GigaOM » Janus Friis

Skype co-founder Janus Friis is working on a stealthy new product incubator

Janko Roettgers — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 19:14:53 +0000

Skype co-founder Janus Friis is getting ready to launch a new venture: Block Talent Partners, a recruiting agency that has been working with Friis on some of his other ventures, is currently looking for senior engineering talent for a stealthy new incubator. The objective of the new company is to ”change how products get built and startups get launched,” according to a job offer, which reads in part:

“More than just an “incubator” or “accelerator”, tbd. is assembling an elite team of engineers to create a one-of-a-kind company. Their goal is to build, launch and commercialize the hottest new products we can dream up, all with an eye towards reusable code and buttressed by a best-in-class infrastructure.”

It’s unclear what the eventual name of the company will be. However, we do know that the new company will be headed by Todd Berman, who was employee number one at Rdio, the Friis-backed digital music service that is joined at the hip with Vdio. Berman served as Rdio’s CTO until last month. Via email, he told me:

“We are not an incubator or an accelerator. We are however looking to hire great engineers who are interested in joining a startup that is trying to change the industry standard model of how startups are created.”

The idea to re-use code for launching new products may also at least in part be informed by Friis’ experience with Rdio and Vdio. Friis initially hired a separate team of designers and engineers to build Vdio. But those efforts were eventually scrapped, and Vdio was rebuilt from scratch on top of Rdio’s architecture, with most of original team being let go in the process.

So what will Tbd. build? The job posting offers no details, but it does mention that the eventual goal is to spin out the products it builds into separate companies. It goes on to offer prospective hires “the (highest) compensation in the Valley,” something that Friis can easily afford: In 2001, Friis and his co-founder Niklas Zennstroem made an estimated $1.19 billion by selling Skype to Microsoft.

This story was updated at 4:30 pm with a comment from Todd Berman as well as further details on the name of the company.

Image courtesy of Flickr user Marcin Wichary.

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Futureful’s smart content discovery app hits the iPad in the U.S.

David Meyer — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 17:00:27 +0000

Back in November we told you about Futureful, a Finnish startup that’s trying to create a semantically-driven content discovery tool — kind of like StumbleUpon but smarter. Well, as of now, iPad users in the U.S. can try it out for themselves.

The company, which describes itself as “a group of humanists and computer scientists,” is basically trying to fuse machine learning with human understanding. It’s backed by Skype co-founder and über-angel Janus Friis, who lent a glowing quote to the launch release:

“Futureful makes it fun to surf the web again. Everyone should try it. And this is only the beginning of what Futureful can become.”

So, how does that square up with the reality of using the app?

I’ve been playing around with it a bit pre-launch, and I have to say the simplicity of the interface appeals, particularly when you compare it with the iPad version of StumbleUpon. That said, it can be a bit confusing at first, and that’s partially a data issue.

What you’ll see is an in-app browser, much as you’d get with Twitter or StumbleUpon, but with two rows of tags at the top. The first row is what Futureful’s artificial intelligence engine is proposing, based on the personalized information it gleans when you sign in using Twitter or Facebook. The second row takes in the tags you’ve picked.

That’s where it gets confusing. If you have multiple tags, sometimes they will all light up — if two are activated, for example, that means the piece of content you’re looking at covers both subjects. Sometimes, though, only one will be activated at a time. The example where I saw this happen involved the tags “swarm” and “robots”. This should really produce something relating to swarm robotics, perhaps, but it doesn’t.

“If you do some queries, a lot of them will combine,” co-founder Marko Anderson explained to me. “That might lead to content that’s older or less relevant. The system makes a decision that an article is closely related to ‘swarming robots’, but we’re not including that in the query.”

Similarly, sometimes if you swipe down to check out a second page related to your chosen tag, it will default to a Google search results page. As Anderson noted, this is about populating Futureful, and that’s hard to do before it has a significant number of users.

“Certain topics are very well covered and certain aren’t,” he said. “The technology is in very good shape, but it’s always a data problem with search. Now that we’re getting it out there, we’re going to continually ramp up the index. Users can also add content. It’s not alive yet until many people are dynamically using it.”

