rdio

Money and musicians: Rdio's new artist-payment model

One of the creators of Skype has announced a new addition to his digital music service Rdio.

Janus Friis says the Rdio Artist Program is designed to give musicians a better alternative to iTunes Match or Spotify, where some complain that commission rates based on the number of times a song is streamed leaves an artist with almost nothing.

With Rdio, uploaders earn $10 for every new subscriber they lure to the service. The platform pays artists to share both music and recommendations on social-networking sites including Facebook and Twitter -- promoting the company as well as themselves.

San Francisco-based … Read more

Mobile developer platform gets $12 million boost in funding

Xamarin, a company that provides developer tools to hundreds of thousands of mobile app developers, has received $12 million in first-round funding, the company announced today.

The financing comes from Charles River Ventures, Ignition Partners, and Floodgate, and will be used to expand the company's software and build a sales and marketing team, according to a press release.

The desire to build mobile apps can often be hindered by a lack of mobile developers, but Xamarin's software makes it easier for traditional programmers to make the transition to mobile, according to an analyst quoted in Xamarin's release. … Read more

Rdio said to offer the U.K. and France music streaming

On the up and up, Rdio music streaming service continues to grow. Now it looks like the company is expanding into two new countries, the U.K. and France, according to The Verge.

"Just launched in the U.K. and France apparently," Rdio developer Ian McKeller tweeted earlier today. "Happy now?" He was responding to another Twitter user who apparently leaked the news.

According to The Verge, there are other reports of Rdio moving into the U.K. and France and that initially it will offering people an unlimited listening free trial for seven days. However, … Read more

Skype co-founder wants to give you free mobile broadband

Niklas Zennstrom changed the telephone industry when he co-founded VoIP juggernaut, Skype. Now he's preparing to attack the industry again with the introduction of free mobile broadband from FreedomPop.

FreedomPop today announced that it would partner with Clearwire for its upcoming mobile broadband service. Backed by Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom, FreedomPop aims to disrupt the mobile broadband industry by providing mobile Internet to consumers free of charge.

FreedomPop had previously named LightSquared as its launch partner, but it appears that relationship has stalled due to mounting complications in the LightSquared camp. The FCC yesterday suspended LightSquared's waiver to … Read more

Gain easy control of your music with Mac app Skip Tunes

Skip Tunes is a 99-cent app that puts a convenient control in your Mac's menu bar for controlling music in iTunes, Spotify, and Rdio.

When I'm working, I'm often listening to music. And when I'm working, I can get very lazy focused, to the point where opening iTunes or Spotify to find out the name of a song I don't recognize feels like an arduous chore. (In my defense, iTunes can be slow to appear from its hidden state.) Because of this, I found the 99 cents I spent on Skip Tunes in the Mac App Store to be money well spent.… Read more

Rdio redesigns Android app

Rdio, the subscription music service, just put out an update to its Android app, and it's a big one.

On top of offering support for Android Ice Cream Sandwich's new remote control client, the app is more streamlined and highlights Rdio's "rich" social features and extensive music discovery options. The free app is available for both smartphones and tablets in the Android Market.

According to Rdio, here's what's new:… Read more

Which music service should you use?

You just want to listen to some good music.

At this point, music lovers and listeners now have 10 scrillion ways to listen to music online. But where to start? Do you patiently upload all your music to Google Music? Do you check out what your friends are listening to on Spotify? Rdio? Mog? Pandora? Which ones are free, and which ones cost money? Or do you just forget about online music and just go back to listening to CDs (assuming they'll even be around in a couple of years)?

I'll be focusing on on-demand music services where … Read more

The 404 949: Where we drop the SOPA (podcast)

Leaked from today's 404 Podcast episode:

Google Music takes on streaming services like Spotify, iTunes Match, and Amazon Cloud Drive with music encoding at 320Kbps, cross-integration with Google+, and an Artist Hub site for bands to promote their original content. Fans of Hootie and the Blowfish already denouncing the service for its lack of content from Warner Music Group. The Samsung Galaxy Nexus lands in the U.K., powered by Google's Ice Cream Sandwich software for Android phones. Cool upgrades in the OS include facial recognition, voice typing, and Android beam for contact exchange by NFC.… Read more

Coldplay snub sounds alarm for streaming music

Coldplay and singer Tom Waits last week issued no-confidence votes on subscription music services, or at least that's how the press is interpreting their decision not to distribute their latest albums through companies such as Spotify, Rhapsody, Rdio, and MOG.

On Wednesday, CNET broke the news that Coldplay and Waits will follow other marquee acts, such as Adele and Prince, who have withheld at least part of their catalogs from some of the subscription services. Management for Coldplay and Waits did not respond to interview requests. So, while we don't know for sure why they chose to snub … Read more

Sony going solo with phones

YouTube may start releasing its own original content, Coldplay gives a cold shoulder to music streaming, and Sony pays Ericsson to take over the handset business.

Links from Thursday's episode of Loaded: