New Music Streaming Service Rdio: How Does it Stack Up?

Posted on 07. Jun, 2010 by refe in TECHNOLOGY

New music streaming service Rdio.

Rdio is a brand new streaming music service from the creators of Skype and Kazaa that is currently in private beta. Trials are currently invitation only. For information on free invitations please see below.

This is certainly an interesting time to be launching a music streaming service. Today, Monday, June 7th is the first day of Apple’s always anticipated World Wide Developers Conference, and the day that Apple is expected to announce a new version of iTunes that may or may not include streaming or cloud-based features. (UPDATE: Steve Jobs’ keynote at WWDC 2010 has come and gone without any word of the alleged ‘iTunes in the Cloud.’ Looks like it wasn’t such a bad time to launch after all!)

Spotify still hasn’t made it to US shores, yet continues to gain traction and evolve in Europe. MOG , which launched late in 2009, has a gorgeous interface and a comparably cheap monthly fee -$5 for web access – seems to have had a hard time gaining serious market share.

Lala was my own personal favorite, but of course Apple shuttered it at the end of last month. Lala had, by far, the best social and music discovery features. Their catalog seemed nearly bottomless, sharing among friends and followers was encouraged through a system of points, and the entire site as fully integrated with Facebook. I still hold out hope that Apple plans to embrace Lala’s best features, but only time will tell.

Enter Rdio

How does Rdio stack up against the competition? Well, that depends on who you are comparing it too. I mentioned Rdio briefly in last week’s Friday news roundup, and again a few times on Twitter. So far, it has seemed most natural to compare the service to Lala, due to it’s user interface and the way that it collects songs from your iTunes library and brings them into the cloud. Yet, as one reader pointed out on Friday, it really has more in common with Spotify or Mog. It is a subscription-based streaming service, after all.

In reality, it appears that Rdio is attempting to provide an answer to both.

Here’s how it works. Rdio.com not only allows users to stream thousands of tracks from major and independent label, but also to replicate their existing music library both on the web and their mobile phone. These two features may sound a bit redundant – and they are, sort of – but if you’re asking why you should need your personal collection online if you’re able to stream any track you want anyway, the answer lies in part with your mobile phone.

Rdio apps for iPhone, Blackberry, soon Android phones will allow full streaming access when online, and access to your full collection when offline. Spotify’s mobile apps have features similar to this, but instead cache the tracks you are streaming for offline listening.

The collection matching feature is built on Adobe Air, and works well. The matching process only took a few seconds and there didn’t appear to be any errors or bugs. Rdio does not yet reproduce your iTunes playlists, unfortunately, although there are reports that this functionality is coming.

Shallow catalog may not justify cost

The biggest draw back to Rdio at this point is its catalog. At this point, Rdio has only signed licensing deals with a handful of major and indie labels. If the music you’re looking for isn’t available through those partners, that song can’t be streamed. And, like Lala before it, if that song exists in your personal collection it simply won’t match when the Rdio application is run.

Unlike Lala, however, Rdio’s catalog is currently very limited. Only about 200 tracks from my library were matched, out of the thousands on my hard drive. Let’s be clear – Rdio isn’t even out of private beta, so we should probably cut them a little slack.

However, they will have to hurry up and sign on a few more licensing partners if they hope the general music listening public to fork over the $10 per month subscription cost. At this point I cannot see upgrading my account when my free trial runs out.

User interface is on the right track, but needs some tweaking

Rdio’s interface is clean and easy to navigate. The front page dashboard features a selection of tracks that are currently receiving a lot of play within your network, as well as the most recent activity.

From the top navagation bar you can also choose to browse new music, view your existing collection and playlists, check out user reviews, or review the people in your Rdio network.

One of the most interesting navigational features is found on the collection page. A series of blue bubbles represent the artists in your collection that you listen to the most, the bigger the bubble the more frequent the plays. Think of it as a kind of tag-cloud for music.

From the top navagation bar you can also choose to browse new music, view your existing collection and playlists, check out user reviews, or review the people in your Rdio network.

Unfortunately, there’s not much you can do with these bubbles other than mess around with where they are positioned on the screen. I found myself wanting to drag and drop these bubbles into playlists, or to be able to remove the ones that I didn’t want there.

Instead you have to scroll through a full listing of the artists in your collection in a sidebar to the left of the screen. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it feels like they’ve missed an opportunity to turn something that is simply fun into something truly useful.

