South of the border: After a recent expansion of its streaming and cloud-serving music service to a half dozen European countries earlier this month (covered in RAIN here), the irregularly named Google Play Music All Access is now accessible in Mexico. Farther north, Canadians are still waiting for both Google and Apple to bring the warmth of streaming music to their chilly clime.
Student perk: A little late for back-to-school shopping, Rdio is offering half-off its subscription streaming plan to verified college students, lowering the monthly rate to $4.99. Will students dish out to avoid ads? That remains to be known. In the meantime, see Audio4cast’s broader picture of Rdio’s movements in the Internet radio space.
Burning indictment: Rocco Pendola, a stock analyst at TheStreet.com, left all forbearance behind in his assessment of Slacker’s newly launched “My Vibe” feature. The heading of Pendola’s review sears into the page: “Apple Should Buy Slacker and Burn It to the Ground.” You might recall our interpretation of Slacker’s new product, which we said flagrantly imitated Songza’s “Life Moments” programming style. Apparently the derivative nature of Slacker’s product development gave Pendola some sleepless nights: “Slacker gives Internet radio a bad name,” he raves.