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.

[personanongrata · Accepted solution]

kudos.  this is what people need to do, instead of just continuing to pay and complain.  i think as more people start to move to rdio, they will gain momentum and they seemd poised to leverage it, as opposed to spotify which doesn't deserve the users it is able to keep.

[Matze]

First of all: I'm absolutly not happy with the current android app and will cancel my premium subscription if it doesn't get better by the end of the month and yes the support here in the community is really bad.

But have you tried contacting the Spotify support team via e-mail? They responded to my mail within 24 hours and acknowledged that there are problems and they are working on fixing them. So the support isn't all bad. 

About Rdio: as long as they don't have local file import in their desktop client, that's not an option for me. Unfortunately Spotify seems to be the only streaming service that offers integration of your local music libary into the desktop client (and via wifi syncing also in the android app).

[personanongrata]

so use spotify free on your desktop, and use rdio on your phone.  you have to decide what features are most important to you.  if it's a working android app, then spotify is out of the question for everyone except the very occassional unscrupulous user.

you consider spotify acknowledging your e-mail to be noteworthy support?  they've been "working on fixing things" for years.  but nothing ever actually gets fixed.  even if they pushed out fixes for their major bugs at a rate of one per month, we could have a somewhat decent app by the end of the year.  people thought that when they re-wrote the UI, they'd start being more responsive to users and fixing problems, but they have not.  it's been three months with nothing updated since the beta (yeah, someone call me out on the stupid mundane language fix -- the one update since official release).  most consider the official release to have introduced even more bugs than were fixed in the beta.  they even promised a set of features that were not present in the beta to be present in the official release, such as landscape mode and local files.  some of these were present in the old app and were removed.  their marketing hype still touts some of these features, so they're even guilty of false advertising now.  still, we don't have them.  and we have no indication that they are even coming, other than the pandering response, "it's a high priority item -- we're working on it."  anybody who seriously explores the capability of this app will find bugs and missing features around every turn.  have you tried using it with bluetooth?  have you tried using it while changing cell towers, or wifi spots?  have you noticed that it eats GBs worth of data per month while it's completely idle in the background?  tried swiping the album art on the player to change songs quickly?  ever had your music randomly start playing again minutes after a phone call, perhaps while you are in a meeting?  that's a great one -- makes me want to throw my phone through a goddamn window.  we've all tried e-mail support.  let us know when they actually FIX something for you.

[mannp]

Pretty much sums up my feelings too.

[HeXetic]

---

@Matze wrote:

First of all: I'm absolutly not happy with the current android app and will cancel my premium subscription if it doesn't get better by the end of the month and yes the support here in the community is really bad.

But have you tried contacting the Spotify support team via e-mail? They responded to my mail within 24 hours and acknowledged that there are problems and they are working on fixing them. So the support isn't all bad. 

About Rdio: as long as they don't have local file import in their desktop client, that's not an option for me. Unfortunately Spotify seems to be the only streaming service that offers integration of your local music libary into the desktop client (and via wifi syncing also in the android app).

---

I've been using the Rdio trial for almost a week and the fact that I can play music without it stopping randomly is almost enough to make me switch. I have to agree with Matze though, without local files support this is not really a permanent option. There are quite a few bands I listen to that simply haven't got any presence on Spotify.  

[Matze]

I was refering to that:

---

@tallowman wrote:

A simple recognition that they messed up, but fixes are on their way. But nothing.

---

All I wanted to say is that compared to the crappy support here in the forums, the e-mail support is alright.

It's not the fault of the support team that the Spotify Android developers are either extremely understaffed or incompetent and can't get a decent version of the app out in the public (even the beta was better than the crap we are offered at the moment). 

I guess I'll have to go back to the preview of the new app to avoid the playback bug.

[personanongrata]

to be clear, i'm not faulting the support staff, or any other particular person or department within the company.  i'm faulting the entire company!  i don't know what's going on internally -- maybe they can't retain android devs for some reason, but that's just speculation.  maybe the problem is project management -- who knows?  if they were really smart, they'd create an open API and be done with it.  let the free market produce dozens of client apps that work well and have whatever features you want.

[user-removed · Accepted solution]

I'll give Spotify a month, then I'm going to look around.

I want to commit to a music provider, one that's moving forward.

But with this Android release, Spotify is going backwards.

Why should I take this risk of them muddling into perpetuity.