But is it fun? Yes, in a curious way. I like that it doesn’t regurgitate the same content over and over, and Friis isn’t blowing hot air when he talks about getting a sense of things to come. It’s a very different kind of search from Google, to be sure – think serendipity rather than looking for something specific – but the mechanism is intriguing, and it may well evolve into something useful down the line.

Speaking of Futureful’s future, Anderson told me the immediate next steps will involve more countries and more platforms – iPhone first, as that version is pretty much developed, then Android. But the company is also playing around with various data visualization ideas, perhaps around trending topics and so forth.

Which sounds good, as this team is clearly pretty smart and imaginative, but I just hope the Futureful app retains its elegant simplicity, rather than going too far down the ‘what kind of search would you like?’ route. There’s a nugget of something powerful here, and it needs to develop in its own way.

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Here comes Vdio: Janus Friis’ video service launches private beta in UK and US

Janko Roettgers — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 08:01:45 +0000

Vdio, the online video service founded by Skype co-founder Janus Friis, is finally emerging from stealth mode. The company just launched a new homepage, which touts a private beta test, and comes with a few surprises: Vdio is getting ready to launch in the U.K. as well as in the U.S., and a screenshot of the service as well as the site’s Terms of Service reveal a purely transactional business model. In other words: It won’t directly compete with Netflix, but is instead targeting iTunes and Vudu.

That’s a notable change of tune from October 2011, when GigaOM first broke the story of Vdio’s existence. Back then, everything pointed to Vdio going into the video subscription business, and leaks in the following months hinted at plans to combine a Netflix-style subscription with transactional VOD. Those plans have seemingly been scrapped, and the new homepage describes the service the following way:

“A better way to watch. Rent or buy movies and TV shows worth tuning in to.”

Vdio’s homepage features a screenshot showing off some of its studio partners. Click to enlarge.

The accompanying screenshot shows popular movie and TV show titles like Prometheus, Breaking Bad, Ted, Monsters Inc., The Dictator, Family Guy, Pulp Fiction, Doctor Who, The Woman in Black, Real Steel and The Amazing Spider-Man.

Judging from these titles, Vdio has partnered with Disney, Fox, Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures, AMC, BBC America, Lionsgate, Paramount, CBS and DreamWorks Pictures – a pretty impressive list.

Just as noteworthy however is that Vdio is going to launch in the U.S. right away as well. Last year, the company said that it would initially only be available in the U.K.

The story behind Vdio’s delayed launch

Vdio’s team in December of 2011 at a restaurant in Slovenia, where some of the company’s engineers used to be located. Much of this staff was let go three months later.

Vdio has been a bit of an enigma ever since our first report about the company. The team behind it stealthily worked on the service since late 2009, and signs initially pointed towards a launch in early 2012. But in March, Vdio abruptly fired most of its engineering and design staff, including its CTO Justin Erenkrantz and a number of other people who had previously worked with Friis on the ill-fated video streaming service Joost.

I had a chance to briefly chat with Vdio CEO Ian Aaron about the upheaval a couple of months ago, and he told me that the company’s decision had a lot to do with the fact that Friis already had another media venture on his hands: Rdio, the music subscription service that is competing with Spotify and others, had already solved a lot of the problems that Vdio was working on. “We were literally reinventing the wheel,” said Aaron. That’s why the decision was made to share resources instead, he explained.

Vdio’s close alignment with Rdio

Aaron insisted at the time that despite those shared resources, Rdio and Vdio still remained separate companies – a line repeated by a Rdio spokesperson when my colleague Robert Andrews inquired about the two companies in September.

However, the relationship between Rdio and Vdio seems to grow closer by the day. Vdio’s website is hosted on Rdio’s servers, and the screenshot of the service prominently features the user name of Rdio’s VP of Product Malthe Sigurdsson. Vdio’s Terms of Service also reveal that users will be able to log into the service with their Rdio account. The two services apparently plan to offer users a way to use payment information provided for Rdio’s service to pay for movies bought on Vdio, and gift cards will work for either service. From Vdio’s Terms of Service:

“Unless otherwise specified or inapplicable, you will be able to use your Vdio Purchase Offerings on Rdio and your Rdio Purchase Offerings on the Vdio Service.”

Also interesting: Vdio’s Terms of Service now list Rdio’s address, and not its original Santa Monica office, as its principal business address. I wouldn’t be all too surprised if the two companies made their bond official once Vdio emerges out of private beta – but right now, it’s still unclear when that will be.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user jaaron.

