fans to cough up.

Deezer is hardly the first music service to build a partial paywall around its stream: alongside Spotify, CBS (NYSE: CBS) Interactive’s Lastfm started charging users in March (except in the US, UK, Germany) and We7 introduced a premium version over the summer. With the ad market still waiting for a return to pre-recession levels, it would be a brave music site that hopes to grow revenue without charging at least some of its customers.