Rdio is getting in tune with other online music services by offering free unlimited listening.
The online subscription music service said Thursday it had lifted its restrictions on Web listening, a day after rival music service Spotify announced a similar move. Like Spotify and Pandora before it, Rdio had offered its listeners a limited amount of online streaming, both those services have removed the caps.
While the ads aren't going away for free streaming, Rdio promises that they will be "short and sweet."
I'm a longtime happy $5/mo rdio subscriber. I despise Spotify's messy, track-oriented interface and generally avoid it like the plague. I don't like ads either, so have no tempation to stop my (already ridiculously cheap) rdio sub. If only they would get around to adding genre tagging...
I never found the ads that bad in Spotify though I did find an app that mutes ads. I have found the app slowing down lately when it comes to searching it
That's the latest thing in web design, actually - you'll see that it changes instantly as you resize (or rather, change the width of) the window, so that the same page is supposed to work on a smartphone/tablet and the don't have to maintain a special "m." subdomain. In this case it still needs a bit of work, what with all the elements that are appearing past the right boundary, and without a horizontal scrollbar I might add.
Anyway, I'm afraid we're going to see more of that sort of thing in future - I wouldn't be surprised to see the main emusic.com site changed soon to work that way too, which (knowing them) will probably re-break all those features they finally got working after the last redesign.
This kind of design seems to me to raise distraction to a new level. In the olden days, distraction meant that you were actually paying attention to something and then something else came along and snagged your attention. With that page I can't come to rest on anything in the first place. It's just distraction all the way down, dispensing with that pesky detour through initial focus. Internet news pages are getting the same way.
We've still just got the same old emusic, with no links to the new features - I could only find it with Doofy's link above. Just remember that is why you are paying so much to emusic for your downloads!!
My 3 month hold ends in 3 days. I am not sure whether it has broken the habit. After 3 months I have a list of almost two months' worth of things I've been waiting to buy cheaper on emusic. I'll save about $10. Most of the things I most want to get at the moment are not on emusic. I have felt no urge to go there during the 3 months. I don't miss getting angry at customer service. (Of course things like Christmas and Flaming Pines giveaways every two days and a month on Morr's drip helped a lot). And I have so much music now I want to spend more time trawling what I have. All that I am coming back to at the moment is saving a bit of money and ten years of habit and attachment and memories of finding cool stuff.
And the latter is pretty strong still. It's why I still want to go into used bookstores when I don't need any books.
Rational calculation says I should just quit now.
Where I actually live, as a being not actually driven by rational calculation, the prospect still fills me with glumness.
Sigh.
But hey, three days and I can get the new Janek Schaefer album :-).
Gp, do you face the loss of some grandfathered plan or something? If not, perhaps just cancel, save up a bunch of wanted-but-not-urgent items emusic offers cheapest, then join again down the road. That seems the best strategy. Unless emusic tanks in the interim, I suppose.
I've done a couple of holds and last time I thought I wouldn't go back, but I did, mainly to retain my very generous plan (100 credits per month for £20). But there are times, eg, this month, when I do wonder if I'd be better off without emusic because I am downloading stuff I might only play once or twice in the next couple of years. It really is an addiction, and actually I wouldn't be too disappointed if they did go under as long as I'd used most of that month's credits!
@kargatron, that's another area at the fuzzy boundaries of rationality. I do have a grandfathered plan. It's worth about $24 a year in free credit, maybe 3-4 albums. Add that to what I save per album and emusic does save me money, not doubt. The flipside is that at this point if belonging to emusic makes me buy a bunch of albums that I might not have 100% wanted (which was a cool thing when I had a small music collection and just wanted to explore randomly but makes less sense now) that could balance out pretty quickly. Plus, I just looked at emusic's current offers, and if I left and joined anew at their 20.99 level I would get the same bonus I have now.
Right now I'll probably do a month or three and then another hold and save up albums that way, but the objective reasons not to just cancel and possibly rejoin at some point are getting mighty vaporous. @greg, I am approaching the same feeling - that the returns are diminishing in terms of what I get out of it.
You know I just backed into another subscription after several years away. I've been Dripping a lot, and that's fun, but it inevitably leads to downloading albums you end up not liking much. I love Domino Records - a lot - and that's a great deal for ten bucks a month, but I still despise it when I pay ten bucks for two albums and an EP I'll never listen to more than once - even if eleven months a year it's great.
