What I learned with Rdio without using Rdio.
Since Pandora acquired Rdio, the main topic among my friends is: How will we listen to music now? Will Pandora look as cool as Rdio? Will we need to move to Spotify? — Rdio shutdown came as a sad news for everyone.
Well, for almost everyone. I was not directly affected because I've always used Spotify. That, in fact, came as a surprise to my friends and co-workers who always preferred Rdio. There was an assumption that designers would prefer a clean, better organized and album-focus interface. And that would be true if I were not caught by Spotify before.
It was at the beginning of 2011 when I first joined Spotify. Rdio came to my life later on, but my decisions on keeping Spotify as my primary source of music were based on my listening style and features that made the difference in my experience:
- The desktop app opening at login with accessible control on the keyboard to play my favorite songs (Rdio didn’t have a desktop app until later).
- The free music search on mobile (Rdio only had stations for mobile in the $4.99 plan, while Spotify was offering more than that).
- The larger collection of music that allowed me to find the songs I was looking for at almost all times. (Apparently, the repertoire is the similar now, but Rdio used to have fewer songs than Spotify).
- And unique features like curated playlists for every situation, and the recent run feature that detects when I am running and play the music that matches with my tempo.
These items were enough for me to stick with my decision and loyalty. And apparently, I was not alone: Spotify has grown to more than 3 million paying subscribers in less than three years since the U.S launch in 2011. In total, they are responsible for 20 million paid subscribers. Rdio was believed to have an anemic number of under 600,000 users. However those items and numbers were not enough to convince my friends about why I have never switched services. While, for me, it was just a matter of purchase choice, for them it was ideological. There were something else behind the resistance to leaving Rdio, and I wanted to understand why.
A Brief Story
Music distribution and consumption
We all have an idea of how distribution of music started. Since distribution affects the way we buy music, it also affects the way we consume music.
Think of how the move from the 78 to the vinyl record let people listen longer, and how the cassette tape made music portable.— Jacob Ganz for NPR, in 2009.
- 78 RPM Record allowed to play 5 minutes of music;
- LP (Long Play) Vinyl allowed to play 22 minutes per side;
- Cassette tapes made music portable and would typically play 30 or 45 minutes of audio per side. The Walkman, from Sony, introduced a change in music listening habits by allowing people to carry recorded music with them and listen to music through headphones.
- CD (Compact Disk) kept music portable and allowed to play 80 minutes straight. The Discman, also from Sony, sparked public interest in CDs as an audio format.
- MP3 made music more accessible with easy download on the internet.
With CD players, we had to make space in our backpacks for CDs and choose in advance which albums we would carry. Luckily, Apple iPods and other MP3 players facilitated the portability. With that, people were able to bring thousands of songs with them anywhere they were going to. Then, the question was not more about space, but about time: how many hours of music do I have on my iPod? And when should I listen to it.
From MP3 to Streaming
Records to MP3 was a significant shift in music consumption. But MP3 to streaming was the most recent one, and we haven’t fully figured out the impact on our habits yet. Streaming music brought business models that influenced our way to “find” music. It looks like someone else has downloaded all the MP3 songs in the world, saved in my computer and left a search bar for me to find them.
Even though streaming services are gaining a significant number of new adopters, they are far to rank first. The music landscape still looks highly fragmented. On average, only 3% of the money that consumers spent on music went to paid online music streaming services.
In 2014, streaming made up just 27% of industry revenues, compared with 37% of digital downloads and 32% of physical sales, according to the RIAA. So while streaming is most definitely the future, the future hasn’t quite gotten here yet.
In May, Geoffrey A. Fowler published an article called “Apple Music Is Here, But Is Streaming Right For You?” on The Walt Street Journal. He mentioned that, about a year ago, he stopped buying tracks from the iTunes store, and started streaming on Spotify. He realized he was paying more for music than before:
When I checked my old receipts, I discovered my Spotify subscription costs twice what I used to spend on music. Yes, twice.
Depending or your listening style, this "Rdio versus Spotify" discussion would not even be worth. Streaming music is not for everybody. And if you are the kind of person who listens to the same artists and albums, you might be paying more than you need.
Album Listening Style
A lean forward experience
The music distribution was always album-based because artists organize their music repertoire in albums and vice-versa (It seems to be a chicken-egg relationship). In any case, 6o% of the money we spend in music goes to Album-based choices. I noticed there is a mindset that states: “I would spend money on albums and artists, but I would not spend money on playlists”. Therefore despite the popularity of playlists (see stats on next topic), there is an obvious reason for the natural tendency of album-by-album music listening.
