Events - Rdio Blog

Events Music

Festival Watch: Sasquatch! Music Festival

He might be hard to find in the wild, but every summer, take a peek into the valleys around George, Washington, and you’re sure to find Sasquatch — the indie music festival, that is. Every year, Sasquatch! brings the best and brightest indie musicians, rappers, comedians, and more out to its four stages for four days of music, comedy, and culture.

This year’s lineup includes Jack White, Beck, Bon Iver, The Shins, Girl Talk, The Roots, Feist, Childish Gambino, Fred and Carrie from Portlandia, and tons more. Rdio users have been busy making some pretty great playlists — listen to Rdio user Brick Hammerstone’s collaborative Sasquatch 2012 playlist below, or make one to soundtrack your perfect Sasquatch! Music Festival.

∞ May 25, 2012 — 10:00AM

Events Giveaways Music

You’re Invited to the Rdio Loves San Francisco Party

If you're in the Bay Area, you could win an invitation to Rdio's private party featuring Dirty Ghosts, Tanlines, and Twin Shadow.

Rdio loves San Francisco — so much that we’re throwing a special night of live music to celebrate our hometown. Since it just wouldn’t be a party without you, we have 50 pairs of tickets to giveaway for our private event on June 7th at the Independent.

If you’re in the Bay Area, here’s your chance to catch Dirty Ghosts, Tanlines, and Twin Shadow along with the Rdio staff. Not only that, one lucky winner also wins a year of Rdio Unlimited, and a limited edition Rdio-branded Jambox.

Want to come? Good — we want to see you there. Enter you your name, email address, and Rdio user name into the entry form between now and June 3rd and we’ll notify the winners on June 4th. Read the Official Rules for details.

Wouldn’t our Rdio Loves San Francisco playlist sound nice coming out of that Jambox?

UPDATE: The entry form is now closed. Thank you for participating!

∞ May 23, 2012 — 9:00AM

Events Music

Paste Magazine and Rdio: Music for Your Eyes and Ears

For the past decade, Paste Magazine has been bringing you the best in music, movies, books, TV, videogames and, yes, craft beer. Their sophisticated take on popular culture has ensured their continued authority in the world of music — now, they’re teaming up with Rdio.

Moving forward, Paste will join their musical list-making with Rdio's music player, where their annual and weekly features, such as the recent Best Albums of the ‘70s, will be available to both Paste readers and Rdio users. Follow Paste Magazine now, and the next time you’re reading up on your favorite new artists, listen to Rdio while you do it.

∞ May 21, 2012 — 11:22AM

Events Music

Mother’s Day Music: Share What Your Mama Gave Ya

This Sunday is Mother’s Day — it’s your chance to show ol’ Mumsy just how much you appreciate everything she's done for you. What better way to start thinking about how she influenced your life than by thinking about the music she introduced you to?

Did your mom spin records for you at a young age? Play classical while you were in the womb? Take you to your first rock and roll show? Think about the music, good or bad, that you might never have found without her, and add it to the “Thanks, Ma” playlist on Rdio. And don't forget to tell her about it. Have a happy Mother's Day!

∞ May 10, 2012 — 10:00AM

Events Music

Bandas de la Bandera: Celebrate Cinco de Mayo with All-New Mexican Music

This Saturday is Cinco de Mayo, a day to celebrate Mexican heritage in all its forms. With that in mind, we’ve decided to make a playlist featuring all-Mexican tunes — but it’s not what you’d expect.

Tradition is an important part of any culture, but Mexico is home to more than just mariachi bands — there’s also a thriving independent music culture there, doing innovative things and incorporating new and exciting influences into their traditional sound. We pulled together some of the bands doing just that. Listen to our Bandas de la Bandera playlist now to see what you might have been missing, or just blast it during your weekend festivities.

∞ May 4, 2012 — 10:00AM

Events New Features

From Rdio Engineering: Rdio Hack Day #1

A couple weeks ago, the Rdio engineers participated in the first ever Rdio Hack Day. Using the Rdio API, they built some incredibly cool features and extensions for New Rdio. We’ll let the engineering team take it away and show off their creations.

On Friday, the Rdio engineers put down their task lists and rolled up their sleeves for the first ever Rdio Hack Day. We put aside our regularly scheduled programming and focused our attention on any project we wanted. We built dream features and spelunked into unexplored coding depths. The results included everything from esoteric visualizations to practical hacks that streamlined that one annoying thing that ruins your coding flow every day. Here’s the rundown on a few choice hacks.

Web Audio API Hacks
With the new Rdio’s flash-free music playback, Google Chrome gives us access to the Web Audio API. Michael Smith built an equalizer that lets you adjust your music’s frequencies. This hack is using bleeding edge browser technology, so you may need to wait a bit until you can pump up the bass on that dance party playlist. Also using the Web Audio API was Brian Ferrell’s visualizer. Brian added basic support for WebGL with the three.js library and ported the brilliant visualization by felixturner into Rdio.

Song Identification Integration
Eugene and Raul integrated Shazam and VCast Song ID with Rdio through email. These services let you use your smartphone to identify a song that is playing through nearby speakers. They used Shazam and VCast Song ID to send a digestible email that would then use Rdio’s API to search for an Rdio library match and add it to your playlist. Now you can have the club’s playlist in the comfort of your own home.

Search Results RSS
When is that new album coming out? Eric Fikus tackled this problem and developed an RSS feed for Rdio search results. Tie it into your favorite feed reader and you’ll get notified as your favorite artist's new album becomes available.

Related/Influencer Artists for Android
Brett and Adam supercharged the artist page on the Rdio for Android app, so you can now view the artist bio, related artists and influential artists.

