from Hacker News

Spotify vs Rdio

by kolistivra on 2/25/13, 9:00 PM with 19 comments

• by ry0ohki on 2/25/13, 9:43 PM

  I'm always curious how Rhapsody gets left out of these conversations. It's been doing what Rdio and Spotify are doing since 2004 (or earlier?). I've tried them all but continued to stick with Rhapsody if for nothing but superior music selection.

• by username111 on 2/25/13, 9:31 PM

  I use rdio over spotify for one reason: music discovery.

  It is much easier to find new releases and new artists on radio because they have a large dedicated new releases section which is updated weekly and ranked by popularity.

  The radio option isn't something I use much but I find rdio works okay and spotify only works well for very popular music and bases itself completely off of artists so if you get some slow songs from rather not slow artists and start a radio you won't get any better an experience than rdio.

  Rdio search also is much much faster on my phone than spotify which tends to hang forever.

  I switch back and forth every few months to see if spotify has improved but it seems that rdio improves at a rate of 10x more than spotify because in the month that I try spotify rdio has already updated apps and web player to something that works better (see the ability to control rdio from any rdio app to the one that is playing).

• by bratsche on 2/25/13, 9:40 PM

  I use Rdio right now, but I'm thinking of moving over to Spotify because I hear it will let me play my own music collection through its interface.

  It sucks to be in Rdio and not be able to play my iTunes music. I've read that playing your location music collection is a feature that the Rdio team has no intention to ever add because "it's not social". Sorry, but that's a terrible reason. Sometimes you just have to get the Led out, and that's not possible in Rdio at all so you'd have to switch over to iTunes.

  The idea that the Rdio team dismisses this feature because "it's not social" probably bothers me even more than the missing feature itself.

• by joeblossom on 2/25/13, 9:36 PM

  User interface is huge for me, especially from a mobile app standpoint. In my opinion, Spotify's mobile app is pretty terrible when compared to Rdio's.

  Also, I love the "Collection" feature of Rdio which puts the music I like right at my finger tips rather than creating playlists for every artist with Spotify.

  Radio is also available with Rdio for an artist, collection, etc.

• by Derbasti on 2/25/13, 9:42 PM

  I use Rdio instead of Spotify because of its radio feature

  Contrary to what the article was saying, whenever I started one of those automatic playlists based on an artist or something, Spotify would seemingly play stuff at random. There would be some coherence, like "songs using the same language", but it would jump wildly between slow, fast, folk, rap, dub, and what have you. Really, it did not work at all for me.

  In contrast, the Rdio radio stations work really well for me. You can base them on songs, albums or artists and they will stick to that genre within reason. I had some of those playlists running for days on end without them getting annoying or repetitive or veering off genre.

  This has become my most used feature of Rdio.

  Well, and then there is the thing about Spotify not being available here. But that is really not something that would stop anyone in the HN crowd.

• by arasmussen on 2/25/13, 9:53 PM

  I started using Spotify first about 6 months ago. I wasn't in love with the UI and I couldn't easily figure out how to use it the way I wanted to. After two weeks I switched to Rdio and fell in love. Maybe I was just being lazy when trying to figure out Spotify, but honestly your users shouldn't have to put effort into figuring out how your features work, especially with a type of product that's been around for so long (eg. iTunes). This was enough to cause me to switch to Rdio and I've been very happy with the selection and technology there ever since.

• by ajtaylor on 2/25/13, 9:45 PM

  As an American living in Australia who likes country music, I'm very frustrated with the choice of artists available in the AU version. Out of the Billboard Top 50, maybe 2/3 of the tracks are available here. I assume this is due to licensing issues, but it's annoying to say the least.

  That aside, I agree with the author that the ability to use local audio files and the offline downloading are the killer features. I use both on my phone nearly every day. My recommendation is to go with Spotify (I'm a premium member).

• by bpm140 on 2/25/13, 9:37 PM

  Rdio's user interface is significantly better on mobile for anyone who still views the world in terms of albums.

  Spotify has a significantly larger catalog.

  For now I'm using both. Rdio whenever possible and Spotify for specific artists and releases. Still cheaper than buying all the music I listen to each month.

• by rdouble on 2/25/13, 9:49 PM

  I use RDIO because my friends work there. The downside is that music disappears from my library as labels decide to discontinue their licensing agreements. I wonder if the same thing happens at Spotify.

• by Honzo on 2/25/13, 9:29 PM

  Clear winner for Canadians: Rdio.

  Why? It's available.

• by jasonlgrimes on 2/25/13, 9:49 PM

  Recent Spotify user - I hate that whenever I start an artist playlist, it almost immediately starts the same series of songs.

• by mvkel on 2/25/13, 9:56 PM

  Not sure if you're OP, but thanks for the writeup. I love Spotify and am glad my choice wasn't in vain.

• by slinkyavenger on 2/25/13, 11:57 PM

  People have already asked about Grooveshark, but where's MOG?