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Rdio Launches Internet Radio Service to Take on Spotify, Pandora

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Popular music streaming service Rdio has launched its own internet radio feature in order to compete with the likes of Pandora and Spotify. Rdio is launching the service on iOS and Android, and it’s completely free for non-paying Rdio users, but while the service is ad-free right now, expect that to change soon as Rdio looks for advertisers.

The new feature is called Stations, and it’s launching initially in the US, Canada and Australia. Rdio users who don’t want to pay for the service can now at least have access to listen to an unlimited number of artists, albums and genres in a radio-style format. Of course, it’s pretty similar to the offerings from Pandora and Spotify, with Pandora being the original internet radio behemoth and Spotify joining in at a later time. Obviously, this means that Rdio would too at some point.

New subscribers to Rdio will get a 14-day free trial of the complete Rdio experience, including on-demand music and offline storage, allowing you to play specific tracks. Once the 14 days end, users will have to begin using Rdio’s radio stations only, unless they sign-up at $9.99 a month to keep the complete experience.

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Obviously, Rdio wants to use Stations as a free trial in a way, allowing anyone to give Rdio a try for free on their mobile device. Previously, if you weren’t paying for Rdio’s premium service, the mobile app didn’t do anything, since you have to pay $10 per month in order to use Rdio on your smartphone or tablet.

Internet radio has been around for a while, but on-demand services have become a huge market in the music industry. However, many of these services are realizing that free radio-style listening is a crucial part to the listening experience, and it’s something that company’s can offer for free and use to try and to persuade users to pay for the full experience.

The update to Rdio hasn’t been pushed to the respective app stores just yet, but we should be seeing them hit at some point today. The app itself is a free download, but you’ll need to pay the monthly subscription in order to actually use the app if you want the full experience, or you can use it for free with access to only Stations.

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