
Why Rdio died - coloneltcb
http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/17/9750890/rdio-shutdown-pandora
======
danr4
_" Rdio, I guess, made the mistake of trying to be sustainable too early,"
Miner says. "That classic startup mistake of worrying about being profitable
and having a business that makes any sense before you’ve reached this
astronomical growth curve."_

A. Mistake of having a business that makes sense? Are you kidding me?

B. Spotify and Pandora are heading straight towards the same fate as Rdio.

~~~
davecap1
If Spotify becomes its own "label" then it'll probably have a better chance...
given the size of its user-base.

~~~
shostack
I've always wondered why Google and Apple didn't do just that.

They offer some of the biggest distribution channels available, have deep
pockets, and have a VERY vested interest in killing the status quo because of
the freedom it will give them for using music and promoting artists in new
ways.

That is definitely one industry that needs to have more competition.

~~~
prostoalex
The book "How Music Got Free" explores that dynamics. Steve Jobs had an idea
for Apple Music to launch as a label, doing direct 50/50 split with an artist
instead of opaque label contracts.

He'd call Doug Morris (ex-Universal, ex-Warner, ex-Sony) to get him to come
onboard as a CEO of that label, but in Morris' view a label that could not cut
upfront checks to young artists would not stay in business for long.

Any promising artists would then be schmoozed and seduced by the labels who
can cut advance checks and offer real money in the pocket today instead of
abstract fairer revenue split down the road. Any existing top artists already
have some label relationship that is hard to get out of. What you're left with
is a bunch of nobodies, kinda like the MP3.com back in the days.

~~~
shostack
I might be missing something here, but Apple clearly can bankroll paying
artists up front. Any insight into what drove the strategic decision not to
(at least in the short term)?

~~~
prostoalex
From the book it sounds like they didn't want to. That implies running a whole
shebang with scouts, sleazy agents, legal departments that draw up screwy
contracts to guarantee future revenues, i.e., everything but the transparency
that Apple wanted to bring to market.

------
rickhanlonii
I'm in denial. I refuse to believe this is happening.

When Rdio is gone there's going to be a huge hole in my life that needs filled
with good design and experience browsing my music. iTunes is a shitshow.
Spotify is ugly. Pandora is radio. It's all rubbish.

The Winamp revival cannot come soon enough.

~~~
eterm
Have you tried google music? I find that <random song> radio, while a little
too "just one genre" is good for finding new artists and music.

They also have a decent "blogged 50" playlist which is recent/modern music.

Other than that, I mostly listen to kexp.org for a good mix of music.
Sometimes for radio you can't beat the radio.

~~~
soylentcola
Agree on the radio part. I know "curated" stations are the hip new feature on
Apple and similar music services but there are tens of thousands of free
streaming stations that use the shoutcast/icecast protocol and they've been
around since the late 1990's.

The on-demand services are more like a replacement for album/track purchases
but I've found that bookmarking 10 or 20 favorite Shoutcast stations in
anything from Winamp to VLC to any other desktop or mobile app that supports
streaming mp3 is like having the best, human-programmed radio dial ever.

Even back in the early 2000's when I was stuck on 128k/sec cellular data I
would hook my Treo up to the car stereo and stream 96kbps music when everyone
else was paying for XM. Then with the move to third-gen data networks I got
the bump to 800k/sec and streaming much nicer 128k-192k stuff was simple.
Sound didn't beat a CD but it was better than satellite radio's compressed
streams a lot of the time.

Even today, I usually listen to KEXP's stream or Devil's Night Radio or
something from SomaFM before dicking around on Spotify or Youtube. There's
just something to be said for finding stations that are programmed and run by
people with a knowledge and love of music that you also may enjoy. Noticing
themes or trends in strings of songs always puts a smile on my face in a way
that Pandora or Spotify just never will.

------
btbuildem
Wow that really sucks. I use Rdio daily. It's really good for exploring new
music - I've built up a great list of favourites. Is there any way to back
that info up locally?

~~~
stdgy
Yes. You can extract your favorites as a CSV with this extension:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/rdio-
enhancer/hmaa...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/rdio-
enhancer/hmaalfaappddkggilhahaebfhdmmmngf?hl=en)

Now I'm looking around to see if it would be possible to import the contents
of that CSV into another service. It looks like Spotify has an API to add a
track to a user: [https://developer.spotify.com/web-api/save-tracks-
user/](https://developer.spotify.com/web-api/save-tracks-user/)

And there's a third-party API some folks cooked up for Google's service:
[http://unofficial-google-music-
api.readthedocs.org/en/latest...](http://unofficial-google-music-
api.readthedocs.org/en/latest/reference/mobileclient.html)

Might have to play with them this weekend.

~~~
amorphid
Thanks for pointing out this extension. I was looking fod a say to export my
favorites.

------
hcarvalhoalves
I was a Rdio subscriber for a year before Spotify, and I can say I left it
because of:

\- Buggy desktop app (used Flash player and would eat 100% CPU)

\- Buggy mobile app [1]

\- Restricted library (lots of tracks marked as "not available in your
country", which defeats the point of having an online streaming service).

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7074056](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7074056)

~~~
KingMob
To be fair, the country restrictions are caused by the labels, not Rdio.

~~~
yen223
The unfortunate truth is that to users, it absolutely does not matter whose
fault it is, only that the country restrictions are there.

