There’s currently a heated battle being waged between three of the biggest on-demand music streaming services — MOG, Spotify, and Rdio — each of which is trying to capture our hearts and ears by offering the best mobile experience for tunes on-the-go. You can check out Josh’s in-depth comparison of the battle for mobile supremacy here.
While it wasn’t Josh’s top pick for music streaming on the tablet, Rdio is today taking a big step forward, launching a completely redesigned music listening and discovery experience, starting with the web and its desktop apps. While the company unveiled its plans at SXSW, today marks the first time the new Rdio will be available to all. → Read More
Don’t stop the music. It seems obvious, but MOG is the first of the big on-demand music streaming services to get this right on a tablet. Today MOG officially releases its iPad app, and it includes MOG Radio which when enabled will continue to play songs after your currently queued tracks finish. No more hours of accidental silence. It’s also retina-ready to crisply display artwork, bios, editor’s picks, and reviews.
Compared to Rdio’s iPad app and Spotify for iPhone (no iPad app available), MOG has the best experience for simply playing music, it streams in higher fidelity on Wi-Fi, and provides the most accurate recommendations. Here’s a full breakdown of how the three compare on music playback, discovery, price, and sound quality. → Read More
The landgrab for music streaming customers is on, and Rdio — the U.S.-based startup from Skype founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis — is joining that race in earnest.
The company today announced that it is now live in Spain and Portugal, just one month after it launched in its first European service, in Germany. The total number of countries where Rdio now works is up to eight, including the U.S., Canada, Brazil, Germany, Australia and New Zealand — and hints that there will be more to come. → Read More
Today, Rdio is releasing a brand new application for Android phones chock-full of fresh features, which is awesome. Mainly because it gives me an excuse to write up a rant I would have published at some point anyway. → Read More
Rdio, the streaming music service started by Skype founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, is arriving in its fourth market today: Germany. Already available in the U.S., Canada and Brazil, the company says it will be offering a 7-day free trial to the 82+ million German residents who want to give it a shot.
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Kobo has partnered with social music discovery and streaming service Rdio to let users of its just-released Android-powered Vox eReader access more than 12 million tracks while they’re reading.
Kobo, which was just acquired by Rakuten for $315 million in cash, says it boasts over five million users worldwide. → Read More
Rdio, the digital music service created by Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, is making a big push to international markets. The startup is launching its service in Brazil later this week, and will expand to Germany and Australia in early 2012. The music streaming service is already available in the U.S. and Canada.
Co-branded as “Oi Rdio,” Rdio is partnering with Brazil’s second largest telco, Oi, to bring the service to the company’s base of 17 million subscribers. The service is available for both Oi and non-Oi subscribers and Brazil users can sign up for a free 7 day trial here. → Read More
I love Yvo Schaap, even though I’ve never met him in person.
Wanna know why? Because the man keeps on digging up interesting stuff by simply perusing code, and then alerting us.
Schaap found the embeddable +1 button and a a link to the Google Games logo before either of them was publicly released, and now he may have identified several companies that will be partnering with Facebook for the imminent launch of the latter’s Music service (which may be called Vibes). → Read More
Yesterday, we outlined a bit of what we’ve heard about Facebook’s upcoming f8 conference. One big launch will be their official foray into music. Today, we’ve heard more about that launch.
One thing we’ve heard from a very good source is that a key aspect of the service will be “scrobbling”. The term, made popular by Last.fm, means that when you listen to a song, it gets sent to your profile without you have to do anything. I assume there will be a way to turn this off, or a way for you to selectively share songs, but this is a key to the service. → Read More
Streaming music service Rdio from Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, is today launching two new music gifting options – physical gift cards and online credits. Consumers will be able to purchase the virtual gift card options in $10, $25, $50 and $100 values or in user-selected amounts. Meanwhile, physical cards in the $10 and $25 values will be sold in over 600 Target retail stores here in the U.S.
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As we mentioned a few weeks ago, Rdio family plans are now available for, as Bob Dylan would say, “the wife and family” and “the whole kids.”
