Rdio wins hands down

[tallowman]

Just dropping in to say smell ya later, spotify.

I've gone to Rdio. They are not perfect, they have issues, and there are quirks with their android app too. But the difference is, I am getting repsonses to my queries, within 24hours. The forums are full of answers from their technical staff. That feeling of being left hung out to dry and pi55ing in the wind has gone. The Rdio team RECOGNISE their problems, and OWN them. 

I used to love Spotify and recommended them to everyone. Then everything changed a month or so ago. A dodgy Android app has been released, and suddenly, a wall of silence. Simple customer service would have kept my custom. A simple recognition that they messed up, but fixes are on their way. But nothing. I can't understand what has happened. 

It's obvious from these forums that there is something drastically amiss, both technically and from a customer service perspective. But it seems that Spotify are just burying their heads in the sand hoping we will all go away. Well, I've got the message.

Rdio aren't perfect, but at least they seem to be trying to so something about it, and they also seem to care about their customers, which goes a long way for me.

[couchdog]

I subscribed to Rdio when I was seeing no fixes on the horizon for the offline storage location issue on Android (this has been fixed now apparently).  Rdio's UI is light years ahead of Spotify's, both on your PC (browser) and on the Android.  It orders your albums in alphabetical order - another thing that seems to escape the Spotify developers.  Rdio has no song limits, while Spotify's limit is 3333.  I've read these incredible posts where they proudly say that you can have 9999 songs on three devices (!).  Seriously, who's going to travel with two/three mobiles just to have all their music with them?? This limit is a pain, it makes you have to mainatin the playlsits you sync.  Rdio also has a much better music discovery service in my opinion.

Unfortunately, Rdio's catalogue is slightly poorer than Spotify's.  I have been bouncing between the two services for a few months, can't make up my mind who to stick with - Spotify with a slightly bigger selection, or Rdio with a cleaner interface, better Android app and no solng limit?

[rhyshiscock92]

Join me in the campaign to make Rdio add this feature. 

https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/rdio-add-local-file-support-to-your-roadmap 

[user-removed]

I agree. I'm a premium Spotify user for a while now.

I'm currently trialling rdio now and so far it looks lightyears ahead of Spotify.

I'm using this website to transfer my playlists.

http://resp.in/

Check it out

Hopefully Spotify puts a bit of work into their service, they need to, there is compitition now.

(On a Spotify break for the next two weeks)

[djshackesq]

I tried to like Rdio, but there are simply too many technical issues with it that the company either doesn't care about, refuses to admit exist, or just acknowledges but says it has no plans to change.

Examples:

• The Android app, while pretty, is almost unusable--it struggles to not only stream tracks, but it's also painfully slow when playing locally synced tracks.  It also can't handle gapless playback (neither can the web interface).  It's also just slow in general, and uses on average ~100 MB RAM (and runs in the background constantly)
• Bitrate/sound quality:  Rdio streams at 192 kbps as its highest bitrate, but will not admit doing so.  People have performed tests to come to this conclusion.
• The Android app does not recognize a double headset click to skip tracks.  All it allows is single click play/pause.
• The Android app does not support Android equalizers, and the company said it has no plans to implement such a feature.
• Customer support is slow to non-existent.

So, yes Rdio is pretty, has an amazing interface, etc.  But when it comes to what really matters (to me)--audio quality/playback and the Android app--it is just way too far off to be worthwhile.

[user-removed]

Rdio updated its audio-codec last year and now they are using 320 kbps AAC-files, which is huge improvement over the older edition.

[killtogetcrimso]

I use Spotify mostly to listen to albums offline (and I usually know what I want to listen to). Sound quality and available music are most important to me. Would you recommend Rdio for a listener like me?

I'm mostly happy with Spotify but the app and desktop client seem to be getting progressively worse, so it can't hurt to explore something else.

[user-removed]

I have been using different services myself as there's differences in catalogues but also each service has its own pros&cons in how they behave. I started using Spotify in 2009 but later as these other services came available, I tried some of them out and now have been actually using few different ones at same time.

Deezer and Rdio are the ones that I have been using most besides Spotify and I like both of them alot.

Deezer has that wonderful "flow" option which plays endlessly music which adapts greatly to users taste. 

Playable tracks are selected using an algorithm that takes into account a comprehensive user's listening history, playlists and favorite selections. Also, in my opinion Deezer mobile-app is very good and fast atleast it works great on my iPhone and they just updated their iPad app also. Rdio is good as Deezer or Spotify overall..soundwise Rdio got closer to Spotify with its updated new codec.

I don't rely too much on sound-quality as I buy most of my music on cd/lp anyways, so its just neat and useful way to have access to huge library of music easily. Of course I want that it sounds good if I pay for it, but Im not as too demanding as some people are here, as they aren't satisfied with anything.

I would advice for you to read latest reviews or comments on each service and then maybe try out if you feel like doing so.

There's too many opinions and thing surrounding each service, so maybe probably better that I won't be writing too much stuff here now.

 Definitely, you could try trial for Rdio or perhaps Deezer also and see how they compare to Spotify.

Theres services like Tidal or Qobuz which offer lossless streaming, but they do cost more money for sure.

I think Spotify used to be the best one there is, but now luckily competition has become really tough and also it does not greatly help that Spotify (for some really unknown reason) has decided to make its desktop client progressively worse (like you said here also).

Will be interesting to see how this goes on and on...

[killtogetcrimso]

alright, thank you.

Actually used Tidal for a month but it was a mess, hehe

[user-removed]

I also tested Wimp (before it came Tidal) when it wasn't officially available here in Finland, had some trial on it but decided to not to continue.

Then as Tidal became officially available here, I tested the trial and decided to subscribe and test for couple more months, surely the quality is lossless but same as Wimp, the catalogue has some lacks and holes, the browser-player is ok but the client is laggy. Sometimes the client claims that I have connection problems (if I do anything else on the pc at same time, like play WoW, browse web or anything), but thats the problem of the client-program as I have excellent and secure100/10 optical fibre connection.

Based on the compability, social-stuff and catalogue, I think Tidal is little behind these 3 others that I used alot (Spotify, Deezer and Rdio).

Sometimes it feels that only excuse to subscribe to Tidal etc lossless-services would be the lossless quality, but after doing really great number of listening and comparing, I might as feel that maybe its not actually worth to pay 2 times more price for just lossless quality. Better use these normal lossy streaming-services as they still provide good quality, then buy the albums I like and etc like I have done always.

I think I will continue with Spotify for sometime and then see if any other competitor is more to my liking, I have accounts currently to all these most popular services, but surely its better to just subscribe to only 1-2 at same time as its no use to spend too much hard earned money..

[NOTaVZNfan]

Holy **bleep**. These issues were posted 5 years ago!

No wonder why customer service.told me they wouk d give me 2 months of a refund and still havent!!! Such vs! I better. Not get charged on my wrong check acct AGAIN because for every charge that goes to my Old checking acct, it's $35 fee!!

By the way, the data hogging is complete Bull**bleep**, and that's why they couild never figure it out. Do u have vzn? Has ur data gone up a super amount much more quickly? They are trying to say I have used 8.96 gigs of data in 2 weeks!! No way! 

They just throw the data into settings where it looks good, either via pop-ups or by having permissions to use your storage. Check it out. 

[user-removed]

I have Verizon, 6 gigs a month, and stream daily on my 40 minute commute. I have never gone over the 6 gigs and I'm streaming 'high quality'. Are you sure the data usage is a spotify issue?