Rdio Music Service

Platform: Android

RATING:
5 out of 5

PRICE:
Free Trial ($4.99 Web, $9.99 Unlimited)

TASTY:
A fresh streaming music service that finally makes it easy to save songs locally (play offline) and listen to the artists and genres your friends like (think social!)

BUMMER:
Free trial lasts a fleeting three days. Saving songs for local playback requires a finger press on an icon for each song you’d like to capture. That’s right: One press per song, no automated harvesting here, folks.

COOL:
For the cost of a few cups of coffee, listeners have access to a broad array of artists and genres, with the ability to save songs for playback offline.

SIMILAR APPS IN THE MARKETPLACE:
Thumbplay
Last.fm
Pandora
Slacker Radio
Grooveshark
Rhapsody
Spotify
MOG

REVIEW:

iTunes. Love it or hate it, we all know and hate/like/love its most basic functions. That is, it allows us to save all of our tunes in one place, sync it to our Apple-blessed devices, and take those tunes with us wherever we may roam.

Rdio joins the mobile music fray with similar capabilities tied to a subscription model (think Rhapsody, Last.fm, Pandora), but with a few twists that may make the service your go-to app for all things music on your Android phone.

All the basics are here. Choose your favorite artist or genre, press play, and let the streaming begin. With so many sources available (and more coming online weekly), there’s no longer a need to sync your local collection and MP3’s to your phone.

The service turns the entire sync-and-go system on its head. Instead of forcing you to purchase and upload songs to your phone, Rdio is the first service to let users save individual songs from the service to their phone. The songs can then be listened to via your phone even when you’re not connected to the Internet.

That means you can, over time, save dozens or hundreds of great-sounding songs on your phone, downloaded directly from the service. So long as you maintain your subscription ($9.99/month), your library will play back anywhere you and your DROID go.

Add in the social experience that lets you view friends and tastemaker play lists, shuffle modes, play list builders, and more, and you’ve got yourself a worthy competitor to all the established players in the online music subscription landscape to date.

Read all of my past Android app reviews at Appolicious and Yahoo! Tech -- click here.