Rdio is the emerging online music radio which is one of the raging fevers of the current online music scene. Naturally, the relationship between Rdio and Apple’s iTunes, which is almost a rival, may not be very amicable. Or at least so was reflected in the words of the head of design at Rdio, Wilson Miner, who termed iTunes as ‘just a fancy CD changer.’
Miner gave these remarks while being interviewed during the SXSW conference. Currently, Rdio is working on a redesign of the service and the company is quite hopeful that the redesign may make it a bigger player in the online music industry.
iTunes conventionally provided the users a lot of customizable tools such as rating, smart playlists etc to manage and organize their music effectively. Rdio, according to Wilson, is also working on a lot of these options and that it has a far larger collection of music than iTunes Store when it was initially launched.
However, a slight tinge of bitterness was reflected in Wilson’s remarks when he termed iTunes ‘just a fancy CD changer.’ According to him, borrowing ideas from a desktop app and then applying them to music service with millions of songs is a ‘non-trivial task’, apparently a reference to the task Rdio is currently doing.
Rdio is also watching the prospects of working with Facebook’s Open Graph. If Rdio ends up being integrated into Facebook’s Ticker and Timeline, this could be a huge win for the service as it can get viral within days, if not months, given the sheer population of Facebook.
Image courtesy Hot Meteor.
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