*Oh, streaming will die, all right. Supposedly immaterial and all that, but just as dead as a wax cylinder.
http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/17/9750890/rdio-shutdown-pandora
"It’s easy to forget now, but the first modern music streaming service to arrive in America was Rdio. Like its founders, Skype billionaires Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström, Rdio was awkwardly spelled and a little hard to pronounce. When it arrived in August 2010, the smartphone era was young enough that the company offered a $5 web-only streaming plan (on the assumption you might not have a mobile device) and a BlackBerry app (in case you had a bad one). The company’s catalog was limited to 7 million songs, well short of the 30 million tracks that it and its rivals now provide. From the start, Rdio had more product sense than business sense, and its cautious approach to growth and marketing would ultimately spell its doom.
"For a solid year, though, using Rdio felt like the future. Securing label deals took so long that the app was in development for two years before it launched, and it showed in the polished product delivered by its team. There was that calming blue-and-white design, and its simple grid of album artwork — a powerful rebuttal to iTunes’ nightmare spreadsheets. There were its innovative social features, showing you what your friends were streaming in real time, and a "heavy rotation" playlist that highlighted albums based on how many friends had listened to them. "Social from the ground up — it sounds like marketing speak, but it was legit," says Chris Becherer, Rdio’s head of product. "The founding premise was the best music recommendations come from the people you know. That was the whole idea."
"In the end, it wasn’t enough. Rdio is seeking bankruptcy protection and plans to wind down its service. Pandora is acquiring its intellectual property and some of its employees. Among them are Becherer, who will become vice president of the company’s consumer-facing products, and a majority of the product and engineering team. But Rdio’s apps will soon stop working — the exact timing depends on when the deal closes — and its modest subscriber base will have to do its music streaming elsewhere…."
