Deezer was to give unlimited access to music lovers through streaming technology. The site in its original incarnation was charged with copyright infringement by French agency SACEM, and after being shut down in April 2007 was relaunched as Deezer in August 2007, having reached an agreement with SACEM to pay copyright holders with revenue from advertising on the site and by giving users the ability to download songs streamed on Deezer from iTunes, with Deezer receiving a commission from each purchase. At the time of its launch in 2007, Deezer had not yet negotiated agreements with major music labels and therefore
Deezer offered a limited catalogue. It took more than two years for agreements to be signed with the four largest labels, as well as various smaller ones, but by 2011 the company had rights to about eight million songs. During August 2007, its first month of operations, Deezer saw about 773,000 visitors to its site, with traffic increasing rapidly in the next several years—2.75 million people used the service in May 2008, and there were seven million users by December 2009. Despite the high traffic, Deezer almost immediately ran into financial problems—during the first half of 2008, the company saw revenue