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Rdio, Vdio tag-team for Skype founders’ music, movie combo

Robert Andrews — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 17:12:52 +0000

Spotify may not be the only online music service to enter the internet video space, if last week’s rumour turns out to be true.

Stealth online TV start-up Vdio and music rival Rdio have been part-combined behind the scenes, as the pair’s backers assemble a two-pronged digital entertainment assault of their own.

Rdio was founded by Skype co-founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis in 2010, while Friis also kickstarted Vdio for a still-secretive move in to online movies.

Although the two entities are related, they had remained separate. Now, with Vdio’s launch still languishing, much of the two teams was combined back in May, paidContent has learned. Many staff now have dual roles across the two companies.

The closer coming together follows the March unveiling of Rdio’s own redesign. Alongside, Vdio also has undergone a pre-launch rebuild – one reason for its gestation time. Launch may now happen toward year’s end.

A Rdio spokesperson tells paidContent: ”Due to common ownership, Rdio and Vdio share select resources. However, Vdio operates as a separate company and Ian Aaron currently serves as the CEO.”

The tie-up does not go as far planning a single super service offering both music and movies. More likely the case, Vdio is calling on Rdio’s product team to get its development back on the road.

Also, although subscription is gaining traction as a new on-device digital music consumer model for outlets like Rdio, it is not yet set in stone that subscription will be Vdio’s chosen method.

In fact, in many countries, rights to distribute movies by subscription are harder to come by, since large multi-nationals already hold exclusive rights. Vdio may get fresher movies by offering them as PPV.

Rdio launched in Norway last week, where it will take on Spotify’s Scandinavian might.

Vdio is much anticipated since Zennström and Friis have unfinished business in online video. Their last effort, Joost, was valiant but did not gain significant enough traction and was eventually sold.

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Rdio sneaks into UK and France. Will you be using it?

Bobbie Johnson — Thu, 03 May 2012 07:58:34 +0000

We were a few weeks off with the prediction that Rdio would be launching in the U.K. — but only a few. In the early hours Thursday morning European time, the music streaming service quietly rolled out in Britain and France.

The offering is pretty familiar: Rdio is delivering the same web-based streaming service as it does elsewhere. It looks like there have been some local additions to the catalog, but there are a few touches that suggest localization of the service itself has not been a serious priority — signup, for example, uses American-style date format rather than the European one, which feels a little off.

The big story, of course, is the competition with Spotify. The unannounced arrival takes the San Francisco startup directly onto its London-headquartered rival’s home turf, nearly a year after Spotify did the reverse by launching in America.

However, Rdio — which already launched in Germany earlier this year — may feel a certain sense of familiarity with its new surroundings: the service was started by Skype co-founder Janus Friis, a Dane who is domiciled in London.

On the surface, Rdio’s rollout seems to follow pretty much the same pattern as its big rival: premium subscriptions cost £4.99 or £9.99 per month ($8.08 or $16.17), which is more than Rdio’s American pricing, but follows the same structure as Spotify. Given the similar package on offer — unlimited desktop streaming for lower tier customers, and mobile streaming and offline syncing for the higher price — it seems the market has settled into that 5/10 shape for now.

The big question as the two go head to head may be the difference between their catalogs. The general consensus seems to be that Spotify has deeper listings, but Rdio is better at getting new releases on board.

A cursory look through the top 20 UK albums suggests that they’re pretty — most interestingly neither have access to Adele’s 21, one of the U.K.’s biggest selling records of all time and currently #2 in the album charts. Spotify (which is part-owned by the big record labels) has famously struggled to get those tracks into its catalog, but Rdio users in America can listen to it. That indicates some jiggery-pokery going on with the labels over rights — though the extent is not clear yet.

Given those similarities, the question seems to be whether Rdio’s offering is enough to tempt away Spotify’s substantial user base, which has built up over several years. Or is Spotify’s gravity — and new offerings like its iPad app, launched Wednesday — going to make it hard for Rdio to make headway?

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Can Vdio compete with Netflix & Hulu?

Janko Roettgers — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 21:08:22 +0000

Netflix, Amazon, Hulu … and Vdio? Many of our readers were skeptical when we broke the story about Vdio, the new premium video service launched by Skype co-founder Janus Friis. Can a newcomer really compete with the big boys?

