I can't possibly recommend Rdio enough. The design is simple and intuitive. State transfers nicely between devices.
Even little things are pleasantly surprising. If I have my laptop hooked up to speakers at a party playing through Rdio, I can change the song from my phone.
The only thing it doesn't have that I'd like is Grooveshark-esque queue building. Every music player could just lift Grooveshark's queueing system wholesale and everyone would be much happier.
Agreed. I've been using Rdio for maybe two years now, and there's just something about the experience that's hard to explain, but feels a lot better than Spotify to me. Initially, their big selling point for me was just the fact that they had a web app at a time when Spotify didn't, but now that they both work in the browser, I still think Rdio is a way better experience.
That said, the way that search works on their iOS app does tend to frustrate me. Search for an artist, play one of their songs, go back to search, and your query plus all the results are gone. I kinda just wish that they'd keep them there for me, since I usually wanna find another song by the same artist after that. Maybe that's not actually a common use case though.
Absolutely love Rdio too, but you're also completely right about search on their iOS app. Not only does it not take you back to the results, but when searching for a song or artist, for whatever reason it does not prioritize for what's synced to your phone. Overall, amazing service with a great UI, but search needs some improvements.
I hadn't visited the site in a while, and within 60 seconds I found an irritating UI issue: When you're playing an "artist station" there's a slider thing from "artist only" to "adventurous" (which is awesome because the lack of this is the reason I never listen to Pandora).
However, when you change the slider, it advances the song (whether or not the current song is by the station's artist).
I highly suspect that is the case. On-demand (picking specific songs) has significantly higher royalties than radio. turntable.fm's model of picking a bunch of songs to be played but playing them with a batch of other user's requests was an interesting way around that.
In this case, however, I don't see the reason for skipping the currently playing song. I'm assuming that they've already had to pay for the current play so they might as well let it play out before skipping to the cheaper rotation.
I actually prefer Spotify to Rdio. Mainly because it's really easy to find playlists from other users and because the multimedia buttons work out of box.
I follow ~5 people who have these huge > 1000 song playlists that get updated daily. Practically a constant stream of new music that I like.
Unfortunately Spotify doesn't provide an easy way to manage playlists. Yes, there are folders but once you have 100ish playlists it kind of gets difficult.
If I wanted to migrate I would want to copy these playlists form Spotify to Rdio, which is nearly impossible without a lot of manual labour.
And then there's the audio quality. The songs constantly sound better on Spotify than on Rdio (that's at least my impression).
Ah and for me Spotify is actually cheaper than Rdio (I have Spotify premium for offline mobile support). The mobile playlist sync feature is awesome: I don't have to touch the phone in order for Spotify to update my offline playlists (on Android at least) for all the playlists I have tagged on my phone.
I'm more critical. The quality of the apps has been going down lately.
The UX of the desktop and mobile apps turned into a mess after they introduced a bunch of sliding panes, and the iOS app crashes so much I don't bother with it anymore.
I'm still a subscriber because it's one of the few streaming services available outside US, otherwise I would be looking at alternatives.
I recently switched back to Spotify. Rdio's "web app inside a native app" really kills the experience for me personally, though I'm sure from a dev experience it's a lot less to manage. The app feels slow. Sometimes it refreshes to a blank screen.
But the worst thing - a good part of my collection has gone "unavailable" as they lose music licenses. It's the risk you take when you're subscribing to music, but it seems to not happen as frequently on Spotify - at least for me. On one Rdio mix playlist I had, for example, nearly 40% of the tracks became available. Really a bummer. I liked Rdio's simplicity, but for me personally, the experience was really lousy.
This is valid criticism, and shouldn't be getting downvoted just because people disagree.
I'm a huge Rdio fan and love almost all aspects of its design, but (especially on iOS) I regularly get confused as to where I am and how to get back. A few moment's thought (or just fumbling between panels) gets me where I'm going, but there are simply too many almost-the-same-but-actually-different panels sliding around to be intuitive. It's particularly messy when trying to juggle browsing music with a managing a currently playing playlist.
The android app isn't any better.
It regularly refuses to skip tracks (instead restarting the current one), displays different tracks to the one it's actually playing and the offline mode is useless for everything beyond playing music (I can't add a track to a playlist, why?)
