Earlier today I bought a $10 album from iTumes, which I wish I hadn’t. The reviews were glorious, and the previews not indicative. Listening to the album all I could hear was hipster drivel. Obviously, I wanted my money back. Well, bad luck. iTunes won’t give refunds. I tweeted about it, and a friend suggested Rdio. Rdio, a brand new streaming service, currently offers a 3-day free trial — without the need for a credit card. For $5 let’s you stream their huge library on your desktop via an Adobe AIR app or browser, and for $10 let’s you also stream from Android/BBerry/iOS, plus be able to sync your music with you offline on these devices. Unlike Last.fm and Pandora, Rdio let’s you stream on-demand.
The service allows you to create playlists, add songs to your virtual collection, add songs to queue (which is a more radio-way to have them played). You can also export your iTunes library information to Rdio, so the system can automatically add these albums on your collection. Rdio is a social network too (allows Facebook/Twitter integration), and allows you to follow people, share playlists, create collaborative playlists.
The music quality is pretty good, ranging from 192kbps to 256 kbps, depending on the album. The Adobe AIR app is small and manageable on the desktop, not taking much space (although I’d have liked it to “glue” on the edges of the desktop automatically, and have its icon on the notification area rather than on the tasker). Its UI is slick, and up to the point. The cellphone apps are the same too. You can sync your collection to your mobile devices and take it offline if you like. The format delivered is obviously some scrabbled mp3 database, rather than plain mp3 files. If you like plain mp3 files to be able to copy in any device, you’d have to buy the album, which usually sells full retail price at $10. Not all albums are available for buying via Rdio though.
Personally, I’d say that the service is worth the money it costs. It gives you the ability to fully taste, by listening and re-listening music before you buy. The albums you like, but not enough to spend money on them, you can always listen via Rdio. The ones that you discover that you really like, you can buy via Rdio, Amazon, iTunes, CD. If that $5 or $10 that Rdio costs saves you $10 every month for that bad purchase you could have made, then it’s totally worth it. Just like wine-tasting…
And if you are one of those people who never listen music at home, on their living room, via their HiFi system (or AppleTV, like I am), then you might never need to buy any album, and have your music craving completely fulfilled by Rdio’s $10 all-you-can-eat offer.
Still, things could be better. Not all artists are on Rdio. Animal Collective’s bulk of discography is not “live” for example. Currently there is no gapless playback (which kind of kills Pink Floyd)! There’s no way to “star” songs (or import ratings from iTunes), which are important for the formation of “smart” playlists — another must-have for my husband and myself. Other info, like year & genre, are also missing, info that’s also important for the formation of smart playlists.
But these are just feature requests. Features that one day may arrive if enough people ask for them. Instead, I have a strategic advice to give Rdio: partner with Bandcamp, among others. The future of music is in bedroom artists. Stardom, and manufactured “artists” won’t be as prominent anymore as the music industry crumbles. Instead, just like everyday people revolutionized photography via digicams/FlickR, the same thing will happen with video (especially with the latest crop of HD dSRLs and digicams), and of course, music. A lot of upcoming, successfully online, music is made by these artists that don’t have representation on iTunes and Amazon. And that’s a good opportunity for Rdio to grab this coming-strong cult, truly-indie, market. I guess what I’m saying is for Rdio to let unsigned/non-represented artists publish their music on their site easily, and if these artists want their music to be free for downloading, Rdio should allow just that without hassle. There’s no reason why I need to jump from Rdio, to iTunes, to Amazon, to Bandcamp, to Jamendo all day long like a grasshopper, just so I can find all the artists I like. Bring music in one place. And if something is supposed to be free, let it be easily downloadable as plain mp3s.
…You can usually get a feel for the song.
I think I’d still prefer last.fm and itunes.
Eugenia, OSnews is more than just a blog written by someone in the USA. I’m sure you know it – in big part that’s your own achievement.
It’s quite interesting to see what ideas others are coming up with but please label such stories appropriately so others don’t have to loose their time if they are only interested in the particular product or service.
Grooveshark and Spotify are good alternatives. The Spotify app is really nice, it lets you star and queue songs, it is lightweight, fast and has lots of infos and links etc. But some stupid artists like ACDC and Metallica and I think Sony stuff are not on there.
Grooveshark has everything everywhere, but their website is just one big and ugly flash blob. (The amazing thing is that Grooveshark seems legal in Germany. Major news outlets touting it as a Spotify alternative.)
And you can rip songs really easy from both.(Ripping internet radio is even encouraged by the government. Only filesharing is portrait as the devil reincarnate, which is totally stupid obviously)
Grooveshark is three bucks a month for their VIP (as they call it) and it’s fantastic. It may not be the best streaming, it’s really worthwhile for it’s price. I’d like to try other ones too.
