Rdio is shutting down, Pandora acquiring parts (theverge.com)
almost 8 years ago from Jonathan Suh, Designer at Planning Center
almost 8 years ago from Jonathan Suh, Designer at Planning Center
RIP. One of the services I happily pay for every month and will miss terribly. The others just don't have the same feeling of belonging that Rdio gave me.
Same here.
Same here.
Same here
Yup. ._.
Yep I'm in the same boat. Listening with the Rdio app at the moment, it's the end of an era.
I guess that answers my Rdio vs. Spotify app question.
Even with shutdown imminent in a few days/weeks, Rdio is still the better choice. I've been on it for 5 years and am not looking forward to joining the competition.
Sidenote: in my signups to both Apple Music and Spotify last night (not sure where to go), both had HUGE site-breaking bugs and design flaws that don't make me excited for the jump over.
Care to elaborate on such bugs?
Sure thing: here are two screenshots from trying to sign up for Spotify (the T&C just looks broken, but the other wouldn't let me pay them. And I have JS enabled in my browser) https://twitter.com/AndyStone/status/666425404345847808
As for Apple Music, the layout was completely busted during the sign-up process. Didn't feel like it was Apple's (or anyone's) level of quality. http://imgur.com/udUV6zK
I've moved over to Spotify out of need at this point, but I was considering the move anyway with how buggy the Rdio app was getting, which is an entirely different topic. But I hear you on how Rdio was such a nice change from a community and design perspective. Loved reading this recap: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/11/a-eulogy-for-rdio/416310/
That was an excellent read. It is crazy to think about how much knowledge Rdio has about me and my music preference. I discovered SO many of my favorite bands through Rdio and have mostly avoided music review sites since Rdio premiered. I'm currently trying out Apple Music, but feel like I still need a better discovery website for new tunes (and that's not Pitchfork for me).
Have a great day.
Ugh, yeah the Rdio mobile app was the only blemish on an otherwise fantastic service. Consistently had problems with it.
For a long time I really wanted to work at Rdio because they were doing my favourite design work on a product I genuinely loved using every day.
Same for me!
I don't get it, what's so bad about Spotify? Have been using it for a loooong time and I love it.
+1. Not being a Spotify fanboy, I just find it hard to understand what would be better if I went through the process of switching to another service? Price/Sound Quality/Features/Company Values/UX?
I love Spotify! I've never used Rdio since it never worked here in Denmark. Apple Music sucks so much.
Spotify caters more to playlists and I'm more of an Album listener, Rdio's interface catered much better to my music listening experience then Spotify. Opened up Spotify today to give it a shot now that Rdio is kaput. As a runner I'm interested in the Running feature though.
I used to be an Album listener as well, but I find so much more joy in putting playlists together and it's so incredibly easy with Spotify. Their recommendation engine is top notch as well and it keeps me diving deeper from artist to artist, discovering new music all the time. Having said that, it's still really easy to just listen to albums if you want to, you can now save artists and albums in 'Your Music' and it'll show up for you very much like it would in say iTunes.
This was my biggest gripe with Spotify as well.
Not sure if you've used it recently, but they now have a "Your Music" section that allows you to browse your collection by Artist, Album, or Song.
NO! This is horrible news.
Edit: here is how to get a CSV of your favorites...
1.) Install this Google Chrome Plugin.
2.) Refresh the Rdio webapp and select your favorites list. An "Export to CSV" button should appear at the top. Click the button and wait (my library took about 30-60 seconds before the download happened, be patient).
3.) Shed a tear.
Can you do anything with this? Can you import it to Spotify?
Once you have your CSV you can use third-party services like Ivy to import them.
I'd be amazed if the engineers at Spotify, Tidal, Deezer and Apple Music weren't working on import tools right now to try and ease the transition onto their service from Rdio. They'd be daft not to. This is a huge opportunity to grab a whole bunch of users that would never have switched otherwise.
Well, I use this because I switch my music streaming service every 3 months or less, currently using Google Play Music and MixRadio, but it work with Rdio, Spotify, Tidal, Deezer, Rdio and Groove Music and others: Soundizz
They had the best design in the music streaming service. I will miss it.
I've been using Spotify for over 3 years now and it's only getting better and better. Rdio relied heavily on design and never really appealed to the mass market - I doubt any of my non-dev/non-designer peers have ever even heard of Rdio.
That's sad. Seems like Apple music will be the next stop for me. But hopefully we'll still have Rdio service for a while.
You can skip Apple Music and just go straight to Spotify.
Apple Music makes more sense to be since I already buy albums on iTunes Music and use iTunes Match. Even not being the best product to use right now makes more sense to have all my music library in one place.
This is one of those moments when you struggle with the possibility that design isn't always the silver bullet answer when there could have been other fundamental business issues solved to help them survive.
I'm going to be an outlier here for saying this but I found Rdio to be overdesigned and frustrating to use. I stuck with Spotify, which is still a great product.
Design doesn't always matter.
Designer News: Design doesn't always matter™
I disagree completely—design most definitely always matters. Now, whether or not it is the most important aspect depends on the product.
I'm interested to hear what aspects you feel Rdio is over-designed, if you wouldn't mind elaborating. The design is pretty paired down which allows the focus to be on the music, which is how it should be IMO.
As with most, I'm quite sad. Rdio has been my favorite for a long time. Great app that's easy to use (though it had a rough time for a while there where it was pretty buggy, but everyone goes through that it seems).
Pandora could stand to gain if they also take the music licensing deals with this sale. If they don't get the licensing deals, then this will just lead to another on-demand music clone with Pandora's pitiful music library. They can use Rdio's tech all they want, but if they still only have the same million or so songs in their catalog, it's not worth it.
Spotify has the music library to match, and even best Rdio, but the app and interface are terrible. On the Android app, for example, you can't reorder your play queue. Also each song and album has an "overflow" style menu button on it, but the press target is so small that if you don't use a stylus, there is about an 80% chance you won't hit the menu button and instead select the track itself, which starts playing immediately and REPLACES the play queue that you can't reorder. Terrible, terrible interface. And it's been this way for years.
Hope Pandora does something similar.
Damn. I loved Rdio, and then they put the focus on stations and new users, and abandoned the features old/power users knew and loved. (Removing history.. ? wtf?!)
Maybe someone here knows: does Spotify have the remote control functionality, when you are logged in on multiple devices? i loved this feature (when it worked)
Spotify does have this feature!
Yes, remote control does work on Spotify (even when you're not on the same network). It's worked really well and much better than Rdio IMO.
Yeah to get to your history you click on your name and then click on history. I was bummed when I thought it was removed but found it after digging around a bit. Guess it doesn't matter now though :(.
I switched over to Spotify today and upgraded to Premium. I'm still getting the Google ad at the bottom. I figured it would go away once I paid.
Is this normal?
Definitely not normal, it may require a re-login or a re-launch.
Hopefully they offer a clean way to switch over to another service. I will really miss Rdio.
Because of the new Pandora relationship, it seems like it'll be unlikely that they'll offer tools to move to services like Spotify... though I'm interested to see whether Spotify will release some better import tools at their end.
I didn't use Rdio regularly but whenever I checked in and played around with it there was always some good design going on. Sad to see they're bowing out.
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