I completely agree. Rdio is the first music streaming site that really pulled me in. The clean design is pleasant and the multi-device support is superb. The autoplay functionality has introduced me to a ton of excellent music I didn't even know existed. I suppose other sites do the same thing but they never got me in the door like Rdio did.
I used to be a premium subscriber to Pandora. After growing tired of Pandora's limitations, specifically a hard cap of 100 custom stations, I looked around and for Radio.
I liked Pandora a lot. I LOVE Rdio. It's gorgeous, robust, and flexible. Great product.
Couldn't agree more. I don't understand why playing music that's been synced to my mobile has to load for as long as it does. What is happening? And why does my synced collection listing sometimes not load while I'm disconnected from the net? It's mind boggling.
I still love the service, but their apps need a bit of love.
In my experience I believe that the app has to check in every so often for songs to ensure you still are paying for the license to stream it. It shouldn't be doing this every time though.
I'm always really impressed by the detail put into Rdio. Dragging a song allows me to drag it into a playlist or to share it with friends. In HTML5/Javascript? That's pretty rad.
Spotify feels way too much like iTunes to me. That's not a compliment. My only fear is that I've picked the wrong side in this one and that Rdio will be gone soon enough.
I also switched from Spotify some time ago. I was Spotify user and subscriber since their beta around 2009 but in the recent years the apps seemed were more and more complex, sometimes buggy and the design just worse and worse.
Now I'm a happy Rdio subscriber. I just wish they would have real native desktop client.
Another lover of Rdio - been a paying subscriber for 2.5 years and gave it as a gift to three friends, plus on the family plan for my wife, brother and I. It's awesome.
a)one my major complaints was that the app never recovers from spotty connection. When network goes down music goes down which is expected ( kind of , why doesnt the app buffer music?) but when network comes back music never comes back.
b) Non existent buffering: Please take a leaf from pandora's book and look at how fast their music streams under spotty(any) connection. I kept thinking 'hey they are new, they'll figure it out soon', but nothing after 2 years.
c) App keeps crashing: i've had several incidents where app crashes and never recovers so i have to completely uninstall and reinstall the app ( and re download al the offline music). unacceptable. The app i have now on my phone crashes every time when it comes up( which was kind of the final straw)
I doubt it's purely a response. They mentioned that they're going to be inserting advertising into the streams now for free users, which isn't something you build out in a day. I'm sure they've been planning this for a while. Maybe the Spotify announcement forced them to announce and release it sooner than they were planning, though.
I'm not going to complain too much, RDIO is the only streaming service available to me in canada. I'm grateful to them just for existing, if they can't be free that's okay.
It's completely unclear if that is actually against "the" law.
I'm in Australia, where a parliamentary report encourages users to use technological means to bypass geographic restrictions[1].
If I use a service it is true I must agree to their terms of service. However, if I'm not in the jurisdiction those terms apply to it is unclear if they can be legally enforced.
Additionally, it is also unclear if those ToS are broken at all by using an unblocking service. Typically the aim is to restrict serving music to any client outside the area the music license applies to, and music licensing companies understand completely that geographic restrictions can be bypassed.
It is actually in the interest of the licensing company that you do bypass the block. Then they get paid for the stream.
It isn't in the interest of the license holder in your jurisdiction that you bypass it, but in most jurisdictions they don't have grounds for a complaint: they can't actually make you use their service (especially if it doesn't exist).
Should I be worried about Rdio? I am happy to pay Rdio a relative pittance for continued access to music. I'm less happy if they're in a tailspin that is going to destroy the quality of their catalog.
Unfortunately, worrying seems prudent. While I suspect this move had been planned for some time, it follows on the heels of a large layoff that decimated (triple-decimated, if the 30% number is to be believed) the company.
That may have to do with their cancellation of the Vdio service. I was a beta tester of the service but received an email last month that it was being cancelled.
Rdio, please release your streaming quality figures. I'll return as a customer, I promise - please just be more transparent about this sort of thing.
The reason I say this is because the quality is noticeably worse than Spotify, and I feel they won't release the numbers because they know they can't compete.
I just want some transparency. The UI and experience is beautiful, but the quality is lacking.
This is correct. At my current place of employment, we have to deal with music licensing issues from various catalog providers. I mean this with no hyperbole, it is insanity dealing with music rights.