The plan costs $17.99 for two accounts and three accounts costs $22.99 a month. Unlimited web and mobile plans still cost $9.99 a month (as do additional accounts added to the family plan.
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It took a bit longer than I’d have guessed, but the Rdio iPad app that we previewed a few weeks back is now available in the App Store.
As predicted, it’s the first of the big three on-demand, all-you-can-eat music streaming services (those being Rdio, Spotify, and MOG) to get an iPad app into the store.
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It was just last week that Greg brought us a first look at Rdio’s forthcoming iPad app, and now the streaming music contender has dropped another bombshell on us.
Last night, Rdio CEO Drew Lerner let slip that in addition to their current line up of plans, they will launch an “Unlimited Family” plan that lets users “share an account with multiple people at a discounted rate”. With this, Rdio is breaking out of the pricing rut that they and their competitors have been stuck in, and on top of that offer a compelling new concept for music sharing. → Read More
In the all-you-can-eat music streaming battle between Spotify, Rdio, and MOG, the iPad is more or less untouched territory. Sure, they’ve all got iPhone apps which can be stretched to run at near-full screen on the iPad — but if you’re wanting for something that doesn’t look like hot pixelated garbage, you’re pretty much out of luck.
It’s starting to look like Rdio might be the first of the lot to crack out an iPad-native release: they’ve just submitted the big-screen-friendly build of their app for Apple’s oh-so-crucial stamp of approval. I’ve been using this iPad build for a few days now, and have returned with screenshots, video, and first impressions for an exclusive hands-on. → Read More
Spotify is finally here in the US. It offers on-demand music for a relatively low price — just like Rdio. There’s several service levels including mobile listening and offline support — just like Rdio. There’s even support for third-party hardware and platforms — just like Rdio.
Rdio has a head start in this race but it might not matter. Rdio left private beta last August and has since gained a good deal of traction here in the States. It’s our hometown hero, if you will. Even though it wasn’t available until today, Spotify’s hype built the service up to near legandary status. The two services are remarkably similar on the outside, but when you dive in, there are some distinct and fun differences. → Read More
Not to flog a spotted horse, Spotify is now available on your Sonos devices. To add the service to your devices follow these instructions. → Read More
One day after it announced an imminent US launch with no other details, an American Spotify user has sent us these screencaps showing pricing in US dollars. Only going by these screencaps, the Unlimited US Spotify plan will cost $4.99 a month without mobile streaming capability and the Premium Spotify plan with mobile access will cost $9.99 a month. According to the same source, a free version with limited plays is also available.
Interesting enough, these amounts are less than what European users currently pay, at £4.99 ($8.00) and £9.99 ($16.00) respectively.
As a non-ashamed Windows user and straight up Rdio fan, this makes me happy. Rdio has expanded its product suite with a native app for Windows XP, Vista, and 7.
To be fair, I’m likely not going to use the desktop app much, as I’m mostly using Rdio on my mobile phone and iPod touch, as well as via my Sonos system.
But it’s great to have options – I have always lamented Spotify for not having a browser-based application. → Read More
Streaming media is the future. You know this if you’ve used Netflix, Rdio, Grooveshark or any of the other popular music services. Apple is said to be getting into the game as well and a recently-released patent application from 2009 shows iTunes streaming will in fact offer something different from the rest of the players.
As much as I love Rdio, and I do love Rdio, I can’t always guarantee that the mobile app will start playing music when I press play. There’s always this waiting game as my Droid X fights for enough Verizon bandwidth to start streaming. Once the little blue bar partially fills up, signifying that there’s enough of a buffer for seamless playback, the song starts. This is where Apple will offer something better and different. → Read More
Rdio, the social music startup founded by Skype founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, is expanding its platform today with the launch of its API and an affiliate program.
Rdio launched last year as an unlimited, on-demand social music service that allows users to build and share online music collections from a catalogue of over 8 million songs. Rdio offers a Web-only music streaming music service for $4.99, and a premium version that adds mobile access for $9.99 per month. → Read More
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