Rdio coming to all countries in Europe

29 Mar 2012

Just as it emerged that Spotify will be coming to Ireland soon, it has emerged that another streaming-music provider, Rdio – which is backed by Skype founder Niklas Zennstrom – will be launching soon in all European countries.

This means that as well as Netflix on the movie front, Ireland will soon have three streaming music providers – effectively Rdio, Deezer and Spotify – in competition to be music providers of choice.

Streaming-music providers offer a legitimate and affordable service for music lovers. Users pay a basic monthly fee and have access to thousands of streaming music tracks with the opportunity to buy and download favourite tracks.

In addition, these streaming services integrate with Facebook’s Social Graph, which means if users are listening to new music their friends can listen in, too, and create an opportunity or mechanism for music to be bought or subscribed to.

According to a report in Paid Content, Rdio VP Scott Bagsby said that Rdio will be coming to all countries across Europe.

Bagsby said that lining up the various labels and record companies is a difficult process but the company recently won a PRS for Europe licence to play UK artists across Europe.

Despite the acclaim for services like Rdio, Deezer and Spotify, Bagsby made an important point. The music-streaming market is only in its infancy, with just 13.4m paying subscribers in the world, which leaves impressive room for growth.

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com