The music industry has been a fickle one, and has always depended on the whims and fantasies of producers, big record companies and insiders who dictate terms to musicians and listeners who end up paying more, and the artists end up getting less thanks to piracy.
Internet has created a situation in which piracy can only be avoided, if subscribers are allowed to listen to unlimited music even if they had to pay a certain amount of subscription fees.
With that in mind, Last.fm, Grooveshark and other services gained popularity for quite some time. Of all of them, Spotify has been the most popular, and it recently began its services in the U.S.A as well. Spotify has about 15 million tracks that can be streamed for free if you live within the U.S. While online music streaming is a topic that is not within the confines of this news article, it should be noted that Internet certainly is the way to forge ahead for artists, music producers and even record companies.
Perhaps a glaring proof for that theory is Rdio. While Spotify has hogged all the limelight in the recent weeks, Rdio has slowly but steadily continued to grow, and has in fact managed to hit the 10 millionth track mark. While Spotify has been predominantly European in nature, Rdio is right now limited to only the U.S.A. and Canada. Rdio allows people to share and listen to music using social networking platforms like Twitter or Facebook, and use their cellphones to access unlimited music for free.
Rdio comes with apps for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry phones. The new start-up even announced its services for Windows Phone 7 devices recently. While Spotify may be the rage in the U.S. at the moment, other music subscription services like Rdio are quickly catching up. We had recently reviewed Spotify, which might be of interest to you.
