AfterDawn: News

Rdio now available to all

In October 2009, billionaires Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, the creators of the Kazaa P2P client as well as Skype, announced that they had developed and financed the unlimited music subscription service Rdio, and the company has now made the service available to all.

Separating the service from others like Rhapsody is the fact that Rdio allows users to listen from anywhere in "the cloud," including through their phones, instead of needing to download DRM-laced music locally.



Furthermore, Rdio has many social networking features connected to Facebook and Twitter. Rdio uses subscriber's online social networks to recommend songs, as well. If a bunch of your friends like a certain artist, Rdio will likely recommend it to you.

Rdio has over seven million tracks available from the major labels and thousands of indies.

The service charges $10 per month for unlimited access to music on a computer or your smartphone. For $5, you can get browser-only access.

Rdio is available on BlackBerrys, Android devices and the Apple iPhone.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 3 Aug 2010 19:31

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• 8 comments

• ThePastor

  all of these streaming music stories are the same...
  
  Can someone explain why it costs $10 to listen to crap which I could hear for free on the radio... and why a subscription to music costs more than a netflix subscription to MOVIES?
  

  Unfortunately for them, all Blu-ray protections have been broken and BD rips can be found around the Internet, usually before the retail even hits shelves.

  3.8.2010 20:37 #1

• KillerBug

  I guess that is two questions.
  
  The answer to the first is simple...the radio is mostly talk, advertising, and music that you don't want anyway. Also, short of calling the station and requesting a song, there is no way to listen to what you want to listen to, when you want to listen to it.
  
  The answer to the second is not as simple. For starters, there is no Android version of netflix. So the $5 version of Rdio is competing with the $9 version of netflix (yes, iPad has netflix, but AT&T is too slow for netflix anyway)...until there is a version of netflix for Android that will run on newer 4G phones, netflix is not mobile. Then there is the issue of licensing. Netflix has a lot of customers, but few content providers. This makes licensing rather easy (it is still a lot of work, but the fees are lower thanks to volume). Music isn't as easy because there are many, many labels...often bands will start their own labels (independent films are almost always under a major label; many "Independent" films are released by Fox, MGM, etc). Because of this, you are not licensing 500,000 tracks from 100 suppliers; you are licensing 500,000 tracks from 1500 suppliers; making the bulk discount for each much smaller. In addition to this, Rdio has very few subscribers, also driving up the cost (per user) to license a track.

  4.8.2010 05:12 #2

• Ripper

  Should the title not read "Available to all (if you live in the US)"?
  

  
  

  4.8.2010 07:40 #3

• aldan

  i hope they are not holding their breath waiting for my 10 bucks.jango is still free and you pick your artist.
  

  4.8.2010 22:33 #4

• KillerBug

  Not to mention MOG...the same price, far better selection, better audio quality (up to 320K MP3 quality), the ability to "cache" songs so they keep playing if you loose signal (or for a device like the touch that may not have signal at all), and support for Android, iPhone, and even iPad touch. Oh, and a free 3-day trial that does not even need a credit card. Not bad, considering you can spend more than the service fee for a month on a single album from iTunes; and iTunes is just a long-term rental anyway.

  5.8.2010 05:29 #5

• Ripper

  Did everyone just forget about Spotify? Or this this a slightly different concept?
  

  
  

  5.8.2010 05:31 #6

• KillerBug

  Spotify isn't even available in the united states...and they have been around long enough that this is not an oversight; it is intentional. On top of that, the selection is tiny, and it costs the equivalent of $16 per month for the version that works with mobile devices. All things considered, it is a terrible deal, assuming it is available at all.

  5.8.2010 06:07 #7

• Ripper

  I had little to no idea, I was genuinely asking! I've never used any service such as this, mainly because a) they're a pain to actually get on to (well, Spotify was) b) they're never usually available when you want them and c) you have to pay.
  
  *Goes back to Soulseek*
  

  
  

  5.8.2010 06:27 #8