Music Discovery

As the music streaming and online radio market becomes increasingly crowded, services will rise and fall based on how easily users can discover great new music, and how much fun they can have doing it.

This is where Lala excelled, and Rdio borrows heavily from the now-defunct service. There’s just one important piece missing.

Rdio, just like Lala before it, allows users to follow other users and view their playlists and streaming history. Rdio lays it out a bit differently, grouping network activity into Heavy Rotation and general activity on the front dashboard instead of a catch-all stream.

The big piece that’s missing is the incentives that Lala built in to reward sharing. In Lala, when one of your followers purchased or listened to a track at your recommendation you were awarded points. These points didn’t really mean anything, but acted as a sort of influence meter. The users with the most points built reputations as tastemakers.

This was more powerful than it may at first sound. Without built-in incentives to share and promote great music, a user’s network becomes a more passive force in the music discovery process. This is a shame. Because, while I’m sure Rdio’s internal recommendation engine is adequate, there is no substitute for peer-to-peer sharing.

Music discovery can be fun, social and highly engaging. Or, it can be a cold, lonely, technology-driven process that users participate in solely due to a need to feed their musical itch.

Fortunately for Rdio, that itch is just as powerful as ever.

10 Invites Available!

If you would like to receive an invite, please leave a comment below. I have 10 to give away, and I will randomly draw names from among those who comment and send the winners an invite via email. Please DO NOT leave your email address in the body of your comment – WordPress will ask for your email when you comment, so just make sure that you enter the address you want me to use for the invite.

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Tags: Apple, Lala, mog, music in the cloud, online streaming, rdio, Spotify

27 Responses to “New Music Streaming Service Rdio: How Does it Stack Up?”

Tweets that mention New Music Streaming Service Rdio: How Does it Stack Up? | creative deconstruction -- Topsy.com

07. Jun, 2010

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Refe Tuma, iboyLUNNO. iboyLUNNO said: RT @refeup: Read my hands-on review of new music streaming service Rdio – invites available! http://bit.ly/dAhWkD [...]
weroqq

07. Jun, 2010

Nice intro to rdio, Refe!

And invite?
guylaine l'heureux (@chagota)

07. Jun, 2010

Rather interesting to see how this evolves over the next few months as music moves to the cloud and benefits from social networking (recommendation, music discovery).
Are we ready to be each others’ curators?
Apparently. Increasingly so.
Massimo

07. Jun, 2010

Nice post Refe – looking forward to trying the service on multiple platforms.
The UI/UX will make or break this and many of cloud music services. Listening experience and interface learning curve should be at the forefront of their concerns. It’s an exciting time for mobile music.

- Massimo
- refe
  
  07. Jun, 2010
  
  Mobile is where it’s at.
  
  It’s funny, because it’s all simply coming full-circle. The iPod introduced us to carrying our music collections with us, and now streaming services like Spotify and Rdio are allowing us to do the same thing in much more interactive ways.
Mike B.

07. Jun, 2010

Thanks for the in-depth post, Refe. Sounds like a solid start to an interesting service, and I hope they’ve ironed out some of the issues you mentioned by the time they’re out of beta. Looking forward to trying Rdio on my phone.
Kevin English

07. Jun, 2010

Really interesting stuff Refe. I’ll be watching this one closely!
Gabriel Nijmeh

07. Jun, 2010

Ok, maybe I’m becoming a bit jaded with all these new music services. Nothing really new or original but starting out of the gate, the interface is clean, fairly easy to navigate and very little bugs/quirks.

As you said, the catalog is not deep at all but the recommendation feature is actually pretty good. The music match collection is interesting. Playdar (http://www.playdar.org) would be a perfect tool that they could implement that plays the song from your music collection instead of streaming from their servers.

I installed the desktop app which had me scratching my head. I guess I was expecting something a bit more full featured (spoiled by Spotify!). You can’t really use the desktop standalone (can’t search for music) as you need to either create a playlist or fill up your music queue. Kind of a pain to be jumping back and forth between desktop and wbe.

Which leads me to one last point… playlists need to be shareable and portable. Anyone spending a lot of time creating playlists within each service runs the risk of losing them if they either stop paying or if the service goes out of business.