Just signed up. A couple of weird issues, I was presented with people to follow. I had no idea who these people were, and wondered what it meant to follow them. I managed to skip that step. Then I couldn't find a search box to find any artists or songs to play. It was buried down the bottom left of the page. I then typed in an artist, then clicked on an album, and got some music. Then the UI flipped, with a nice big search on top.
Took me a while to find out what a free, unsubscribed account was.
The design is really washed out. Very lightweight grey fonts that are very difficult to read. It's all a bit white and bright. Stylbot for Chrome helps a little there as there aren't any user settings to change the colour scheme.
Oh some mystery meat navigation, click on the bottom bar to bring up the current playlist. Actually you have to do quite a bit of click experimentation, to find out what the icons do. Would be nice to have some hover tips.
Oh and you can scroll the playlist, it's not at all obvious!
Gripes aside, quite nice. Will see how I get on with it.
Spotify is about to roll out Collections. Searching for spotify:app:collection in the desktop client enables it for some people, although it didn't for me.
I am also on the $4.99/month plan. From what I can see is that for people already on the plan it stays the same. The article reads that if you are subscriped to a plan you will not be moved. I assume they will keep the $5 because the only difference is no ads vs the free version.
I'm wondering the same -- I had just switched from the $9.99 plan to the $4.99, because I only listen to Rdio on my computers (at home or work). Maybe I'll start streaming vinyl over MPD, or some fool thing.
That's his point - what is happening to that subscription level? The RDIO post only says "we now have that service, but ad supported and if you don't want that, you can pay $10 for our unlimited service".
So what is happening to the $5/mo service that is the same as the now-ad-supported service, but without the ads? I listen to an average of less than one song per day and only need it on my desktop, laptop, ipad, etc -- so there is no way I'm paying $10/mo for what used to be $5 and if I wanted to listen to ads, I'd just turn on terrestrial radio.
I switched from Spotify 8 months ago and at first it was a breathe of fresh air but I soon started noticing issues with the desktop client. It's just a UIWebView that loads the web app. Album artwork loads slowly if you've got a large collection, UI interactions are unresponsive and will often time out.
The other major issue is having albums in your collection become unplayable due to what looks like licensing issues, only to reappear months later as the same album, except not in your collection. Spotify doesn't seem to have this issue.
Like the TV then. Weirdly the ITV player in the UK has completely pathetic sound on the adverts that you can hardly hear, which makes them a little more bearable.
Having the ability to listen to music from one source is important to many and Rdio has no "Local File" support. This is necessary for artists/albums Rdio doesn't have in it's library and it's a reason myself and many others won't ever make the jump from Spotify.
I switched mostly from Rdio to Spotify. I used rdio since it started, but spotify's radio based off a playlist is great. I get more discovery songs this way. I also have non-english songs that aren't on rdio, but I can add them in Spotify. I do love rdio's new album page better.
I love rdio, but what is up with the lack of gapless playback? I love continuous albums, and even for the lack of being able to play these without the annoying silences between tracks I still prefer rdio, but this is the biggest issue I have right now with the service.
Actually, RDIO has never been forthright about what quality they stream in.
From their customer support in their knowledge-base:
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"We're not currently providing specific bitrate or codec information. We experiment with different rates and encoding formats in an effort to provide the best possible listening and user-experience, and stream CD-quality audio over the web and wifi (for mobile devices), and only stream a lower bitrate if you’re on a 3G connection.
We realize that is not be as much detail as you’d like, and we apologize for this — if you have feedback about Rdio’s sound quality as you're listening, please do let us know."
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Play no, control yes. It's still pretty cool at a party to hook up my laptop to my speakers, and be able to walk around and queue up songs from my phone.
Strange none of the big players are offering play & control audio in sync. There are a few native (seedio, tunemob) and web apps (speakerblast) that offer this already.
I might buy their mid-tier plan and cancel my Spotify subscription. I was planning on downgrading my Spotify subscription, but it seems that their mid-tier plan (the one that cost half that of premium) is gone now.
Even little things are pleasantly surprising. If I have my laptop hooked up to speakers at a party playing through Rdio, I can change the song from my phone.
The only thing it doesn't have that I'd like is Grooveshark-esque queue building. Every music player could just lift Grooveshark's queueing system wholesale and everyone would be much happier.