This style is a lean forward experience because you need to choose proactively the album you want to listen. That also means that you would need to interact with the music player more often.
Greg Wilson, an English DJ and music producer, once mentioned that, in the past, people were listening to albums as an artistic statement rather than a random selection of tracks. These people would sit in a quiet room, put music on and absorb it. He complained about the fact that people don’t give music its full attention anymore. Modern people multitask while listening to music:
You would not do it if you were watching a film. I think people have lost the ability, in lots of perspectives, to understand the process of what should be happening. There is a reason that someone in a studio put down this album in the hope that somebody would listen to that in a certain way.
Playlist Listening Style
A lean forward-back experience
When the MP3 became popular, listeners could finally build their digital playlists and save on their computers. Many people had access to MP3 though illegal downloads, and, sometimes, the songs would not come with its full album. So track-by-track and playlist-by-playlist listening started to be a thing in digital music. Let's not forget that mixtapes and CD playlists were already there to make history.
This style is a lean forward-back experience because listeners still need to prepare the playlists, choose the songs and albums. But, since playlists are longer than albums, the interaction with the music player is reduced.
For streaming services, there’s a crossover between playlists and traditional albums:
We are absolutely in a world where two consumption patterns are coexisting, — says Mark Mulligan, founder of MIDiA Research.
Spotify has over 1.5 billion playlists. One of the playlists I follow on is called “Hipster International” and was created by Napster co-founder Sean Parker. This playlist currently has 12 hours of music and over 800k of followers. Famous playlists like this can help to shed light on artists who are are starting or recently became famous. One good example of that is Lorde, who appeared at the playlist before becoming an international sensation.
Playlist-based consumption is today my preferred way to listen to music.
Curated-Radio Listening Style
A lean back experience
Tech and music partner up to automate music recommendation based on artists, albums, and previous songs. In this model, listeners can give feedback on what they like and what they don't like. The system gets improved with users' feedback. This is how Pandora started in 2000 with the Music Genome Project.
This is a lean back experience because the listener just needs to press play and the service will choose the songs for her/him. According to Nilsen, “radio is the top platform for music consumption, as 59% of music listeners use a combination of over-the-air AM/FM or online radio streams to tune into their favorite artists and bands each week.” Curated streaming music services count with 36% of the audience.
The opinion is divided by those who like this style and those who do not like to listen to "random" songs.
“I worry I’m hiking into an unhappy valley of music streaming, where I like more, but love less,” — noted Geoffrey A. Fowler for the WSJ.
In the interest of improving recommendations, the services are adding a human touch besides the algorithms. The fact is: if you are looking for an infinite playlist for your house party, a radio with recommended songs works wonderfully.
Pandora is the top service for this style. They have 81.5 million active users and 9.3% of share in radio listening in the U.S. Unlike Spotify and Rdio, 80% of Pandora's revenue comes from ads. I was impressed with Pandora numbers, and even if Rdio users are not content with the acquisition, that can be something good. (Discloser: I am not a Pandora fan, but I am curious about Pandora+Rdio plans for the future.)
Back to the Rdio versus Spotify conversation
The way you select your music defines your service
After this research, I realized there are different types of listeners. And, besides the social aspect of Rdio, that was probably the reason my friends and I couldn’t agree on a single streaming music service. It is not that one was right or wrong, better or worse, we just have different habits. On Rdio, the Album cover takes over the screen while, on Spotify, a small sized album cover seats at the left bottom corner. Even though, both services allow easy creation of playlists, Spotify puts more weight on that. They have several curated playlists by genre, mood, and time of the day. For my listening style, playlists are a great way to fill up my headphones with music all day long and avoid the inconvenience of changing albums every 30 minutes.
Because I don't interact with the music player as much as I would if I was an avid album listener, Rdio clean user interface and social features were not selling points for me.
Maybe I should feel ashamed for not valuing albums as I should, for listening to music as a background layer, for not considering the social aspects of Rdio, and for not choosing a streaming service that has a better user interface design.
Maybe that would have been different if Rdio has caught me earlier. Maybe I would be sharing the tears for its death by now. Maybe… But now it's too late, and I am welcoming new friends to the music platform I chose four years ago.
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