Rdio Review

by Eric Dybala

Description

"Rdio is unlimited music, everywhere." is the tagline of Rdio but it is much more than that.  Rdio is a multi platform streaming ad free social sharing music site.

Access

www.rdio.com

Free to Try but only for a limited period. (6 months)

Web Access: $4.99 per month. Unlimited web streaming from your browser or desktop (web browser optional)

Unlimited Plan: $9.99 per month. Web Access Plan + Unlimited Mobile streaming on smartphone, Sonos, and Roku (Supported Phones see Additional Resources)

Unlimited Family: $17.99 per month. 2 Unlimited Plans (Save 20% on the second subscription)

Sample Usage

What the Tool Does Well

While there is a cost after 6 months it is completely free of ads the entire time your listening which means no blaring McDonalds commercial will blare through your speakers if you happen to be listening to classical music while studying.  

Easy to use interface. Setup of a new account takes only seconds. Rdio has drag and drop features to make playlists quickly and easily. Rdio has a very simplified way to purchase any song through their site unlike Pandora and others that open a new window to amazon.com.

Allows you to connect with Facebook, Twitter, last.fm to find and share new music with people you know. Which allows you to find new music choices you never thought of.

When you follow people with Rdio you discover what people are listening to the most, what playlists they have, and reviews of music they may have given (unlikely unless they are an audiophile).

They offer a desktop app that syncs with current library allowing you to access your library while not at home. When Rdio scans your library the artists, albums or songs you have in your library that Rdio also has in its catalog, will be added to your Rdio Collection. (DRM protection feature) 

What it Does Poorly

Rdio is still relatively new and competing in a very saturated market competing with Free Version giants like Pandora, Spotify, Earbits, SoundCloud

Radio or Station button is only available on Heavy Rotation portion which  is a collection of songs based off who you follow and what I listen to.

While sharing in Rdio is more of a voyeuristic look onto the habits of others. Those privacy minded may not want others to see what your listening to or saying may not want to use Rdio as anyone can see what your doing. 

Top Charts/New Releases offers half of the songs in preview only with no explanation why. 

(Example: Justin Timberlake: The 20/20 Experience released March 2013 is completely available while Rihanna's Unapologetic is preview only and released in November 2012)

Unavailable Music and Catalog Requests. Simply a lot of the songs I searched were either not licensed for the US and couldn't be played for some reason. There were many popular artists I looked up for the CRAP playlist like Nelly, Snoop Dogg that specific songs were internationally licensed but not locally meaning you find the song you want but you can't play it. (Very Frustrating)

Rdio's Explanation for unavailable songs:

• Unreleased: if an album hasn't been released yet, its tracks will become playable when its release date arrives.
• Download-only: the music’s Label and/or Rights-holder has licensed the track for purchase and download, but not streaming.
• Regional restrictions: the track isn't available for streaming in your location, per licensing restrictions from its Label and/or Rights-holder.
• Take-down: music licensing rights occasionally change from one party to another (Labels, Distributors, etc.), so a former rights-holder may issue a take-down request that causes a track to become unavailable in Rdio’s catalog. Usually it only takes a little while before the track re-appears from its new Label/Distributor. If you encounter a track that was stream-able one day and not the next, let us know.

Additional Resources

http://help.rdio.com/

Supported Phones

Rdio for iPad + iPhone + iPod touch works on all devices with iOS 4.3 or higher.

Rdio for Android works on all Android devices running OS 2.2 or later.

Rdio for Windows Phone works on all Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 8 devices.

Rdio for BlackBerry works on Curve 8500+, Bold, Tour, Torch, Storm, and Style models. Requires BlackBerry OS 4.6 or newer.