Will the company have enough money to get the content it needs to take on Netflix? Or has Netflix already sealed the deal with an unsurmountable lead of more than 25 million subscribers?

Those are all very good questions. Here are some of my thoughts on them:

Vdio is an international play, and that’s smart. Netflix has been aggressively expanding beyond the U.S., but most of its 25.5 million subscribers are still stateside. And most of Netflix’s deals are structured in a way that separates U.S. from foreign rights. So even if Netflix has tied up exclusive rights for shows like Mad Men in the U.S., it still has to compete for those very rights in other markets – and it may be unwilling to spend premium dollars for exclusivity in unproven markets.
Starting in Europe is even smarter. Netflix and especially Hulu have had a hard time sealing the deal in Europe, which is part of the reason they went to Canada and Latin America (Netflix) and Japan (Hulu) first. Vdio starting off in the U.K. is a strong move, and it comes at a time where more and more Britons are getting used to paying for online subscriptions, thanks to Spotify. Which brings me to another point:
With foreign markets, it’s all about timing. We have to wait for Netflix to post its Q3 results next week, but I’ve got a hunch that their growth in Latin America will be much slower than in Canada. Securing markets like Brazil and Mexico may be a good long-term bed for Netflix, but the company may have a tough time today selling subscriptions priced around $8 per month in countries where the average wage is still much lower than in the U.S. Europe on the other hand is ripe for a Netflix-like service, and Vdio may have a chance to claim a stake there before others pull up their tents.
Legacy is weight. Vdio is of course not the only one trying to compete with Netflix, and some of rivals are much bigger that the upstart that wasn’t even on anyone’s radar before this week. Think of Amazon for example, or Dish. However, Dish is also a great example of how things can go wrong when you’ve got a legacy business to preserve while trying to compete with the forces that threaten it. Dish was rumored to have a Netflix competitor in the works, but only unveiled yet another pay TV subscription enhancement when it finally took the wraps of its online video service a few weeks ago.
An exit may just be the beginning. It’s true, Netflix has likely a lot more money to spend on content than Vdio – even though Friis recently cashed out on Skype. However, who says that Vdio is built to become yet another publicly traded entity? It’s much more likely that the company will get acquired by a Google or Yahoo once it proves itself – and if the canceled Hulu sale has shown anything, then it’s that there are definitely many willing buyers for a video subscription service.

What do you think? Will Vdio be able to compete with Netflix? Let us know in the comments!

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It’s confirmed: Skype founder’s new startup is Vdio

Janko Roettgers — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 20:21:49 +0000

We just got an official confirmation for our story on Vdio, the new Netflix competitor by the founders of Skype: The company sent us a Q&A that confirms most of the information we uncovered, while remaining vague on details like pricing and launch date.

The Vdio team also already took a first swipe at Netflix and the backlash it has been facing from consumers by saying that one of the differences between Vdio and Netflix will be that “people will love using Vdio.” Oh snap!

Read the entire Q&A below:

What is VDIO?
VDIO lets you instantly watch the best in TV and movies, right now.

How is it pronounced?
Vee-dee-o

Who is behind VDIO?
VDIO was founded by Janus Friis and is run by a team with experience from Skype, Napster, Microsoft, TV Guide, and Apache.

When will it launch?
VDIO is currently in closed beta.

How is VDIO funded?
VDIO is privately funded.

Where will VDIO be available?
Initially, VDIO will be available in the U.K.

Where is the company based?
VDIO has offices in Santa Monica and Europe.

How much does it cost?
The pricing will be announced at a later time.

How is it different from Netflix and LoveFilm?
We think people will love using VDIO.

Who is the team?
Ian Aaron – Chief Executive Officer
Justin Erenkrantz – Chief Technology Officer
Priidu Zilmer – Creative Director
Scott Barrow – Senior Vice President of Operations
Sander Striker – Senior Vice President of Engineering
Patrick Dodd – Senior Vice President of Global Licensing
Jessica Algazi – Senior Vice President of Business Affairs

What is VDIO’s relationship to Rdio?
VDIO and Rdio are run by separate teams.

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For eBay, the Bet on Skype Pays Off. Finally!

