What I like and dislike about Rdio, my favorite music streaming service

Some time ago I started testing two music streaming services: Spotify and Rdio. The former is based in Sweden and by far the most popular in the Netherlands, the latter is based in the USA and much less popular here. Both services offer two forms of paid subscription and have identical pricing. After giving the free accounts of both services a try, I decided to start paying € 5 a month for Rdio’s Web account.

Rdio versus Spotify

I like Rdio more than Spotify because its web interface is so awesome. It looks so nice and is so easy to use, unlike Spotify’s web interface. The other notable difference with Spotify is that Rdio has a large collection of genre radio stations, with many separate radio stations for subgenres. This makes it easier for me to discover new music.

Both Rdio and Spotify have a catalog of more than 20 million songs, but the availability of specific artists is slightly different. Personally I noticed both don’t have AC/DC and only Spotify has Inna. And Rdio only has three Metallica albums available. But with such a large catalog there is enough other music to listen too.

My issues with Rdio

Apart from these lacunae in the catalog there are several other issues which I would like to see improved. I’ve posted my suggestion for improvement to the Rdio public help center:

The Logitech UE Smart Radio is not such a big issue for me. When I get finally get a job and my own home at some point, I would like to have a device in my living room which can play music from Rdio. However, I could also buy the Audioengine A2+ speakers and connect them with my laptop through USB. This would give me better sound quality than the UE Smart Radio. If I place them in my living room I could probably connect them with my TV too.

With a laptop I can also keep using the € 5 subscription instead of upgrading to the € 10 subscription which I assume would be necessary if Rdio were available on the UE Smart Radio. This is also the case for Spotify, which is supported by the UE Smart Radio. Spotify considers it a mobile device, which will only work if with their premium account for € 10 a month.

Concerning my issue with the payment methods, if they are absolutely unable to do something about it I might consider getting a PayPal account again after all, at least PayPal is free and credit cards are not.

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