On Rdio [Lifechanger]

Inside the last 30 days, I’ve easily discovered more great new music than I even have inside the last decade, and have listened to the iTunes equivalent of at the least $700 in music for the fee of a CD.

I’m talking about Rdio, a streaming music service that strikes me as much more useful than others which have been around longer. I’m uncertain its the suitable in the market in classic terms-I’ve heard that other services have better libraries. But I do adore it for a couple of big reasons. Rdio’s gone out of its approach to put itself on more platforms than any other streaming service I’ve ever seen. It’s on android, iphone, blackberry, the net, has a desktop client and even works with my favorite home audio multi-room system, Sonos .

That’s important for the easy reason that I will use Rdio on my iPhone, within the car or airplane (the $10 dollar a month service includes an offline sync mode), while I’m working at my desk or across my house using Sonos. But mostly because several of my good friends who have astoundingly good taste in music don’t necessarily use a similar gadgets I do. In truth the buddies I actually have with the very best taste in music use Android phones and PCs. A minor point by itself but Rdio’s social interface is immensely powerful. I will be able to see what albums friends are adding in a stream, and I will be able to try them all out. Pretty soon its apparent which friends of mine like a similar sort of music that I do. That’s basically a more streamlined version of ways I might usually discover new tunes: Ask them what they’re listening to, and have them send or buy the tracks. Discard if it doesn’t work for me, or keep it if I feel its cool.

Now, Zune was social, and Zune even had the neat ability to permit you to keep 10 tracks a month-but Zune was only lived inside the Windows ecosystem. And Rdio again, works almost everywhere. And iTunes’s ping is social, but without a flat subscription rate, it’s impossible to truly roam through different albums beyond the 90 second playlist.

Because I pay that $10 up front, I’m encouraged to explore and experiment and seek new music instead of being put inside the position of having to continually risk procuring a new album that can suck. And whether I know I don’t own lots of the music I’m listening to, that’s fine. If an album turns out to be an instant classic, I will always dip into Amazon or use Rdio’s store and buy it. But 19 out of 20 times, I won’t. I’ll just be too busy listening to new stuff to stress about it. Another bonus is that, well, my computer’s being crushed by photos, video, emails and, yes, music files. So having less to prepare and back up is truly a super relief, especially because I’m adding 5-10 albums a day to my collection that I will be able to’t believe I didn’t find out about before. I will’t really put a cost on that, but Rdio only asks $10 a month. I suspect the single thing I’d ask them to do is let friends subscribe to group plans so that my friends-the folk who make Rdio work for me-never stop using it.

Source

This post is tagged: social interface, streaming music, streaming service, streamlined version, subscription rate