A new music service launched this month recently released as an invite only preview. I subscribed and took a deep look at this new entrant into online music. The service offers an initial free three day trial and subscription options include a $4.99 web or a $9.99 unlimited offer. The web offer gives you on-demand streaming to all music on the Rdio service from a web browser only. The unlimited offer gives you the web features plus music on your mobile phone while connected or unconnected to the service. The mobile device list includes iPhone or Blackberry, there was no mention of iTouch and iPad. Android is in the works. There are three ways you can access the service via browser, mobile device or desktop application.
The Web application user interface is nicely designed; searching for music is fast and the playlist editing features work well. In addition to the audio streaming, community and social features include integration with Facebook and Twitter as well as last.fm. I was able to successfully Tweet a new playlist and share it with others on Twitter. I really liked the share playlist feature and the ability to allow others from the network to collaborate on the shared playlist. The only thing I didn’t like about the playlist features was how many clicks it took to add a track to a playlist. There is no option to add an album easly. Usability in this area needs to be addressed. They have also really overloaded the “+” menu.
On the iPhone the service is similar to the web experience for searching and playing your playlist. I did notice I could play from the web and iPhone at the same time. Something they will likely need to fix. They also have a sync option called offline mode which is interesting. This can be turned on/off by users. When in offline mode there is an orange bar across the top of the application. This could be a useful feature for those that want to save on data charges in the future. Finding the make available offline selection wasn’t initially obvious. You need to first select the playlist for offline and then go to a separate area in the application to “Sync”. Syncing didn’t take long and the application provides a nice progress bar. Playback over WiFi was flawless and I easily synced a playlist while playing it at the same time. There is a bug in the current iPhone version where it looks like you loose your collection, playlist and ability to search and sync. I found restarting the application would fix this.
Rdio desktop needs work and the limitations around “login” require you to first open a browser window to login, then login and then start the desktop application. I would expect or hope they fix this quickly because it really detracts from the hard work they put into the rest of the service making it simple with mass marketing appeal. The desktop application features are really limited, basically allowing you to download your purchased MP3 tracks and albums and launch it with one playlist. The only potential benefit to installing the Rdio desktop application is the match collection feature that on the surface seems like a great idea but I was not able to get it to work. It’s an open bug on their support site. Rdio is using Adobe AIR for their desktop application and streaming using Adobe streaming servers in the desktop and web application.
The catalog looked complete from a Major label perspective and they provide 30 second clips when the album or track is only available for purchase and not streaming. The licensed catalog includes WMG, EMI, UMG, Sony, The Orchard and INGroves. My rough estimate would put their catalog at around 3-4 million tracks.
Over all for a beta they have done a nice job and I look forward to the launch.
A new digital content catagory MediaNet is prepairing to launch soon is ebook support. I took the opportunity while at CES to stop by the eBook TechZone and see who attended with booths.
Congratulations MOG! They launched their new streaming service powered by MediaNet. http://mog.com/ This subscription service has some great features and is using our high quality MP3 (320/256kbps) catalog. For a complete guided tour check out their videos. http://mog.com/promos/overview
Here are the articles I’ve found on their launch.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/02/mog-launches-all-access-sets-new-standard-for-online-music/
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10407900-2.html
http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/stories/120209mog
MediaNet released Unique Identifier Technology Solution or UITS today. The good news it is not a rootkit, watermark or digital rights management (DRM) applied to purchased music files, instead it is a unique tracking identifier. Why is MediaNet using UITS? It is a requirement by Universal Music Group. Now when end-users purchase Universal Music Group content distributed by MediaNet customers there is a receipt embedded in the file unique to each purchase of UMG content. How will UITS affect consumers? It’s hard to say with all new content tracking and protection attempts it depends on what is done with the data later. If you would like to know more, review the technical specification, implement UITS as part of your music service, content distribution network or music jukebox? Universal has launched a website to share their new proposed standard for unique content purchase tracking. http://uits.umusic.com/
September 17th, 2009
Jeff
MediaNet kicked off it’s press and ad campaign today!
Check out the blog. MediaNet Blog There is a lot to share with the industry since the release of our first web component “Song of the Day”. The MNOpen product has seen a bunch of new customers. The growing MNOpen development community has been heads down building new services and access to music in cool new ways.
Below are a couple articles.