~~~
jandrese
It means that every (legal) service is likely to run into the same problems
though. The only way to avoid the headache is to pirate the music instead.

------
oddevan
Most of my friends are (were?) on Rdio. I liked it to a point, until the music
library I'd built was suddenly cut in half because reasons? Reasons pertaining
to exclusivity arrangements with other services, or label agreements expiring,
or whatever. But basically, reasons.

It's enough to turn me off of cloud-based music services entirely, honestly.
I'm only considering possibly ever subscribing to Apple Music because they let
you upload tracks you own that they don't have. I hear Google Music does the
same thing? Or maybe I'll finally set up that Plex server...

~~~
creeble
So true. I remember the first time I brought up an old-ish Spotify playlist,
only to discover that _all_ of the songs were now unplayable, with no
explanation. All of the songs still existed on the service, but those IDs just
expired for some reason. Same happened on Rdio from time to time. Presumably
this is a record company issue, not one endemic to any particular service.

But as much I wanted to love Rdio, the app (Android in particular) had many
bugs that would cause it to crash or lock up, and some that would send my
network connection off into the weeds, requiring (at least) an airplane-mode
reset.

And despite the claims of "elegant, groundbreaking", what music app has Search
on slide-out besides Rdio? With results that appear in a 1/3-size screen?

Time to figure out how to get my playlists over to Rhapsody, the Little Music
Service That Could.

------
bhouston
I was a rdio subscriber and their Andriod app was unreliable - it would just
stop working and have to be force killed. Yes, I can do that but for most
people, that is pretty horribl. Even I switched to Spotify after a while.

~~~
mdellabitta
Just as a alternative view: I was a Spotify user but their Android app was
unreliable... my phone would hard reset occasionally. Then I started using
Google Play Music.

------
bloke_zero
I loved the interface design and discovery. There was a lot to like about
Rdio, but no gapless playback? C'mon who wants to listen to Darkside of the
Moon with a 2 second pause between each track?

------
axx
For someone like me who was using Spotify for a few years, the short
experience with Rdio that i had was like "Oh, ok, it's basically like Spotify.
I keep using Spotify then."

~~~
hyperchase
Alternatively, I used Rdio first and tried out Spotify when they released the
Playstation4 integration and my reaction was "Oh, ok, it's basically Rdio but
with a lousy interface. I'll keep using Rdio then".

~~~
aianus
Rdio wouldn't let me download songs onto my laptop to listen to on flights so
I ditched them for Spotify.

Also helped that my new living room receiver had Spotify integration but not
Rdio.

------
inthewoods
Given the brutal reality of the streaming music business, it would not shock
me if Spotify suffered the same fate.

~~~
axx
The difference is, Spotify has a HUGE brand. When Spotify launched it was like
iTunes, but you could listen to everything "for free". Sure, it wasn't free
but compared to paying for every Album i'd listen to, a flat rate is basically
free.

~~~
inthewoods
Spotify has a great brand, but that doesn't solve the underlying poor
economics of their model. With Apple and Google moving in, I'm not sure their
brand is a long term advantage at this point. I just started trialing Youtube
Music - $9.99 a month (US only at the moment) with free Google Play Music. And
it's pretty good. And I'm pretty sure Youtube is a bigger brand than Spotify.

Neither Google or Apple has to make money from their service - whereas Spotify
must make money. It makes me wonder why Spotify hasn't just gone after artists
directly, because that's the only way I see them making money long term.

~~~
lagadu
> It makes me wonder why Spotify hasn't just gone after artists directly,
> because that's the only way I see them making money long term.

That's partially what Tidal tried to do but it's not going very well for them
either, unfortunately.

------
tomekn
I love how easy it is to browse for music by record label on rdio. Not
something you can do on other platforms and it's a great way to discover new
music! It'll be sad to see it go.

~~~
ituitu
Searching by record label is a hidden feature on Spotify. Try typing
label:"Atlantic records" in the search box.

~~~
neduma
Why so?

------
altendo
As someone who worked at GS, this kills me. I hate to see a streaming service
go down like that. I've mostly been listening to my library in Amazon's online
player - not a particularly big fan of Prime Music at all, bleh - but I did
give Rdio a try and enjoyed it. It was a much more enjoyable experience than
Spotify. Definitely feeling for the company.

------
dbg31415
I can't for the life of me figure out why we need 18 different services that
do -- from my perspective -- the exact same thing. Spotify, Pandora, iTunes,
Google Music, Amazon, Rdio... can't tell the difference between any of them,
so I just use whichever one gives me a free month that month in all the spam
marketing crap they send out.

~~~
wishinghand
Competition is healthy. With 18 different services to do more or less the
exact same thing, prices stay down. If there was only Spotify and they raised
their prices to higher than what you prefer, what company would you turn to?

------
mikikian
And for those interested, here's the sale process and purchase agreement fro
their bankruptcy filings (
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5k5SQee7k5pT3ZGVGZiU01jSE0...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5k5SQee7k5pT3ZGVGZiU01jSE0/view?usp=sharing)
)