Yup, Grooveshark FTW. Even the free version is great, but if you pay 3$/month you get a desktop app and a mobile app.
I really hate sites like Rdio and Last.fm that are only available in the US. Really useless.
Apparently the mobile app won’t remain free for ever (i.e. you’ll have to pay more than $3/month).
Otherwise it sounds like an awesome deal.
Well, another 3 bucks for the mobile app is not such a big deal.
Grooveshark and Spotify are good alternatives. The Spotify app is really nice, it lets you star and queue songs, it is lightweight, fast and has lots of infos and links etc.
Agreed. Spotify does all the stuff Rdio does and more and their client is really lightweight and stable while still managing to do all the most important features. Equally as Rdio so does Spotify also offer mobile phone support and these days there are several Linux clients in development too.
But the best thing about Spotify? It’s available almost everywhere.
But some stupid artists like ACDC and Metallica and I think Sony stuff are not on there.
Actually AC/DC is there, I just checked. Do remember the forward slash if you search for it, it’s not “ACDC.” Metallica seems to have only one album released in 2006, I’m just glad I don’t listen to them
Look a little closer.
In my Spotify there is only Gone Shootin’ from AC/DC (on the Beavis and Butt-Head Do America OST), there is also Back in Black, but it is ??broken??.
And the Metallica album you mention is only a tribute album.
ONE song is not enough and there are a lot other artists that are not on Spotify.
By “almost everywhere”, do you mean a grand total of 7 countries?
http://www.spotify.com/int/help/faq/availability/
I’m not suggesting to download your album from the Pirate Bay. If you like it, buy. If you don’t, delete the file. Do not do it, it’s not legal.
I prefer Spotify: it has a decent native client for Linux, OS X and Windows as well as phones. Their music collection is also fairly big.
Of course, Spotify is currently not available in the US, but I have seen rumors that it soon will. Ever since it has been available in The Netherlands, I have been a premium member.
Now, if they could only make such a service for movies.
You should keep an eye on http://www.voddler.com/about/. It’s currently available in Nordic countries only but may be expanding elsewhere in Europe.
Of course now I’m very curious to know what album this is, could you enlighten us?
I was wondering the same thing.. “hipster drivel” leads me to think its something like Postal Service or Decemberists.
Mount Eerie’s latest one.
Just checked their MySpace page, and you are right, I find it terrible, boring, pretentious crap. Never heard the term “hipster” being used over here (Netherlands). I assume you bought the album a while ago, before their MySpace page included all these very bad songs? Otherwise I can only say: sucker!
Earlier today I bought a $10 album from iTumes, which I wish I hadn’t. The reviews were glorious, and the previews not indicative. Listening to the album all I could hear was hipster drivel. Obviously, I wanted my money back. Well, bad luck. iTunes won’t give refunds.
Well, had you reviewed Terms and Conditions [1], you would’ve known beforehand. But I’m pretty sure you knew it beforehand and only weaved this very subtle stab into your article to please the crowd here.
I love the quality “journalism” at OSnews.
[1] http://www.apple.com/legal/itunes/us/terms.html
Regardless of agreements and “Terms and Conditions”(much in the way you put quotes around “journalism”) the customer is “always right”.
And Apple is a bunch of jerks anyways. Mister Jobs is going mad because his vision of the future was thwarted by Microsoft, and now Jobs has has just about lost it and ended up turning Apple into what he hates the most: Big Brother. That’s right, welcome to corporate communism…from a tech giant? No thanks, I’ll buy from someone else.
Ironically enough, your tangential nonsensical rant tells us more about you -via projection- than Mr. Jobs himself.
Seriously, the real world does not resemble your parent’s basement, nor it is run like your school yard. It is sad seen kiddies talk about “Jobs” and “Gates” as if they knew them.
As per the article itself. Seriously, the author could have introduced the service/product without the silly trendy apple-hating red meat bait as an intro.
Edited 2010-08-24 13:38 UTC
Hating iTunes has nothing to do with hating Apple. Hating iTunes is universal, and transcends geekdom. I have yet to meet anyone who doesn’t despise iTunes – other than Apple fanboys, of course.
As both a geek and a Mac OS user, I wouldn’t say I hate it; the app works fine on OS X and is passable on Windows. I still don’t understand why iTunes and Safari don’t work as well on Windows as on OS X.