Digital Music News Embed This: MediaNet Digital Starts a Smart Integration…
PRWeb MediaNet Announces New Products to Bring Digital Music to the Masses
Sites and Blogs referencing the Announcement.
Indieshows.net (Newswire)
MediaNet Announces Revolutionary New Products to Bring Digital Music to the Masses
Tech News http://www.techcebu.net/
MediaNet Announces Revolutionary New Products to Bring Digital Music to the Masses
Individual.com
MediaNet Announces Revolutionary New Products to Bring Digital Music to the Masses
Newmusicreviews.net
MediaNet Announces New Products to Bring Digital Music to the Masses
interactiveincite.wordpress.com – posted on 9-24
Solving the Digital Music Distribution Dilemma
September 15th, 2009
Jeff
Big day for the Zune team! The team worked all day yesterday to release a new service update this morning. The Zune team did an outstanding job with some first run up sells and the many video features. I updated my PC and Zune device without any issues. I also took some time walking through the UI changes. I especially love the new ability to play music from cover art. I am looking forward to using the additional new features.
Congratulations to iLike! They launched their new store powered by MediaNet today streaming mp3 samples and selling mp3 downloads from our catalog. Amazing team from start to finish one of the fastest customer service launches I’ve seen. I’m really excited.
I get this question a lot from my friends. ”What music service should I use?” Being a technology maven for your friends can be fun and a challenge. Being in the business I of course have my own personal favorites like Zune, iTunes, MP3Tunes, Rhapsody, Napster, Pandora and now deceased Yahoo Unlimited and MTVN. In reality there is a much larger list. There are also some really great band sites and of course the social networking sites like MySpace music.
PCMag has done a nice job. Music Service Reviews
While there has been some news on the end of Total Music see the TechCruch and PaidContent article.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/07/the-totalmusic-experiment-is-sinking-fast/
http://paidcontent.org/article/419-umg-and-sony-music-jv-total-music-shuts-down/
Below is the “Album of the Week” from TotalMusic’s owned site Tunepost.com.
A quick tear down of the widget. The whole widget is a flash .SWF it allows you to play, pause, stop and shuffle. It is playing back full-length AAC+ streaming audio using Adobe Flash Media Servers delivered over Akamai’s CDN. While listening to the Album-of-the-Week I experienced one ad that come up inside the widget. After reviewing the PlayerConfig.xml it would appear they also considered a version of the player doesn’t include Ads if a special API key is included. No doubt the Ads are how Tunepost plans on monetizing the streams. Apparently Total Music or Tunepost.com doesn’t do commerce yet or now may never. In the current widget/player the widget buy button sends you off to the Amazon store to purchase the MP3. Unfortunately the buy button only sends you to the current song so you can’t purchase the album. They include a link to merchandise that isn’t implemented yet and a link to dada.net to purchase a ringtone. It is also not really implemented as it sends you to the dada.net site signup. Don’t bother with the Sign-up/Register button on the bottom. The Tunepost.com site is still in private beta so you won’t be able to do much more.
MediaNet launched it’s new redesigned corporate website today and with the new launch it not only includes a new domain name www.mndigital.com but also a new product MNOpen. While the rest of the mndigitalites begin to get the word out across the digital music industry and starts a proper PR campaign, I thought I’d let my family, geek, non-geek friends and visitors to my site in on why this is so cool. For those of you who just happen to come across this site, my name is Jeff Wallace I’m the CTO at MediaNet and have been with MN for 8 years changing and re-shaping how digital music is delivered on the internet. MN embarked on this journey in January 2000 back when Napster was the new household word in internet music and when the music Labels received notice their business was going to change. MediaNet (then MusicNet) was one of a couple responses by the Labels to that notice. MN started as a business-to-business company and is to this day. With our huge music catalog we have served and delivered content to end users for a long list of impressive brands like AOL, Virgin, Yahoo, MTV, HMV, Tesco and Clearwire (list goes on).What I want to share with you is that MN is again changing the way music is sold on the internet. Selling music is no longer limited to an elite list of large companies or music only web stores. Now any person or company can promote and sell digitalmusic. Below is the MediaNet “Song of the Day” Web Component and is one of the web components from the MN Web Component library that is making this change possible. I’m asking you to put the “Song of the Day” on your blog and/or website and give it a try. Congratulations to MediaNet and all the hard work that went into this launch!
Click here for the home page to “Song of the Day.