14 DAY TRIAL // The online music-streaming business is not the greatest place to be right now. Very few companies actually make any money and the ones that do struggle as well. But there are plenty of people seeing the potential of the market, which explains the constant stream of new web music services. Rdio, which was revealed late last year, is getting ready to launch and is now opening its doors to more people.
“Hello there! It’s been a while, but we’re now ready to let more people start using Rdio (pronounced r-dee-o). Starting today, current users will receive a number of invitations, so they can invite their friends to check it out,” a post on the company’s blog read.
“If you haven’t heard about Rdio yet, it’s a new music subscription service available on the web, iPhone and BlackBerry, with an Android app coming soon. You can also sync music to your phone and play it when you’re offline,” the announcement added.
Rdio has been in the works for the past few months and, recently, a number of people have been invited to take it for a spin. Now, with the company satisfied with the results of that first step, Rdio is being rolled out to more individuals, though it’s still in a closed and very limited beta.
Rdio is a mix of features found in the most recent entries on the market with a couple of unique but not groundbreaking twists. For $4.99 a month, users will get access to the web-based app that enables them to listen to any song from the five-million-strong catalogue. For $9.99 a month, they will also get access to mobile apps for the iPhone, BlackBerry and, soon, Android devices.
It has all four major labels on board, as well as several indie label distributors and aggregators. These have been all run-of-the-mill features until now. Its claim to fame are social features that are an integral part of the experience. Users will be able to follow their friends or others that match their musical tastes. They can then choose to listen to the songs that their friends like the most, this being the ‘discovery’ part of the service.
Rdio is on track for a US launch and a worldwide one is planned for a later date. With the backing from serial entrepreneurs Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, of Kazaa and Skype fame, and with a decent feature set, it’s as prepared as most of its competitors to be a winner on the market. But that may be part of the problem, it doesn’t really stand out that much from other music-streaming services, which, unfortunately, haven’t found too much success yet, themselves.