WTF is Rdio?

No one even knew what Spotify was until Tay-Tay decided to dump on it. But now this also-ran streaming service executes a publicity campaign to get insiders to write about their discount service and somebody thinks this is gonna move the needle? HILARIOUS!

Let’s start with tech. You’re either a winner or you’re not, a player or you’re not. Either everybody knows about you or they don’t. There’s one Facebook. One Google. One Amazon. And one Spotify. And if you think Apple’s gonna enter the sphere and decimate the Swedish streaming company overnight, you probably still subscribe to Beats, a failed service if there ever was one. Come on, Dr. Dre and his cronies could get everybody to buy crappy headphones for hundreds of dollars but couldn’t get these same people to lay down ten bucks a month?

OF COURSE NOT! Because you’re competing with free. And YouTube is free, never mind piracy, and you’ve got to convince people streaming is worth paying for. And you don’t do this by saying so.

Apple has everybody’s credit card number and a blue chip brand, but believe me, if Sprint were free, nobody would subscribe to Verizon, no matter how much better it might be. Jimmy failed already, the brass at Apple is clueless, otherwise how to explain the U2 debacle, and just because Iovine got everybody in the biz to sign an NDA and keeps telling them he’ll promote their records, this means NOTHING to the end consumer.

As for exclusives… I won’t waste my time talking about Tidal.

So what exactly is the Rdio offer?

I get Pandora and downloads for more?

But I already don’t pay for Pandora. And what do you mean by “downloads?” What you really mean is streams can live on my handset until I stop paying. But people don’t know that. Hell, they don’t even know streams can download/live on handsets whatsoever. My inbox is filled with people bitching that they can’t afford the data charges for a streaming service, not knowing that you can sync via wi-fi and it’s just like ownership, assuming you pay every month.

So you’ve got an incomprehensible offer to people who don’t care. That’s a winner, right there.

And speaking of incomprehensible, the bozos in the music business don’t realize Spotify’s free tier is crippled on mobile. You can’t just pick and choose what you want to hear. But they don’t know this because they don’t do the research, they just knee-jerk react against free. The reason Daniel Ek says free mobile converts people to pay is because they want the shackles removed. Try it out, sign up for free Spotify mobile and tell me how much you love the service. As for mobile, we just endured days of stories about how mobile is king, explaining the Verizon/AOL deal, how the switch is happening so fast, yet the music business is still worried about the desktop, and CDs and iTunes downloads. Drives me crazy.

What we’ve learned in the internet era is the consumer is king. People decide what they want, they’re not dictated to by purveyors.

Second, comprehensibility is everything. If I can’t understand it, I don’t want it. Even Apple is dealing with this issue with the Watch, people want to know what it’s FOR, and the Cupertino company has had a hard time explaining this. Sure, early adopters are lining up to buy it, but after that…

Streaming has already won. YouTube has proven this.

Spotify has put a dent in piracy wherever it operates. And this is a good thing.

Jimmy Iovine would like to do an end run around reality by forcing free to go away. Even the government is not gonna let that happen, never mind Steven Cooper. And the reason Jimmy wants that is not to please Lucian Grainge or other execs, but because it’s good for HIS business. If there’s no free, suddenly Apple competes with Spotify on a nearly equal level. Everybody’s fighting for that same ten bucks a month. Most people still don’t pay for streaming music, and if Apple can move the starting line to where Spotify is it has a better chance of winning.

Price does matter. But if you think price is everything, you’re probably buying an Android watch, which they’re giving away.

You’ve got to sell what people want.

And so far, the music industry has done a lousy job of convincing people they need to pay for a subscription to a streaming music service. First and foremost they’d like them to buy an album on CD, because they make the most money that way, even though CD drives have gone the way of cassette players. Then they’d like people to buy downloads as if everybody had a handset with 128 gigs of storage, as if the MP3/AAC was forever. Streaming is an afterthought. Meanwhile, everybody in the biz keeps bitching about streaming revenues. Do you want people to pay for something that you keep saying sucks?

And is this really the big issue, how much record companies and artists get paid for recorded music? Haven’t we moved to a more holistic view, where you get revenue from multiple sources and the come-on is the music?

Don’t get me wrong, I want people to pay for music, I want revenues to grow. I think streaming music is fantastic, I’m a big user. But if you want everybody else to come along and grow revenues you’ve got to have a united front promoting a properly-priced, well-rounded, comprehensible offer.

And Rdio at $3.99 is certainly not it.