As for the store, I’ve never bought anything on there even after the switch to non-DRM files. I’ve always bought online music from Amazon and eMusic. I rarely listen to top-40 pop, so most of what I like (trance, eurosynth, industrial, electro, dark cabaret, synthpop etc) is already on eMusic. For the few mainstream acts I currently enjoy there is Amazon.
There are even times when I want a physical CD, for example when I’m really into a band; I usually buy from cdbaby.com, or Amazon if cdbaby doesn’t carry what I want.
The Rdio service was introduced to me BECAUSE of the iTunes situation. So it *IS* part of the story. If I could have had my money back, I would have not looked at Rdio.
I know very well about their terms and conditions. That doesn’t mean I like them and that I have to eat such policies in the face. If I can whine about them, I WILL.
is waffles.fm (:
In Norway we have a similar alternative called Wimp.
Also Adobe Air, and iPhone and Android-apps. 99 NOK (15 USD)/month, the phone-apps support offline-storage as long as you subscribe, and unlimited streaming. What I like about it is the album suggestions, ratings from different websites and newspapers, playlists when there are music festivals etc. etc. made by the people who run it. The only downside is that, as always, not all artists allow streaming, and I can’t figure out why.
Services like this actually predate services like iTunes. It’s just they’ve never been endorsed by makers of products wrapped in shiny plastic.
I will not use any service that removes a vowel from its name to sound cool.
Yr rspns s spt n nd fnny. Thnk y fr kpng t lght nd tght hr n SNWS.cm
How about if they removed the vowel so they wouldn’t have to spend months negotiating and then pay millions to buy a generic-word domain name? Would you use it then?
Twt.
I’ve been using Spotify for almost two years now. I really like the lightweight multi platform client. I love the recent additions of the social and local library features.
It’s awesome to be able to drag and drop a song or album over to the person I want to recommend it to. And it’s fun to be able to look at what my friends have been listening to lately. The local library feature could be improved a lot though, but it’s nice to finally have it there.
Edited 2010-08-24 12:53 UTC
Hurray, another Adobe managed dependency that limits what OS platforms can use the service. Flash 2.0!
Ummm…Adobe Air works on Windows (of course), Macs and Linux.
Granted, there’s no BSD, Solaris, Haiku, MenuetOS, or DOS versions, but it’s still a hell of a lot more alternative OS support than most software companies provide. Newsflash: Most companies couldn’t give a shit about even Mac and Linux support, as long as the Windows userbase is covered. I’m not necessarily a fan of Adobe, but hell, at least they are making an effort!
I hadn’t had reason to confirm so cheers for that. No Air available in the Debian repositories non-free or otherwise so Adobe’s going it alone.
Adobe’s *nix native version specifies Fedora Core 12, ubuntu 9.10 or openSUSE 11.2 as requirements. The ubuntu .deb may work with Debian 6 since Ubuntu 9.10 is based on Debian Testing and Unstable branches. I don’t see any specification if it’s 32bit only or works with 32bit or 64bit systems. I had to dirty my 64bit install to support 32bit Flashplugin so I’m pessimistic about the topic.
dpkg: error processing adobeair.deb (–install)
package architecture (i386) does not match system (amd64)
Errors where encountered while processing:
adobeair.deb
Thanks Adobe.. still can’t manage to find any developers that can code 64bit huh?
Grooveshark is much better & available worldwide & on Nokia Symbian based mobile devices.
The build quality of the Grooveshark app on Symbian is fantastic.
Grooveshark & Mobbler FTW!
Hipster Drivel? You even link to your blog post about chill-wave where you used ‘hipster drivel’ to also describe some other music you did not enjoy. I wouldn’t really bash music as hipster drivel then comment about how Animal Collective is not available on Rdio, as I am sure other people would describe that band in the same way.
In the end this article seems like drivel. You tell people simply go out and get Rdio and don’t even talk about some alternatives.
I got a refund on iTunes through Apple Customer support once. It was pretty awesome. It was the only time I ever bought an album on iTunes as well.
Agreed, sounds like a lame attempt at bashing itunes and plugging rdio.
iTunes provides 25 second previews and every band has a website with some full tracks.
I remember when you had to buy a CD for $20 if you wanted a couple songs and the rest would be filler. Or how about those $7 singles cd? Where you get 3 versions of the same song even though you just wanted the original.
Cry more.
I have to agree with those who’ve mentioned Spotify and other suggestions. If we’re talking about iTunes alternatives, it would be appropriate to offer more than just one — one I haven’t before heard of, isn’t available outside of the US, and therefore useless to the vast majority of the world.
Spotify is a much better alternative, simply because it’s available all-round. Then there’s Grooveshark (though their legality is still a little unclear) and all others mentioned here.
Kinda disappointed in this article.