XSPF (http://xspf.org/) has been around for a number of years, yet no service has implemented it. Actually, If I recall, iLike may have lets users create shareable playlists using this XML standard.

Yes, there are key business reasons why they haven’t… it’s all about service lock-in and making it more difficult for consumers to jump between services. But there could also be some great opportunities as well.

It’s obvious these similar services won’t be competing on price, so what exactly will differentiate between them? New features are easily copied, so there won’t be much of an advantage there.

What will be interesting is to see what services users gravitate too and why.
- refe
  
  08. Jun, 2010
  
  Great comment Gabe, and I couldn’t agree more with your comments about the desktop app. I alluded to this in the review, but it feels like they are trying to have the best of both worlds – all worlds, really – web, desktop and mobile. Unfortunately, I don’t think they’ve quite gotten it right.
  
  If it feels redundant, it probably doesn’t need to be there at all.
Jerry Stifelman

08. Jun, 2010

Great job breaking down the virtues of Lala and setting the stage for the state of streaming today.

I would love an invite.
Tim A.

08. Jun, 2010

I loved LALA too. But. Im discovering Rhapsody. Woul love to try Mog, but at this point I want an iPhone app. So many options.
Invite?
Hugo Kant

08. Jun, 2010

hi refe, great post.

I’m personally a big fan of last.fm. but would love an invite for Rdio to try it out !
Peter

08. Jun, 2010

Great post.

Last.fm and Spotify is my number one services.

Any invites left?
Chris

08. Jun, 2010

I would definitely appreciate an invite. I’d like to move away from Pandora and Slacker.
Brian Serocke

08. Jun, 2010

Nice post Refe and great comment by Gabe. I agree that a solid, full-featured desktop app needs to be a pillar in their approach. If they can get seamless integration across all three environments presented in with a user-friendly design, they’ll absolutely justify the monthly cost. Armed with a broader collection of licenses, I’m interested to see if they’ll build the momentum here in the US that Spotify has generated abroad. But really, what it boils down to (after the tech is concerned), is that publishers and rights holders need to refine their licensing demands and create a viable entry point for these types of services. Hopefully at that point we’ll have a winning proposition for everyone.
peacockskater7

09. Jun, 2010

would love an Rdio invite!
April

09. Jun, 2010

Nice review and I totally agree with your statements about the catalog, the interface, and the fees. I haven’t had a Rdio account for very long (obviously) but so far I can’t justify spending $10/month when I’m satisfied with several free music services whether on the web or mobile.
refe

10. Jun, 2010

All of the invites have officially been sent! If you didn’t get one I apologize – I only had 10 total to send out, so I had to randomly select who an invite and who didn’t. Next week I should have more cool stuff to give away, so stay tuned.
- Mike B.
  
  10. Jun, 2010
  
  Hey, thanks for the invite, refe! Looking forward to checking this out.
Keith

11. Jun, 2010

Would love an invite, if you have any left!
Shawn

11. Jun, 2010

If you still have some invites, I would love one.
Rdio invite

12. Jun, 2010

A tip is to check out Rdio invite[link removed] for Radio invite.
Stop Spam

12. Jun, 2010

Warning: I would be very careful with the above radio invite link. You will be spammed hard. Only do it if you have a disposable/throw-away email address but even with that, I still wouldn’t do it because it only encourages more of this crap.

If you really want a Rdio invite, it is best to have someone you know send one to you. Do a quick search on Twitter and you should be able dig one up.
Vitor Sá

18. Jun, 2010

I’ve received an invitation for Rdio, but I live in Brazil and I’m not allowed to use this service (just USA). I don’t now if I can give my invitation to others, so I’ll post here the link that came by email. The email that I used was vmmnsa.spam@gmail.com
http://www.rdio.com/accounts/create/d77f11fa694391ddc53a72d7feb9c9bbc66ee91c/
- Peter
  
  18. Jun, 2010
  
  You should use a proxy in the US. Install foxyproxy in Firefox and give it a try.
  - Vitor Sá
    
    18. Jun, 2010
    
    Tks man, but it doesn’t work… The “Loading secure connection…” is the only thing that appears. Unfortunately they are smart.
    - Peter
      
      18. Jun, 2010
      
      Hi Victor
      
      I have been using it from Sweden so I know it works. Try to use 74.206.98.202:8080 as a proxy.
      
      Unfortunately, the invite to Rdio is only good for three days
      
      /Peter