Are 10 million songs worth five bucks a month to you? Improbable as those figures may seem, that’s the pitch for all-you-can-eat music service, Rdio. Unlike digital music stores such as iTunes or eMusic that sell individual tracks and albums, Rdio is a streaming service. Accessible through a browser or an app on a computer, or on smartphones and tablets for an extra five dollars a month, you don’t own music through Rdio, but rather pay to have access to millions of tracks, anywhere. It’s the kind of thing that definitely requires you to shift your mentality, particularly if you’ve grown up in the age of vinyl or CDs. If and when you do, however, Rdio proves to be genuinely impressive, giving music fans instantaneous access to a huge and diverse catalogue of tracks. Perhaps just as importantly, services like Rdio also allow the tuned-in listener to stay atop the ebb and flow of contemporary culture for a very reasonable cost. Though it has a perfectly competent website player, Rdio works best by downloading a small, iTunes-like piece of software that also scans your computer’s music collection to match songs you own to your Rdio account. In my modest collection of around 4,500 tracks, Rdio was able to match around 2,800 of them. Those songs, plus the rest of the catalogue, are then accessible from anywhere you have a computer-based web browser. Using either the site or the Rdio player, you can add albums to your collections, create playlists or simply browse and search for new things to listen to. Rdio has an impressive diversity of content, not simply in terms of genre or era, but region and language, too. According to Rdio COO Carter Adamson, who was in Toronto last week, Canadians who sign up for the service have access to approximately 10 million tracks. And unlike, say, movie service Netflix, the disparity in content between the U.S. and Canada isn’t large; the U.S. has only a million or so tracks more. That said, Rdio has significantly less than iTunes’ 18 million songs, and it isn’t uncommon to run into a greyed-out album with ‘Not Available’ written atop it. The other main component of Rdio is discovery, to which the company takes a social, rather than algorithmic approach. Borrowing the model from Twitter, you can follow both friends and strangers on the service, but also the accounts of people like Alan Cross, or music publications like Exclaim or Pitchfork. Being able to see what both your friends and respected music critics are listening to is a remarkably effective way to find new tunes, and it’s arguably one of the most compelling features of the service. There are three levels of subscription. The $4.99/month service gets you web or desktop access to the entire Rdio catalogue. A $9.99/month level adds mobile access for the iPhone, iPad, Android and Windows Phone 7 devices. Songs can be synced, too, which means they will still play even when you don’t have a data connection (though at the moment, the Android app is a bit buggy, and the WP7 one is basically unusable). There is also a family plan for $17.99/month, that lets two people listen simultaneously, and can add more listeners for a discounted monthly fee. A free version is on the way, but Adamson was cagey about details. He did suggest that it would not be ad-supported, but wasn’t exactly clear if it would mean an extended trial period or be limited to a certain number of tracks. Also coming soon to Canada is a way to buy music. Rdio in and of itself isn’t a replacement for owning music–and nor does the company want it to be. “Some segment of people will always own CDs or downloads, and I don’t think that will change,” Adamson says. “But it will be reduced. It’s a generational thing.” And indeed, given the small gaps in the catalogue and the fact that labels can choose to pull their content if they so wish, I wouldn’t recommend solely relying on Rdio. But as a supplement to the occasional album purchase on iTunes, Rdio is remarkable. For five or ten dollars a month, you have access to millions of songs, ranging from obscure 60s tracks to contemporary pop, from anywhere. Couple that with a slick interface, an effective social aspect, and great mobile apps that work offline (if you’re on iOS, anyway) and Rdio is a compelling proposition. On top of it all, having constant access to new music allows the engaged listener to stay atop the swirl of contemporary music and culture. Given that you get all that for the price of a couple of latts per month, music fans shouldn’t hesitate to sign up. __ Navneet Alang is the Toronto Standard Tech Critic, but he always manages to sneak some culture in there, too.
