Rdio is reportedly planning to expand Rdio Select, its mid-price subscription plan, across Europe in the next few months. “The market is complex in Europe,” CEO Anthony Bay told Music Week. “It takes longer which I think is unfortunate for European consumers, because we have a service already available in many places but not in Europe.”
Rdio Select was introduced last month, and in our coverage we described it as “driving a wedge” between free listening (so-called Freemium plans) and fully on-demand music subscriptions — Rdio’s version of on-demand listening costs $9.99 per month.
Rdio Select removes commercials from the listening stream, and unlocks unlimited song skips. with those features it matched Pandora One, the ad-free listening from Pandora. Rdio also innovated a download feature, where users can store up to 25 tracks in their phones — about two albums of music for offline listening. The downloaded tracks can be switched out as frequently as every day, and can remain stored indefinitely. We regard Rdio Select as a distinctly differentiated plan in a crowded music subscription market.
Rdio Select is currently available in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, and South Africa, as it awaits broader European distribution.