I wanted to come up with a more profound title, but I couldn’t. Although, a declaration of true love seems pretty emphatic, don’t you think? Staying up with the trends in the music industry is important to me. In particular, I remember the brouhaha surrounding Qtrax. They were one of the first to offer a subscription based program with unlimited music from all your favorite artists. Every time they were going to launch in the U.S., they didn’t. Rumors of signed contracts were just rumors, and nothing ever materialized — at least, not in the U.S. And I’m not holding my breath on a U.S. launch anytime soon.
Then there’s Spotify. A great idea, a cool concept, and a whole lot of marketing hype. 8 million tracks available, just not in the United States. Not yet. But soon. No really, it’s coming soon.
Here’s the thing: I like owning music. And I like physical product — album art (to me) really is art. And confining it to a PDF, or a CD cover, instead of a full size album … that’s a travesty. So with a lot of hesitation, and limited expectations, I went for the free trial of Rdio. Based upon my own habits, I should hate it. But instead, I’m totally blown away!
From the start, I was impressed with the utter simplicity of the platform. Then I was amazed by the quantity of music available. Then I noticed I could sync it to play on my iPhone. The fact that I didn’t actually “own” the music was a non-issue. It was all instantly accessible and waiting for me. And when I tried to challenge the system with something random, it found it. And played it. Instantly. No forced ads, no “file loading – please standby,” and no “sorry, you’re using an iPhone and this is a Flash app” either. It worked. Beautifully.
A friend recommended the new Ray LaMontagne to me. No problem, Rdio has it. And I’ll recommend it to anyone and everyone. This morning, as I’m writing this, I remembered a cool Joni Mitchell track off “Mingus.” Rdio has that too. Yesterday, I wanted to listen to Broken Bells, Mark Ronson, and REM. All there waiting for me.
I have no hesitations paying $9.99/month for a service like this. It’s probably cheaper than buying all the music I’m listening to, and it’s legal — so (hopefully) the artists are gonna see some revenue. When something works as well as Rdio, it gives me that glimmer of hope that the music industry can get its act together.
