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Comment by rgrieselhuber | Hacker News Reader

Or use Rdio? I've never been impressed with Spotify. The experience on Rdio has been great for me.

I haven't used Spotify in a long time, but I've known it was p2p since the last time I used it in 2010, this is nothing new.

But, I almost exclusively use http://www.grooveshark.com and http://www.songza.com

Both are web based, the latter has a mobile app, both absolutely brilliant and FREE! I'll have to check out Rdio, that looks real interesting.

I switched from Spotify to Rdio recently. As someone that likes to hack on music projects, I'm really impressed with the Rdio API. I especially like their integration with Echonest, which gives you a deep "beat-by-beat" analysis of every track on Rdio.

I'll be honest, I tried Rdio and didn't get where the "music discovery" part comes in. In the month I used it I was only suggested completely unrelated, but obviously 'featured' albums (on their "frontpage" so it wasn't even on my face.)

All in all, I just didn't find the service that interesting unless you consider the technological angle.

Music discovery does suck on Rdio, granted. I find myself using other services for that. But for daily listening, the experience is much cleaner than Spotify's is, IMO.

I like the Stations on Rdio, actually. I've found some cool artists through the Echo Nest-powered discovery stuff they have.

Yep, that's true. I had a bunch of issues with their 'native' OS X app though. Every now and then the embedded browser (I think that's what they do anyway) would go nuts and eat my whole CPU. Also, the streaming quality didn't sound that great. I regularly use Grooveshark, and the quality of the songs over there was much better.

All in all, I guess it might work for some people. It just didn't make the cut for me. For that matter, neither did Spotify or Pandora. I guess I'm just not the target audience for that kind of service in general.

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