Visualizations
Jim Fleming made an abstract visualization that shows the play count in real-time for Rdio’s top charts. Matt Erkilla and Jon Klobucar built different map visualizers that shows Rdio activity on a world map.

Roku Screensaver
For all your set-top box fans out there, Ryan Nordman added a screensaver for the Roku. Now your television will show album art from the currently-playing track while saving your plasma screen from burn in. Expect this to be in the next Roku update.

Artist View in Collection
Jesse Dawson implemented an artist view in the new Rdio’s collection pages. It shows you a list of all the artists in your collection with collapsible lists of albums. (This feature is coming soon.)

Pay attention in the coming months, you may see some of these shiny new objects make their way into the product. So what would you have built? What’s your Rdio dream feature? Let us know on Twitter, Facebook or in the comments.

∞ April 27, 2012 — 9:00AM

Events Music

Experience Coachella Near or Far with Playlists by Goldenvoice

This weekend, those lucky enough to snag tickets are heading to Coachella. The annual music festival is famous for opening festival season each year. It's also known for bringing together lineups that mix up-and-comers and veterans, and, more often than not, reunite beloved bands you thought might never play together again.

Whether you’re looking for the perfect road trip mix or staying home and want to feel like a part of the action, festival promoters Goldenvoice has you covered. They created a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday playlist featuring music from the bands playing each day.

Follow Goldenvoice on Rdio for more monthly playlists featuring artists playing shows in California, and listen to their Friday Coachella playlist below. For more, check out some of the user-created Coachella playlists or make one of your own.

∞ April 11, 2012 — 11:51AM

Events Giveaways

Win Tickets: Rdio Presents The Used Album Release Show

On Monday, March 26, post-hardcore quartet The Used drop their fifth studio album, Vulnerable — in style. The next evening, the band’s album release show goes down in Los Angeles rock venue The Troubadour.

The Used will take the stage at 9:00 pm PDT to play songs from their new album, plus a host of favorites from their past discography. Doors are at 8pm, and if you aren't in the area, the set will be broadcast on theused.net/live starting at 8:30. Stay tuned for an interview with the group backstage and you can ask the band questions via Twitter.

Win Tickets to The Used Album Release Show

Do you live in southern California and want an in to this exclusive event? Win a pair of tickets by entering your name and email address into the form below between now and 4:00 PM PDT today, March 23, 2012. We'll randomly pick the winners and notify them by tonight. For more information, read the Official Rules.

UPDATE: The ticket giveaway is now closed. We'll see you at the show!

∞ March 23, 2012 — 10:57AM

Events New Features News

Introducing: New Rdio

Welcome to new Rdio. We built it for you — it’s faster, simpler, and more social.

New Rdio is a visually beautiful and dynamic way to play Rdio’s massive catalogue of 15 million songs. New features include the oft requested drag and drop playlist creation, a more personalized Heavy Rotation, and private playlists.

The completely redesigned new Rdio is available on Rdio.com and the Rdio desktop apps to all Web and Unlimited subscribers. Switch on new Rdio from the drop down menu under your name and “Try New Rdio.”

What you’ll find in new Rdio

A new look and feel — More than just a boring spreadsheet of songs, new Rdio puts music and people front and center.
All in one place — Spend less time navigating. Music, playlists and your network are in one view.
Add entire albums to playlists — One of Rdio’s most-requested features is now a reality.
Browse even faster — Find music at lightning speed because pages remember your place. Browse a continuous stream of albums, explore one and easily return to the place you left off.
Listen with your network — From the People Sidebar, see what your network is listening to in real-time and listen along with one-click.
Let your network inspire your listening — Wondering if you’ll like an album in the charts or why it appeared in your Heavy Rotation? Under every album, hover over photos to see exactly who listened to it.
Sharing made simple — Drag and drop music into playlists or collection and share with others on Rdio without missing a beat. Music can also be shared on Facebook, Twitter or via email.
Create private playlists – In addition to public and collaborative playlists, now private playlists can be created and shared with just a select few.
Easily discover people to follow — Check out Rdio’s latest music influencers in the People Sidebar and find others to follow such as artists, critics, record labels and brands.

New Rdio will be available in the near future to everyone else with an account, like those using Rdio free. If your curiosity is too much to bear, upgrade to a Web or Unlimited subscription and see how you like people-powered music discovery.

Visit www.rdio.com/new to learn more about new Rdio. Tweet about #NewRdio to let everyone know what you think.

As with anything new, we hope you’ll forgive the occasional hiccup. If you encounter anything out of the ordinary, get in touch with our support team via the help site or @RdioHelp.

Update: Watch the #NewRdio presentation from Livestream.

∞ March 13, 2012 — 9:54AM

Events News

You’re Invited to the Rdio @DAY Event

As we shared earlier in the week, The Rdio @NIGHT Party is a celebration for some big Rdio news. So when do we share the secret? At the Rdio @DAY Event on March 13th. If you’re in Austin for SXSW, join us for a very special Rdio presentation in the AMOA-Arthouse — doors open Tuesday at 11:30 AM CDT and things get started at 11:45 AM CDT.

Not in Austin? Not a problem. Watch on Livestream — new.livestream.com/rdio — you might as well have a front row seat.

We’ll also have a Livestream for the @NIGHT party — so tune in at 9:00 PM CST for live performances by Com Truise, and Teengirl Fantasy.

Rdio @DAY and @NIGHT are part of the Samsung Mobile Presents FEED, Powered by Twitter events. Housed in the AMOA-Arthouse (700 Congress Avenue at 7th Street), this beautiful space is open during SXSW and features art meets technology collaborations. If you're in Austin, stop by to take a look.

∞ March 9, 2012 — 5:00PM