[personanongrata]

if i had a nickel for every post that said, "if this [insert bug] isn't fixed in [insert arbitrary time period], i'm cancelling," i could afford to buy this company and create a working android app myself. 🙂

[user-removed]

Good one. Let not take ourselves too seriously. But if I had $9.99 for every month I've been waiting for a good Android update, I'd have $100 bucks, enough for plenty on 99¢ downloads from Amazon or elsewhere. 🙂

[mannp]

Still going strong after a few weeks.

Giving my money to others while waiting for a reasonable android app.

The time taken from the last release to this latest one could mean rdio getting a significant amount of business from me.

[pdneko]

Yeah... not paying $9.99 anymore. I have a week before my subscription is up. No support, no biz.

[eatonjb]

Ditto. I agree that radio is not perfect,but this is the second time I canceled Spotify and doubt that I will come back. They fail. There service here sucks. I get "check the blog" what blog? Yes I know there is a blog, but its hype saying we are so great , but no features really. New version works but is worse then when the old version did work

And still. If I listen to Spotify ,go to dinner and come back. It forgot where it left off

/canceled

But let's face it. They don't care ..right now that is.....soon I hope they will care,by then it will be too late, and the competition will eat them

[dcdttu]

As much as  I am disappointed in Spotify's canned responses to my begging them to update the app to use the correct audio API that allows use of 3rd party equalizers in ICS and JB, I am still using them because Rdio's sound quality is not very good.

I had Rdio installed for one minute and could tell that the secred bitrate of Rdio songs was very very very much less than Spotify's even at their lower settings.

It's impossible to have an app that does everything, but I'm hopefull and would really like it to be Spotify.

Has Rdio recently upgraded their bitrate?

[user-removed]

Seems like nice service, but eventhough it has its own merits the soundquality aint near Spotify.

I guess Im gonna continue with Spotify.

[user-removed]

I'm trying out some of the other streaming music services just for fun this morning. I installed Rdio on my computer and then on my phone. I was thrilled to see that the phone app told me I was listening to music somewhere else, told me the song, and gave me the option to "Play Here Instead" on my phone. The webplayer displays the "Play Here Instead" button also. Even better, the phone app worked perfectly as a remote for the song playing on my computer. I could switch tracks, artists, etc. 

Awesome feature!

I'm sure Rdio has plenty of problems too. Spotify has many more positives that keep me coming back for now. I would LOVE to see Spotify start to think about important core features and start to implement them.

[user-removed]

Hey there!

I'm big fan of streaming music. Here my + and - to all tested services. I'm starting from Spotify Premium. Tested services are trials or free versions. I tell you what service I use.

Spotify (Premium)

+ Best sound quality, all content in 320 kbps

+ Best mobile app, mobile app just works for me, Extreme sound quality, winner!!!

+ Music content is awesome and rich... I can find all tunes I want to hear today and tomorrow

+ Desktop app is OK, not best, but I can listen music...

+ No Facebook required.

- Too much social bloatware, I just want to listen music!!!

- The Spotify coders are lazy, there is very bad update thing. When I pay for product, I want it bug free and with all important features like SD Card storage in Android.

Deezer (Premium)

+ Good sound quality in web browser (320 kbps mp3)

+ Free radio in Finland with mobile app, no need for subscription!!!

+ Great music collection, simple to search, fast customer service

+ No desktop app; only full-featured web app, you can listen at work, at home, on the go...

- For paid product too bad sound quality in Mobile app!!!

- Mobile app is unusable, awful, hard-to-use

- Facebook required!

Rdio (Premium)

+ Average sound quality in web browser

+ You can listen Rdio also free, however I don't know how much!

+ The web app is full-featured, easy-to-use and jsut works

+ You can also install Rdio as program

- For paid product awful sound quality in mobile app!

- Bad customerservice, they don't answer in what quality they are streaming; streaming is slow, track is buffering way too long!!!

Nokia Music (Free)

+ You can listen hand-selected radio.

+ Many genres in radio.

+ Ability to seklect artist radio.

+ Free and fast.

- Only to Nokia Lumia!!!

- Awful sound quality.

Rara.com (Premium)

+ Nothing.

- Bad web site, very hard to use, looks stupid, no features!!!

- Very bad quality, awful music experience. I better jump from balcony, but no way that I would listen Rara.com sound quality another time!!!

- Is this really an music service???

Winner: SPOTIFY.

[user-removed]

Spotify wins hands down for me as well. I am frustrated with the development emphasis placed on social features while core features such as library / playlist management and SD card storage are overlooked.

[sbrightblade]

Well, it has landscape mode on my tablet, that is certainly a big plus.