Om Malik — Tue, 10 May 2011 14:23:45 +0000

When eBay bought Skype in October 2005 for up to $4.1 billion dollars, turning founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis into billionaires, I was among the most vocal critics of the deal. I felt that it was going to kill the Skype franchise and that eBay would lose its shirt.

For the first two years, the company did lose its shirt as it spiraled out of control. eBay failed to integrate the company and, in the process, became the poster child of the how not to do a merger case study. But today, with Microsoft finally confirming the news we first broke on May 8, eBay can breathe a sigh of relief. A back of the envelope calculation shows that eBay might have made a 40 percent profit on its Skype adventure. Here is how.

While the initial announced price for Skype was up to $4.1 billion, eBay paid about $2.6 billion for the company and another $530 million in earn-outs to the two founders. So in total it spent about $3.1 billion.

In November, eBay sold 70 percent of the company for $1.9 billion to various investors and the Skype co-founders. The company received about $2.5 billion from Microsoft for rest of its share of Skype. In total the company has received about $4.4 billion or just over 40 percent more than it paid.

When eBay bought Skype, its stock was $40 a share. Now whether it was because of disastrous management or Skype, eBay stock took a nosedive and has only recently started to recover. If it used the $3.13 billion to buy its own stock, eBay would have lost about 21 percent on the investment. Even buying S&P 500 Index funds would have resulted in about 8 percent gain. (The S&P 500 was at 1,250 in Oct 05, and is at 1,346 today, for a gain of about 8 percent over the period.)

Today might just be the right day for everyone involved with Skype to take a moment and think about Josh Silverman, who took over Skype at a time when it was unraveling and had seen many chiefs come and go. He (along with some amazing people at Skype) stabilized the company, even though his understated style often came for a lot of criticism.

He took over Skype’s top job right after eBay took a $1 billion write-off in 2008. One would say, Silverman and other Skype members have done a good job of turning a turd into a saleable asset. He left the company after the spinout and is currently an EIR at Greylock Ventures.

eBay CEO John Donahue can pat himself on the back and say job well done. And more importantly, he is now free from the ghost of Meg Whitman that has haunted his tenure at the top position. Maybe it’s even time to send Silverman a big case of bubbly!

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Skype’s Real P2P Network

Colleen Taylor — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 23:15:10 +0000

Skype, the web’s telephone and video chat pioneer, has seen a lot since its inception eight years ago: Explosive initial growth, a blockbuster $2.6 billion sale to eBay in 2005, spinning back out of eBay in 2009, filing to go public in 2010 as a standalone firm, the delay of said IPO in 2011.

But Skype’s real legacy in the tech industry has nothing to do with its corporate ups and downs. It’s the people.

The power of the ex-Skyper network quickly becomes apparent to anyone involved in today’s web landscape. Once you start working your way up, it isn’t long before you bump into an influential ex-Skyper. Which will likely lead to an introduction to another ex-Skyper, who’s launching a startup; which is funded by a VC firm; which is run by another ex-Skyper; who is on the board of directors of a startup founded by… you get the idea. The Skype of today may have its problems, but the ex-Skyper network is active, dynamic, successful, and seemingly everywhere.

The ex-Skyper network is remarkable for how closely knit it is to this day, nearly four years after the company’s initial 2007 exodus. I’m told that a surprising number of former Skypers keep in touch on a monthly or even weekly basis– often through Skype.

Ex-Skypers cite two predominant reasons for their enduring ties:

Skype’s early days as an underdog fighting against the established telco giants.
“Skype in the early days was an atmosphere of passion,” one former Skype executive told me. “It was essentially a David and Goliath situation, so we all really bonded together.”

Skype’s founders had a knack for hiring people who clicked– personally and professionally.
“Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis did a great job of hiring people who were like-minded and driven,” another former Skype exec told me. “The Skype team was a bunch of great people who really enjoyed each other. That’s not something that ever disappears.”

To help illustrate my point, I’ve pulled together a rough list of who’s who in the ex-Skyper network and what they’re doing now. Feel free to chime in in the comments if you notice anyone, or anything, I’ve left out.

Carter Adamson
was: Skype’s head of product
now: CEO, Rdio; boardmember, GrowsUp

Taavet Hinrikus
was: Skype’s director of strategy; one of the company’s first 10 employees
now: CEO, TransferWise.