After burning through the 25 dollars of free credit at Emu and one free month when I quit after two months, I'm ready to go another couple years without. I liked getting caught up with a few artists like Four Tet, Ani Difranco, Boards of Canada.... then I scored some great jazz albums and felt full.
Just went on to emusic to use up my credit before my account goes on hold, and found that I can't download anything - it just takes me to a page saying I need to reactivate the account to use my credit. Is this standard and I've never noticed it before? I've emailed emusic and asked them to sort it out, but this really might be it for me, if I'm losing my credit because they've locked the account down a day early.
I thought it went on hold at the point in time when you clicked to go on hold, so made sure I used all credit before initiating the hold...maybe I was just being cautious.
That's what I do GP. I'm going back on hold as soon as I've used up this month's credit, partly because I am finding it more difficult than ever to get through my credits per month, but we also have a long holiday coming up so will not be able to use one month's worth anyway. I think I read somewhere that you are only allowed two holds per year. Anyone know if they stick to that?
I have just rejoined after being on a 3 month hold, kept a list of wants and have pretty well used them up. You are allowed 2 x 3 monthly holds in the year, I look at it this way, the summer months are normally quiet and December is full of Xmas records therefore I save myself monies going on hold over this period.
When you go on hold, the hold starts from whenever your credit was due to renew, so in theory you get the rest of the month to use the credit before the hold kicks in. As I've discovered, though, they actually stick the hold on 24 hours early. They emailed me to say this was to prevent money being taken from my account, and they will put the lost credit back on when I re-activate, if I decide to (not sure about this to be honest - most of the labels I liked there have gone now, the fabled new content for the UK never did materialise, and I'm wanting to step back from digital downloads and just buy CDs these days anyway).
I'm pretty sure I managed three holds last year, by the way. It may just have been a glitch but I'm sure it let me do it.
Just signed in over there to find another Double Booster Pack sale going on, so iffin' you had anything you were considering......
Well, on that note, my new Jazz Picks are up, and it was a very strong week, IMO. Exactly the kind of music you'd want to hit the site when a booster pack sale is going on.
Comments
Craig
- I wonder how they make their money . . .
I've been getting this now for over 6 hours. Anyone know anything? (My luck, it'll probably be back on by the time I finish typing this!)
There was a message on top of the page yesterday, I can't remember what it said.
- Those "Scheduled screw-ups" always worries me.
ETA: Back now.
Me too, BN! I always think, is it the end?
{Snark aside, a new editorial feature, prominently linked throughout the site}
Anyway, I'm afraid we're going to see more of that sort of thing in future - I wouldn't be surprised to see the main emusic.com site changed soon to work that way too, which (knowing them) will probably re-break all those features they finally got working after the last redesign.
And the latter is pretty strong still. It's why I still want to go into used bookstores when I don't need any books.
Rational calculation says I should just quit now.
Where I actually live, as a being not actually driven by rational calculation, the prospect still fills me with glumness.
Sigh.
But hey, three days and I can get the new Janek Schaefer album :-).
Right now I'll probably do a month or three and then another hold and save up albums that way, but the objective reasons not to just cancel and possibly rejoin at some point are getting mighty vaporous.
@greg, I am approaching the same feeling - that the returns are diminishing in terms of what I get out of it.
After burning through the 25 dollars of free credit at Emu and one free month when I quit after two months, I'm ready to go another couple years without. I liked getting caught up with a few artists like Four Tet, Ani Difranco, Boards of Canada.... then I scored some great jazz albums and felt full.
I have just rejoined after being on a 3 month hold, kept a list of wants and have pretty well used them up. You are allowed 2 x 3 monthly holds in the year, I look at it this way, the summer months are normally quiet and December is full of Xmas records therefore I save myself monies going on hold over this period.
I'm pretty sure I managed three holds last year, by the way. It may just have been a glitch but I'm sure it let me do it.
Well, on that note, my new Jazz Picks are up, and it was a very strong week, IMO. Exactly the kind of music you'd want to hit the site when a booster pack sale is going on.
http://wonderingsound.com/news/new-jazz-week-cordame-polar-bear-freddie-bryant/