Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Pandora to Buy Rdio Assets for $75M, Rdio Files Ch.11, Will Shutter Service

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–266 of 266 posts

Re: Pandora to Buy Rdio Assets for $75M, Rdio Files Ch.11, Will Shutter Service

#261

Post by vlunkr »

andrewingram wrote: post #235
thirdsun wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly, that doesn't sound appealing at all as a discovery tool - unless I know I like the curator's taste, I'm probably not interested in his recommendations. That's why the heavy rotation section in rdio that only showed popular music among your friends (which you should select carefully!) was so useful - if you had a circle of great tastemakers.

It's generated algorithmically based on your recent-ish listening habits combined with a bit of fairy dust, I believe they acquired a company that specialised in it. It's pretty good at recommending songs to me that are similar to what i've been listening to, along with a few curveballs that encourage me to branch out, or throwbacks to older habits.

Right, I didn't word that very well. It's a computer generating the playlist, not a curator.

Re: Pandora to Buy Rdio Assets for $75M, Rdio Files Ch.11, Will Shutter Service

#262

Post by livingparadox »

gitah wrote: post #69
livingparadox wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...in the call today McAndrews made clear that those numbers [of users] are irrelevant since that service is shutting down, not transferring."

How does that indicate Pandora doesn't get the contact information and payment information of Rdio subscribers?

"not transferring"

Re: Pandora to Buy Rdio Assets for $75M, Rdio Files Ch.11, Will Shutter Service

#263

Post by criley2 »

buttscicles wrote: post #227
criley2 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spotify does not allow you to upload your music or anything like that. You simply have access to their full catalog, and can choose to download any part of it for offline consumption.

This is false, this feature definitely exists.

Correction: A local spotify install can find music on your computer which can be played through the spotify client, but you cannot UPLOAD this music for use on other clients.

The Spotify desktop client can act as a Media Player for your other media, but you cannot upload it like you can with other services (which would be pointless, seeing as you already have access to 100% of Spotify's catalog).

Re: Pandora to Buy Rdio Assets for $75M, Rdio Files Ch.11, Will Shutter Service

#264

Post by andrewaylett »

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #234
bmelton wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never noticed that myself, but if you say it's a feature, I'll believe you, and applaud Google for doing it that way. As different album releases often contain different recordings, sometimes finding EXACTLY the song I want to hear is hard to do. Having fallen for Sublime when they were still playing live shows, but knowing that they were only able to capitalize on their fame after the death of their singer, the…

The downside being that the duplicate detection is nonexistent - I have a playlist I sync to my phone, and often when I'm listening on "I'm Feeling Lucky" mode at my PC a song will come up that I like and I'll add it to the playlist. As you can imagine, this often leads to multiple versions of the same song taking up valuable space. The same goes for thumbs-up and thumbs-down - it won't apply to all versions of a son…

MusicBrainz has separate concepts of "works", "recordings" and "releases" that I think should allow for some resolution of your problems. I'm not aware of any tooling that actually makes use of this level of data though -- anyone more familiar than me?

Re: Pandora to Buy Rdio Assets for $75M, Rdio Files Ch.11, Will Shutter Service

#265

Post by johntotenhammer »

jeremyrwelch wrote: post #116

Rdio made a mistake by trying to compete directly with Spotify. And Pandora is making a huge mistake by shutting down the service and losing a valuable niche group of users. Everyone I know who actually uses Rdio is DIE HARD (I see evidence of this in the comments too). The users I know are pro audio guys, musicians, programmers, artists, etc who use the app 6+ hours a day across desktop and mobile. Rdio could easily…

I agree that it seems like a big misstep to discontinue the service so quickly. Given their relative size, there have to be hundreds of thousands of paying subscribers, and an order of magnitude more Free subscribers that are dedicated Rdio customers. That's significant. Why inspire all those people to go away and risk them getting attached to another competing service? Why not simply re-brand Rdio as Pandora for the time being?

I understand that there are costs associated with maintaining the Rdio application back-end; all the API services the clients use, databases, content delivery network, media storage, new music ingestion, royalty payment system, the mobile, auto, TV and set-top apps etc. It costs a lot of dough just keeping the lights on.

But how much does it cost to a) keep the lights on for say 6 months to a year versus b) what, develop your own product and market the hell out of it so you can start from 0 paying subscribers and try to work your way back up to where Rdio was? (is what Pandora has in mind? Can't believe they just wanted to snuff the service.)

But somebody must have done the math and said "yep, makes sense, kill it." Either because they just wanted to flush Rdio out of the way or because the math comparison was a no-brainer.

In the meantime, I'm going to join you in continuing to enjoy the best, and most beautiful on-demand streaming service available.

(not sure about the comments regarding buggy mobile streaming. At 320 it may drop in the countryside, but dial it down to 192 or lower and you're fine. Yeah I like high grade audio too, but I prefer lower grade music to no music at all.)

Re: Pandora to Buy Rdio Assets for $75M, Rdio Files Ch.11, Will Shutter Service

#266

Post by rekoros »

GBond wrote: post #257
rekoros wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rdio co-founders sold Skype (twice). When they co-founded Rdio, they weren't hoping to build their life's work, they just wanted to try something new (I guess), in the US. Rdio was run by VPs. That's OK when things are going great and there's lots of money in the bank. It's not OK when the ship needs some founder-inspired steering in a storm. It's not OK when the ship is taking on water. It's not OK if there are sign…

Do you think lack of founder attention negatively impacted lack of progress on the partnership/BD side? Seem to be key in the market (Spotify with Starbucks; Pandora in-car app). Sad to see the "best" product in the market go under.

Absolutely.

Rdio had insane product talent but no business captain (this can only be an obsessed founder, pre-success).

With normal startups, they just fail off the bat in this scenario.

Rdio had enough money to hide the lack of captain issue for a really long time.

Post reply on HN