Janus Friis
was: Skype co-founder and strategy director
now: co-founder, Rdio

Michael Jackson
was: Skype’s original COO
now: managing partner at Luxembourg-based VC firm Mangrove Capital Partners, an early Skype investor

Saul Klein
was: Skype’s VP of marketing
now: partner at London-based VC firm Index Ventures, another Skype investor

Eric Lagier
was: director of hardware and mobile business development at Skype
now: CEO, Memolane

Stefan Öberg
was: Skype director of product
now: founder and CEO, stealth-mode startup Remby.com

Pooj Preena
was: Skype’s San Francisco-based business development head
now: angel investor; recently departed CEO at Hi-Media USA

Stephanie Robesky
was: early product manager at Skype
now: founder, GrowsUp

Michael van Swaaij
was: Skype interim CEO, post-eBay acquisition
now: angel investor in TransferWise and others

Niklas Zennström
was: Skype’s co-founder and CEO
now: CEO of London-based VC firm Atomico Investments, which invests in ex-Skyper startups Rdio, GrowsUp, Memolane, and others

Pooj Preena image courtesy of Flickr user ThomasHawk

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Rdio's Silence Ends As Skype Founders Launch Music Subscription Service

Paul Bonanos — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 04:01:56 +0000

Music subscription services still haven’t proven themselves in the marketplace, yet new ones keep appearing — the latest being Rdio. Quiet since its existence was first revealed last October, the company co-founded and funded by serial entrepreneurs Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis — who previously gave the world Skype, Kazaa and Joost — has now entered invitation-only beta in the U.S. I’ve been using it for about a week.

Like several others in the marketplace, Rdio -– pronounced “AR-dee-oh” -– promises streaming, cloud-based access to a library of millions of songs for a flat monthly fee. (To learn more about cloud-based streaming, attend Structure, June 23 & 24 in San Francisco) Desktop and mobile access via iPhones and BlackBerrys costs $10 monthly, while desktop-only customers pay $5. That’s an increasingly familiar price point: MOG, which went live last fall and is now preparing its mobile launch, will have the same two-tiered price system, while Rhapsody and Thumbplay both offer desktop-plus-mobile plans for $10; European fave Spotify offers free ad-supported streams and a two-tiered premium plan. (See my report, Spotify Leads the Streaming Music Scene, on GigaOM Pro, sub req’d)

So what’s new? Rdio favors social music discovery via a Twitter-like model based on following other users. Music that’s frequently played among those users turns up in a “heavy rotation” list, a sort of musical version of Twitter’s trending topics. It’s an inherently non-private service, with your listening history as well as your collection of bookmarked songs on display for anyone to scrutinize. That may be a turnoff for some people, but it’s the key to Rdio’s discovery component.

I liked Rdio’s fast-moving, browser-based interface; there’s also a small desktop app that performs seamless playback and inspects your iTunes library in order to populate your web collection. I found the mobile app a little balky, but it survived a road trip test, notably in that since it includes offline caching of songs, I was able to access my favorites while in places where connectivity was sparse. As for the “lean-back” radio element, it’s fairly basic and not terribly flexible, using Allmusic Guide data to construct stations based on a single artist – not trait-based like Pandora or culturally driven like Last.fm, and without the clever slider functionality of MOG.

I’ve already written about some of my frustrations with cloud-based music services, and Rdio doesn’t solve all of my issues concerning interoperability and user experience. While its catalog of almost 5 million songs is growing, it’s still a little spotty –- all four majors are on board, but some but not all major indies are represented. Like its rivals, I see Rdio as a secondary service where I might discover and sample music on-demand, rather than something that can replace ownership of things I like.

Rdio does capably fill the gap between what I own and what I might want to hear but would never pay for — trouble is, not many people have demonstrated a willingness to pay for other cloud music services that do the same thing. (I do believe that paid access models are replacing ownership of music, partly but not completely, and very slowly.) Rdio smartly integrates the better elements of free services –- social connections, discovery, playlisting, radio -– with the paid all-you-can-eat model, bringing everything together into one place in the hopes that people will pony up. It’s a good product that its creators say will become more feature-rich, which is important as Spotify becomes more social and others trick out their services. But while Rdio may be satisfying for a niche of musically curious people, I’m not yet seeing why it would pull away from the pack to become a breakaway hit.

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