Social Music Startup Rdio Pushes Play Button For API, Affiliate Program. Rdio, the social music startup founded by Skype founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, is expanding its platform today with the launch of its API and an affiliate program.
Rdio launched last year as an unlimited, on-demand social music service that allows users to build and share online music collections from a catalogue of over 8 million songs. Rdio offers a Web-only music streaming music service for $4.99, and a premium version that adds mobile access for $9.99 per month. Now, Rdio’s API gives developers the ability to create web apps that can search, access and play all of the artists, songs, albums, playlists, and charts in Rdio’s catalog of over 8 million songs.
Unlike other APIs, this one is tied to a subscription service and users who do not sign up to use Rdio (either as a subscriber or a trial user) won’t get the full benefits of the API. Whether that is enough to cripple the API remains to be seen. Exclusive: Social Music Startup Rdio Raises $17.5 Million, Adds Rob Cavallo To Board. Rdio, the social music startup founded by Skype founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, isn’t exactly waiting around for Spotify to make its way to the United States (or Google Music for that matter).
TechCrunch has learned that the company has secured $17.5 million in funding from new investor Mangrove Capital Partners, along with earlier backers Skype, Atomico Ventures and Friis himself through some of his investment entities. Ironically, Friis co-founded Rdio as well as most of its current list of investors, apart from Mangrove Capital Partners, which did famously back Skype during its very early days and made a ton when the company was eventually sold to eBay. Rdio has also gained a new board member, and not just anyone; the company has appointed Warner Bros. Records Chairman Rob Cavallo as its new director. Cavallo is a Grammy-nominated producer known for his work with artists like Green Day, Dave Matthews Band, Fleetwood Mac, Jewel, Kid Rock and Alanis Morissette.
Rdio. The viral- invite-only Rdio music service indicates which albums the people in my burgeoning network have in heavy rotation.
Janus Friis with Niklas Zennström, who disrupted music distribution with the Kazaa file sharing service and phone companies with Skype, unveiled their Twitter-like version of a digital music service at the crack of midnight Thursday morning. Rdio offers instant access to more than 5 million tracks from all the major labels and several indies to listeners in the United States and Canada through a web browser, downloadable software or mobile app. It’s available for free for three days and then for fees of $5 (web only) or $10 (web plus mobile). The service enters a crowded field; Napster, Rhapsody, MOG, mSpot and others already charge similar prices to deliver the same music in the same ways in the United States. And Apple, Google and Spotify are waiting in the wings. So far, no privacy layers exist on the site, so listening activity is there for all to see. Music Startup Rdio Kicks Off US Launch: A Chat With Founders And.
We’ve written about digital music startup Rdio a bunch in the past, starting from when we found out Kazaa, Skype and Joost founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom were involved in setting up and funding the business through their investment firm Atomico Ventures.
We noted how they were silently assembling a killer team, and took notice when an early iPhone app landed in the App Store that nobody was able to access yet. This morning, the company finally unveiled its strategy for the first time, and opened up a preview version of the service to users in the United States on an invitation-only basis. We had a chat with Friis, CEO Drew Larner and COO Carter Adamson about the idea behind the service, the business model, future plans and some history. Adamson explained to me that Rdio was born out of necessity. Spotify Who? Rdio Launches In The US And Canada, Lands More Indie Music Deals. It’s been two months to the day since Rdio launched in the States – check out Erick’s review if you’re interested in learning more about the (awesome) social music service.
But until today, you needed to be invited by another user to gain access to the service. Not that it was all that difficult – users were able to invite dozens at a time and we gave away thousands of invite codes for TechCrunch readers – but still, the doors are now open. Update: apologies, doors will actually open 8 AM EDT Tuesday morning. That is, if you live in the United States or Canada or at least know how to pretend you are. Users in those countries can henceforth sign up for Rdio and give it a whirl free of charge and ad-less for a period of 3 days, although users get the option to extend the free trial with another 10 days after, according to the startup, which was founded and financially backed by Skype, Kazaa and Joost founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis.
Curious to see what the future will hold for Rdio.