The cloud-based music game has gotten competitive since the launch of Spotify in the United States. There are a lot of good services available out there that will work with your smartphone. Today we will be looking as one of best ones, Rdio.
This is a service for those who listen to a lot of music. A subscription is required to get much use from the site since a free account will only allow snippets of songs. Among the subscriptions there is “Rdio Web” which allows for unlimited access to all music on Rdio from the web player, costing $4.99 a month. The second, and better, option is “Rdio Unlimited” which will allow you to get the most from the service. This subscription costs $9.99 a month but it will give you unlimited mobile access from your iPhone, Android, or BlackBerry, and syncing for offline listening. For the purpose of this review, we had “Rdio Unlimited” which allows for use on our iPhone.
Upon signing up for Rdio, the site will match your current iTunes music to the music they have on Rdio and add it to your collection. The collection itself is pretty big, you will find a lot of the music you are looking for that has been released on big labels.
Rdio has a social component that is important for discovering new music. You can search for your Facebook or Twitter friends using a tool on the site. When you begin following your friends, you will get recommendations from Rdio about popular songs they are listening to. The social side also allows you to share and listen to playlists created by other people.
Now to the mobile side… We used our iPhone 4 to test the Rdio app. It is really clean and has a lot of options right from the front page. It will allow you to easily check out your collection, playlists, queue, what’s in heavy rotation, activity, history, new releases, top charts, and recommendations. Notice that there isn’t much social integration involved in the mobile app. We think this is something that Rdio could work on.
Overall, we are impressed with the Rdio music service. We like the big collection and the ways to discover music. The best parts service is priced up there at $9.99 which is comparable to other similar services so it is nothing too outrageous. Rdio is definitely worth checking before deciding on a subscription music service.
Check out Rdio.