If you’re an Rdio user, you have a week to download your playlists before the service goes offline at 8pm ET/5pm PT on Tuesday 22 December. Although the company was acquired by Pandora last month, its new owners are not continuing the service, but instead incorporating some of its technology and talent.
You can download an archive of your collection, and also see your listening stats, by logging in at the company’s ‘farewell’ page.
Rdio has posted a few stats to the page, showing that the most-played album was Nothing Was The Same by Drake, while the most popular song was When I Was Your Man by Bruno Mars.
There’s a lot happening around the new Apple TV in the news this week. Just yesterday Apple released the first feature update to the tvOS software with version 9.1, adding Siri support for Apple Music plus Apple’s Remote app now works for both navigating and text input. But recent reports claim Apple’s rumored web TV package has been stalled during the deal-making process between Apple and the content providers. And while the expected content bundle seems further off than what was previously expected, new content including Pandora Radio is continuing to launch on the new Apple TV…
Since Apple’s CarPlay feature first hit cars — with iTunes Radio built-in — whether or not Pandora Radio would ever support the infotainment platform has been a popular question among users. In the past Pandora has left the door open for CarPlay support at some point, noting that Apple controls which apps are allowed to work with it, and Pandora’s CFO went as far as promising it will support CarPlay earlier this year. Fulfilling that promise 7 months later, Pandora Radio has updated its iPhone app to totally support CarPlay: Expand Expanding Close
After a pilot of its new “Sponsored Listening” advertisements last year, streaming music service Pandora Radio announced today that it’s rolling out the feature to all advertisers and listeners in its mobile apps. The feature rewards users with an hour of ad-free, uninterrupted listening as long as they first interact with an ad for at least 15 seconds. Expand Expanding Close
Apple revealed the first look at its all-new Music app for iPhone and iPad with the first beta release of iOS 8.4 today, which brings a new look to iTunes Radio among other major changes. Pandora Radio, the similarly-modeled music streaming service that’s arguably superior to iTunes Radio in music variety and selection, released a timely update this evening adding Apple Watch support to its iPhone app ahead of the new wearable device’s release on April 24th. Pandora Radio’s WatchKit app for Apple Watch will include a glance for swiping up from the watch face to identify the song currently playing from the iPhone app.
When Apple enters a new business, you know it’s not going to do so in a half-hearted, small way. When it launches its Apple-branded Beats Music service later this year, it’s a no-brainer to predict that it’s going to be a big deal for the music industry. With Apple’s deep integration of Beats into its existing iOS/iTunes ecosystem exclusively revealed by Mark Gurman added into the mix, I wonder whether the unique selling points being notched up by Apple could be enough to leave existing big-name players like Spotify, Google Play and Rdio dead in the water?
That’s rather a grand idea, of course. As of last month, Spotify reached 15 million paid subscribers–up 50% in the last six months alone. Beats Music had only a little over 100,000 subscribers at the time Apple bought the company, and is rumored to have only 2-3 times as many now. But an Apple-ified Beats Music service has four things going for it … Expand Expanding Close
Proving it can stay competitive with iTunes Radio, the streaming music service that debuted with iOS 7, Pandora Radio is busy at work bringing new features to its own customizable streaming music service.
The company released a feature update today to its iOS app bringing with it the ability to set song or artist stations as alarm clocks.
While the native Clock app in iOS can awake you to a specific song, Pandora’s station alarm clock is a nice addition to iOS and a compelling reason to use Pandora Radio even if you’re an iTunes Radio evangelist.
Pandora Radio 5.1 also brings full iOS 7 compatibility as it was previously designed for the iOS 7 but built for iOS 6,
Check out the full release notes below and download the latest version from the App Store.
Pandora Radio for iPhone and iPad received a minor update today that brings a couple of welcomed improvements for users. The first notable new feature will automatically pause music when muting your iOS device, making sure you never miss a song when muting suddenly and forgetting to pause. The updated app also adds improved playback buffering for what Pandora says is ‘stutter-free’ music and the usual bug fixes and performance enhancements.
Pandora also notes that “all the URLs that work on Pandora.com now work just as well on your phone.”
Full list of what’s new below:
What’s New in Version 4.4
• Stuck with a flaky connection? We’ve improved playback buffering to keep your favorite music stutter-free.
• Never miss another great song: if you mute your phone, we’ll pause your music for you.
• More links to more of what you love: all the URLs that work on Pandora.com now work just as well on your phone.
• Bug fixes and improvements to keep your music playing as it should.
Update: Bloomberg adds more to WSJ’s report from earlier claiming that Apple’s new radio service will be tightly integrated with its iAd business. The report says Eddy Cue is currently making changes to the iAd business to support the new radio service scheduled to launch later this year alongside iOS 7:
Apple, based in Cupertino, California, has been negotiating with advertising companies including Omnicom Group Inc (OMC).’s OMD to secure brands that will run campaigns on the radio service, one person said..The company has taken steps to be more flexible with advertisers to get more business. Apple has required marketers to pay a fee for each 1,000 times an advertisement is placed in an app, plus an additional $2 for every time a customer clicks that ad. In some cases, Apple has eliminated one of those charges, one person familiar with the company said.
Apple also has cut prices so that media agencies can spend $1 million and use the purchased space for different advertising clients. And Apple started taking ad business from companies that sell alcohol, something Jobs resisted after creating iAd, said one person.
After months of stalled negotiations over its planned Internet radio service, Apple is pushing to complete licensing deals with music companies so it can reveal the service as early as next week, according to people briefed on the talks.
It would appear that Apple wants to announce the service at WWDC, but the company needs to overcome issues with closing some of the deals. CNET reported earlier today that Apple had closed the deal with Warner, one of the bigger labels.
Apple has signed a deal with the Universal Music Group for its recorded music rights, but not for music publishing — the part of the business that deals with songwriting. Over the weekend, Apple also signed a deal with the Warner Music Group for both rights. It is still in talks with Sony Music Entertainment and Sony’s separate publishing arm, Sony/ATV, whose songwriters include Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga.
In a strange irony, the music service Apple offers is, again, said to be free and supported by ads (like Pandora/Spotify/Slacker/etc). This is in contrast to Google’s service, which is sold via a paid subscription.
I would have guessed the opposite, but this may be why Google was able to close the deals with the labels and Apple is still at the table.
Users can now publish Now Playing activity to Facebook as it updates, similar to Spotify or Rdio, allowing friends to interact with the music you enjoy. Sharing individual tracks and stations to Facebook, Twitter, and email is built right in now as well.
Pandora 4.3 also includes a handful of UI improvements that greatly improve the native feel of the app, including the ability to tap the album art to reveal track information, but the new features and improvements are only available for iPhone for now.
Henry Ford may famously be thought to have said, “Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black,” as he invented mass production, but now it looks like the veteran auto company has an iPhone fixation, revealing support for the Apple device in future generations of its vehicles running the Ford Sync AppLink platform.
Some may note my determination that Apple has a story to tell in the automobile industry — perhaps partnerships will make this story thrive. So, what will this mean? Expand Expanding Close
Pandora Radio for iPhone and iPad
