“Round and round, round in circles.” – Myron & E, Going in Circles

I’m listening to Heavy Rotation radio on Rdio this morning as I write this post. A track from Shigeto’s latest album is playing. The Heavy Rotation radio station plays music that is being played regularly in my network of friends on the streaming music service.

I dig it.

I’ve been a hardcore Spotify user for, at least, the past two years. I tried both it and Rdio a couple summers ago and found Rdio lacking at the time. If I remember correctly, Rdio didn’t have a library as large as Spotify’s and didn’t have the user penetration that Spotify had so the social features, which were and still are, better, didn’t do it for me.

But the music heads amongst my friends have stuck with Rdio over that time and have been increasingly singing it’s praises so, for the month of September, I’m giving the service another go ’round.

First Thoughts:

• The apps and interface are really elegant.
• The social aspects are much stronger than Spotify’s and put in your face a lot. I like that. One of my favorite things is knowing what my friends are really listening to in charts and such. This is something Spotify has started to bury with their new discover tab. I appreciate this difference here.
• I miss the ability to “star” tracks but maybe I don’t need that here
• This isn’t Rdio’s fault but re-creating playlists is a pain in the ass anytime you switch music services. So is the process of getting these services to learn your changing musical peculiarities. Familiarity is a powerful reason to stick with something even if better options are out there.

You can find me on Rdio.

Any tips for the newbie?