Review: Rdio streaming music service

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

A few weeks ago during a Telus event, we met some folks for Rdio, a streaming music service with over 7,000,000 songs. Rdio is available as a website and also has clients for the iPhone, iPod Touch & iPad, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone mobile devices, which can play streaming music or cache songs for offline playback. There are also clients for the Roku and Sonos systems. The web-based service also offers a native desktop client app for Mac OS X and Windows.

An Rdio subscription is like having all the music you love available without needing to store it on your devices (although you can earmark songs for offline listening and they will be available on specific devices for a period of time). Just type any song, artist or album you can think of and if they have it you can play it. Think of it like Netflix but for music and with a way more comprehensive selection.

We tried both the iOS and the Android apps (Android is better, has more functionality) as well as the web-based service and were more than satisfied with the experience. We liked how you can start playing Dreams by Fleetwood Mac on the iPhone (over WiFi) and when you get to your browser, the song continues from where you left off.

Suddenly, the idea of having a ginormous music collection and having to manage, sync and access files individually across devices feels so, I dunno, 2004?

Rdio is a great example of cloud based technology working seamlessly (provided you have a good connection) across devices so the experience is transparent, quick and trouble free.

Subscription to the web-only service in Canada is $4.99 a month. The full-meal deal gives you the unlimited web access, unlimited mobile access on multiple devices as well as the ability to sync and save your favourite tunes on your device for offline listening, all for $10 a month.

Rdio also has the ability to create playlists, rate your favourite songs and there is a social aspect where you can follow people or suggest music to your friends. I get the feeling that this is what Apple's Ping social music service wanted to be but without the cloud synching aspect up and running it didn't take off at all.

Rdio is compelling even if you just go for the web-based service at $4.99 a month provided you have ample bandwidth via WiFi (you can access via 3G but it will cost you). We were glad to use a service that just worked no matter what device we used it on. Music quality is great and you can't beat  a 7,000,000 song library.

This is a praticulrly brilliant service when you have a song in mind and want to share it with people you are with but you may not have the song in your library. During a recent family vacation in the Bahamas, we were hanging out under the stars and I thought of the perfect song which was  The Church's Under the Milky Way.

Since we had a decent WiFi connection, I Rdio'd the song and was streaming it within a few seconds. How convenient!

Rdio is available for a 30 day trial, which is a great way for people to see if this service is good for their listening pleasure.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5