Rdio

~ the story ~

Rdio was launched on August 17, 2010, in beta in the United States, which is why it was founded by Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström, the Skype and Kazaa founders. The pitch was a paid music streaming service with a beautifully-designed interface and a focus on social discovery (your followers' listening histories were public; you could browse what your friends were playing). The launch coincided almost exactly with Spotify's first US-market preparations.

On November 16, 2015, Rdio's parent company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Pandora purchased Rdio's assets, the technology, the engineering team, the brand, for $75 million. Pandora promptly shut down Rdio on December 22, 2015 and used the assets to build out its own streaming subscription service. Rdio's user base was given thirty days to export their playlists before the service went dark.

~ the record ~

~ what made it special ~

Rdio's product had a specific elegance that was widely admired by designers and music writers. Three things specifically:

The interface. Rdio's web app and desktop client looked, in 2012, more like a magazine than like other streaming services. Album covers were displayed at full size. The typography was custom and well-considered. White space was generous. The browsing experience felt curatorial. Spotify's UI in the same era was utilitarian and dense; Apple Music's pre-2015 tries were even denser. Rdio was, briefly, the most attractive way to listen to music on a screen.

Social discovery. Each Rdio user had a public profile listing recent plays, favorite albums, and playlists. You could follow other users. Their listening would appear in your home page. The model was different from Spotify's "playlist sharing" focus; Rdio's social was about whose taste you trusted as a curator, not about which playlists were viral. Many serious music listeners preferred this model. It produced more discovery of less-popular music.

The "queue" workflow. Rdio had a queueing model where you added songs to a temporary play queue, played through them, and the queue depleted. Spotify's model was "play this album/playlist." Rdio's was closer to how a DJ thinks about music. A small but devoted audience preferred Rdio's queue-first approach.

~ how it lost the war ~

Rdio's defeat was, structural rather than tactical. Several specific dynamics worked against it:

The catalogue gap. Music streaming licensing required negotiating with major labels. The major labels (Universal, Sony, Warner) preferred to license to companies they thought would survive. Spotify had the larger user base and the easier sell. Rdio's catalogue was, in many regional markets, missing exclusive deals that Spotify had. Users moved to where the songs were.

The free-tier mismatch. Spotify's free, ad-supported tier was a massive top-of-funnel. Users sampled Spotify free, then often upgraded. Rdio's free tier was much more limited (intentionally, to push users to subscribe sooner). The math did not work: users were less willing to subscribe to a service they had not used freely.

The marketing budget. Spotify, by 2013, had hundreds of millions in marketing spend. Rdio had a tiny marketing team. The "elegant alternative for serious music listeners" pitch did not have the megaphone needed to compete with "free music for everyone."

Apple Music's 2015 launch. Apple Music shipped in June 2015. Within months it had 8 million paying subscribers, mostly converted from iTunes Music Store users. The streaming market was now a three-way fight between Spotify, Apple, and a long tail. Rdio, in the long tail, did not have the resources to fight. The November 2015 bankruptcy filing was 5 months after Apple Music's launch.

~ the pandora buyout ~

Pandora's $75M buyout of Rdio's assets was, savvy. Pandora at the time was a radio-style streaming service (algorithmic stations) without an on-demand catalogue. Buying Rdio's licensing relationships, technology, and engineering team was a way for Pandora to leapfrog into the on-demand streaming market.

The buyout did not,, save Pandora. Pandora launched "Pandora Premium" in 2017, built on Rdio's foundation. Pandora Premium had modest adoption, because siriusXM bought Pandora in 2019 for $3.5 billion (a fraction of Pandora's earlier valuations). The Rdio assets were, in this sense, a brick in a tower that eventually fell.

The 30-day shutdown window in December 2015 was, for Rdio's small but devoted user base, a particular kind of grief. Many users had spent years curating playlists, following friends, building listening histories. Rdio provided playlist export tools but not full migration, which is why most users started over on Spotify or Apple Music with empty libraries. Several years of musical relationship was lost.

~ the absence ~

The serious-music streaming experience. Spotify is excellent for casual listening. Apple Music is excellent for iTunes legacy users. There is no current major streaming service whose interface and social model are designed primarily for serious music listening. Rdio was that. There is now no equivalent.

The follow-someone-and-listen-to-what-they-listen-to model. Spotify has playlists, but discovering "what is my friend listening to right now?" is awkward. Rdio made this central. The contemporary equivalent. Apple's Music + Friends feature, is buried and underused. Public listening as social discovery has not been recreated at scale.

The design ambition. Rdio was a music streaming service that took its visual presentation seriously. Modern streaming services are decent but utilitarian. The argument that streaming UI deserves the same care as the music itself has not been winning.

~ from the comments below ~

"i was an Rdio subscriber from 2011 to 2015. i had 412 followers, all serious music listeners. when rdio shut down they migrated to different other places. some i still talk to. we never quite recovered the rdio social fabric on any other service.", m.k. 44

"my rdio playlists from 2013 are gone. i had a 'monday morning' playlist with 200 tracks i had curated for years. when rdio died i exported it as csv. spotify did not import it cleanly. i tried to rebuild from memory. i remembered maybe 60 tracks. the rest are forever gone.", e.t. 41

"rdio was the most beautiful piece of consumer software i have ever paid for. its death taught me that beauty is not enough.", a.r. 38