Rumor: Microsoft In Acquisition Talks With Rdio | Hacker News Reader

Rumor: Microsoft In Acquisition Talks With Rdio

thenextweb.com

37 pointsxmen31 comments

Microsoft's "just the tip" mentality when it comes to anything other than Windows or Office really pisses me off. Hardware not withstanding (and the last generation was really good), the Zune service is great. The client software is excellent and the subscription service is a great value at 10 bucks a month.

But then there's the marketing aspect of it all. I think the interactions between the various MS Product Managers and the Marketing team goes something like this:

Marketing Guy: "Alright, what are you here to talk about?"

Product Manager: "<something not Windows or Office>"

Marketing Guy: "Fuck off."

i've been a rdio subscriber for a while now.

+ new releases, right on time. + high quality (on wifi)

- terrible to use on my commute 1hr. seems like the app doesn't buffer data properly for low signal scenarios (pandora does!) - when a song doesn't buffer properly, i "pause" the song and play local music. when the song buffers it stops my music and starts playing. this get's ridiculously annoying. - i've noticed my battery life being drained with the rdio app running (not playing or streaming) in the background. this may have been fixed in recent updates.

imo, these guys have a lot to learn from pandora on ux

I am also a subscriber...do you use the desktop application or the web app in your browser. I found the desktop application to be terrible (as you described) however have found much much better luck with the browser. Ever since then I only use the web app and maybe have it buffer (stop playing) maybe once or at most twice a day.

i'm using the ios app on a 4S

That might be...I only ever did a trial on a mobile (htc thunderbolt). Guess I can't be any help then.

I have similar troubles with the mobile application when in "low signal" environments. It should decide to swap to local or do a better job buffering, but having 1 bar is not going to sustain a stream.

I have a fair amount of streaming issues with Spotify as well. UI doesn't indicate any buffering so I'm stuck wondering if the app is having problems playing the song or it is going to play. I often find myself hitting next and then previous to see if the song will play. Sometimes I just flat out kill the app and restart and it'll play. I have no idea if that is actually doing anything, but it seems to work sometimes.

Even offline playlists?

I agree, but instead of just calling this ux I'd call it engineering. Pandora has some amazing engineers. I know one of them, Casey, because he lives here in Colorado. He's one of the smartest engineers I've met.

Rdio's great, but in addition to the issue you mentioned, they had an issue with Backbone.js and a Chrome Dev Channel bug, where rather than making some Backbone.js source changes to work around the Chrome bug, they simply waited it out. I doubt Pandora would have taken that approach.

I think Microsoft would make Rdio more technically sound. They might screw up the business, but Skype seems to be doing alright and Yammer keeps plugging along, so I'm optimistic.

I'm a web developer. I have Chrome Canary, WebKit Nightly and Firefox Minefield installed.

I still can't bring myself to prioritize a bug which affects only Chrome Dev channel users – and I don't have access to the log files to prove how little that matters.

This is exactly why I stopped paying for (and eventually using) Rdio. Their mobile app (where I used Rdio 80% of the time) was HORRIBLE at keeping the music playing non-stop, without tons of pauses and dropouts.

Pandora, on the other hand, is nearly flawless in the same signal areas.

I'd add the varying availability of tracks as a major problem. Having some things simply not available is an annoyance, but I can live with that. What's worse is finding some albums I like, adding them to my collection, and then having them disappear later without warning. Almost just as bad is when that happens and they replace it with another copy of the same album, it doesn't get added to your collection.

Posted this on HN last time the Rdio discussion came up when Spotify launched in the US, still relevant:

"I'm in Canada and was disappointed that we were cut out of the stateside Spotify launch, so I went looking and heard a number of recommendations for Rdio. Out of 18,384 tracks it matched 3,142. Considering my tastes are pretty mainstream and my files have very clean tags, it's hardly impressive."

For comparison, iTunes Match launched not long after that. More than half of my library was matched without uploading, and by that point it had grown to 21679 songs. Honestly, since iTunes Match I haven't even considered a cloud music service like Spotify or Rdio again. The way I see it, why pay to access someone else's crappy library missing tons of content when you can just upload your library and cut out the middleman?

I'm also in Canada, and while Rdio does have a lot of the stuff I listen to, maybe I should try iTunes match as well.

As a counterpoint, I've found the iPhone app to be quite adept at handling horrible network conditions. I'm on AT&T – you need a massive buffer to soak up poor network engineering.

Everything about "Xbox Music" I've seen (including the app in the Windows 8 RTM) would seem to indicate that the service is simply Zune without the tainted brand. I'm not entirely convinced Microsoft needs Rdio for such a service, beyond their userbase. Not to say an Rdio buyout would be unlikely, but the conjecture in this piece about Rdio being Xbox Music doesn't survive the facts already out there.

Agreed. Sure, there is some obvious upside for Microsoft (talent, code, international rights), but they don't need Rdio. Rdio, on the other hand, desperately needs Microsoft. It's a politically motivated rescue. Similar to the MOG acquisition.

Their 'web player' service exists, but is terrible. If it was at a low price (which, let's face it, it may well be) it might be worth snapping up Rdio just to get some attention given to their music web presence.

Rdio is thinking about acquiring Microsoft. Bold move.

Pardon? Isn't it the other way around? If you're making a joke, I don't get it. Care to explain?

Obvious troll is obvious. Usually these types of comments get down voted into oblivion by god-like powers, but I guess this one is spared since it's attacking MS.

No one is attacking anyone or even trolling. The joke is that someone would misunderstand the headline, thinking that it was implying that Rdio was Acquiring Microsoft. The prospect of someone thinking this is so preposterous that it is funny. At least to me...

Music subscription space is not profitable.

Until it is.

Until the labels stop taking the vast majority of profits from these services to allow them to be profitable.

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/24/pandora-and...

There was a post about it from Spotify, too, but I can't find it now.

but they won't do that, because they have and always will be a leaching industry. Any new revenue stream that emerges they're going to frantically latch onto.

In what sense are the labels a leaching industry given that they put up a major proportion of the resources to produce the "content?" Spotify is a straight up middle man, what value do they really add?

This is a bad move on Microsoft's part and I hope this deal doesn't actually come to fruition. Spotify has the market cornered in this space and even they've been running at a loss for a few years now. I am a huge fan of these services, but this would be a bad move for Microsoft who have finally found their footing in the mobile space only just recently after countless lost millions.

I find this all a little too ironic given Rdio's current design looks like it heavily borrowed from the Windows 8 interface but that might just be due to the similar weights of the font being used on the Rdio homepage and bold flat colours.

On the plus side, projects like Windows Phone and Xbox show that Microsoft has the money to burn while they work out a way to be profitable (and is prepared to do that). I'm concerned that Spotify will run out of money soon.

That's true. I guess when you're a company that still makes a lot of money from the enterprise sector you can afford to burn through whatever amounts of money it takes. I'm too concerned that Spotify will run out of money, my girlfriend and I both have premium subscriptions (being able to tether my iPhone to the car stereo for an endless library of music is worth the $12 AUD a month for a premium account).

Classic power brokers in play. Get the investments from influential people. Build a decent product. They will sell the company for you. No need to have traction. No challenge as well.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com