Rdio, the streaming music service started by the founders of Skype, is releasing a nice, simple desktop app for the Mac this morning. The full-featured program is a great way to avoid dealing with Adobe Flash problems in the browser and it’s just nice to have separate software running in the background for something as constant as music. Rdio has offered an AIR app for the desktop for both Mac and Windows for some time but a native Mac app should be all the more stable and efficient.
The app is pretty solid and easy to learn to navigate. I pay $9.99 per month for Rdio and am relatively happy with it. Subscribers to the $4.99 web-only subscription level will notalso have the option of using this Mac app.
For what it’s worth – competitor MOG doesn’t offer a desktop app. Spotify does, and I think I like its desktop app better because of its larger number of related artists and ease of access to playlists, but it’s not generally available in the US. Now that Rdio has a desktop app I will probably just use it instead, that way my listening history will be synced up with Rdio on my iPhone.
You can download the app here.
Two weeks ago Rdio brought Ryan Sims, formerly of popular web building app Virb, on as its new lead designer. Looking at the work Sims has done at Virb makes it appear that his influence is already being seen at his new job.