Rdio Blog

With so much great new music coming out each and every week, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the all the variety. And sometimes what you need is just a simple, well-curated playlist.

Playlists are the perfect way to find, organize and share music on Rdio — whether you’re creating or listening, there’s always something new to discover.

How do I create a playlist? Hover over the Action menu next to a song and select Add to Playlist. A pop-up will appear — select an existing playlist, or choose Create Playlist to make a new one. Give your playlist a name and description, then click Create. Allow other people to join the fun by making your playlists Collaborative.

Now what?

Get creative! Share ideas, play musical games, and take advantage of other Rdio-ers’ vast musical knowledge. Use Playlists to:

• Collect your favorite tracks of the 90s.
• Gear up for an upcoming event or festival.
• Share (musical) memories.
• Play a game.
• Stick to a theme.
• Go niche and look for an element that ties the music together.
• Or tell someone how you feel…

To cruise the best of the best, check out Rdio’s Playlist Charts, featuring our Top Playlists of all time, this month, this week or today.

Have you already mastered the art of the incredible playlist? Tell people about it—embed it on your blog or Tweet about it. We are always on the lookout for the next great playlist!

We, the folks behind Rdio, want to hear what you have to say. Whether it’s a feature request, bug report, or some heart-felt praise, we’re all ears. This week’s Tip and Tricks is here to show you the best ways to be heard by someone at Rdio. We get great emails, tweets, and posts from Rdio’s awesome community every day, and we want to keep the conversation going.

Contact Us

Short and sweet: Got a question, feature request, or issue that fits in 140 characters or less? Send a tweet to @Rdio or @Rdiohelp and we’ll try to help.

One on one: Need more space to explain what you’re seeing, or have something for our eyes only? You can reach us by email. We’ll do our best to respond as soon as possible, usually within one business day. help@rdio.com is great place to let us know about bugs, mislabeled tracks, or feature requests.

Sharing is caring: Want to open up the conversation? You can search our forums or start a new thread to find out if anyone else has requested the same feature, or is experiencing the same issue—and we’ll chime in. You can also submit a message directly to us from a form on the Help page.

Like Us: Rdio is on Facebook. Like Rdio to get news on the latest updates—new music, features and contests (like the GaGawesome one happening now). Join in on the fun and post on our Wall if you have questions, praise, or feedback.

Build It: If you’re creating something using Rdio’s API, there are several ways you can ask questions—check out the Developer Forum, join the Rdio API Google Group (which is where you’re likely to get the quickest reply), or follow @RdioAPI on Twitter.

Have a question about something? We want to hear from you, and now you know what to do.

You are a music listener of distinguished taste. You have opinions and it’s important to share them with your Rdio friends and followers. Luckily, Rdio has a way for you to inspire them with your words.

This week, Tips and Tricks is about Reviews. Reviews are an excellent way to let your Network know what you think about your latest discovery, rediscovery, or time-tested favorites.

How do I write a review?

You can review any artist, album or playlist by scrolling to the bottom of the page and clicking Write a Review. Have something to say about one song in particular? Choose the song from the dropdown menu.

Pro Tip: Ever wonder how people end up on the People to Follow Page? One of the things we’re on the lookout for is well-written, thoughtful, clever, or just plain awesome reviews from Rdio’s community. Keep up the good work and you could be one of our next Suggested Users.

Next step: Let the world know

You can show off your clever reviews to even more people in your network by posting them to Facebook and Twitter. Make sure your accounts are connected, then choose where you’d like to spread the word.

Bonus: Sharing on Twitter will automatically include an embed in #NewTwitter’s sidebar.

Ready, Set, Review!

Think of something you’d like to see in an upcoming Tips & Tricks? Let us know, as we’d love to hear what you have to say.

Following people on Rdio makes it easy to discover (and re-discover) music — you’ll see what they listen to most, what they add to their Collections, and their Playlists and reviews.

How do I find people to Follow?

There are a few ways to find people to Follow on Rdio — whether they’re old friends, new friends, or just people with awesome musical taste.

Find out which of your friends are already on Rdio by connecting Rdio with your Twitter, Facebook or email account directly on our People to Follow page — just click on the network you’d like to connect, and you’ll see a permissions page appear.

Once they’re linked, you’ll see a list of friends from your network who are already on Rdio, but you’re not yet following.

[Tip: if your email provider isn’t listed, you can also create and import a contact file directly from your computer using the Upload Contacts File button:

What about people I don’t know?

Browse our People to Follow section — the Tastemakers (Labels, magazines, festivals and more), Suggested Users, and Top Listeners you’ll find there are great for inspiration.

Still looking for more?

You never know what music you might discover in other peoples’ profiles, Collections, and Playlists. Following users with similar (or enviable) music taste is great for discovery and your network’s Heavy Rotation.

No matter where you are within Rdio.com, you can find out about other people whenever you see a user icon. Hover over anyone’s icon, anywhere on Rdio — a review, an album’s recent listeners, your friends’ followers — and you’ll see a hovercard appear.

Click the arrow to see Heavy Rotation, Top Artists and Collection details.

Once you Follow someone, you’ll see his activity reflected in Your Network’s Heavy Rotation and Recent Activity — you’ll also be able to Share albums, songs, Playlists and Artists with him directly.

Questions? Feedback? Tell us about it on Rdio’s help site.

We’re sure you’re familiar with the old saying “Give a listener a song and she’ll listen for a couple minutes. Teach a listener to search on Rdio, and she’ll rock out forever.” This week we’re here to help you fine-tune your tune-finding skills.

Your jumping-off point for Search is, of course, the search bar itself:

Type the name of an artist, album, song, or playlist into the search bar, and results will magically appear in a dropdown list, separated by category.

To see more, select Show All Results (or hit your Enter key), and browse through the tabs at the top of the Search page.

Pro Tip: When searching for a tune, you can also see all user-created Playlists that include the song—just click the song title, then select the Playlists tab.

“Nice tips, but where are the tricks?” you may say. Don’t worry, we’ve got some up our sleeve.

Trying to find something but don’t want to go through 10 pages of results? You can narrow things down by putting quotation marks around your search term, or use the hyphen character (-) to exclude words from the search. (“The The” is a favorite search-befuddling band.)

Still seeing too much noise? Check out more search-related tips in our Help site. And if you still have questions or feedback, we’d love to hear from you.

It’s been an exciting few weeks here in the Rdio office, so for this week’s Tips and Tricks we’re keeping things short and sweet.

Whether you’ve got five things in your Queue or a hundred, getting your next listen ready to play just got a whole lot easier with our brand new “Move to top of Queue” button.

Simply click theicon to move that album, playlist, song or Rdio Station straight to the top. You can do this from your Dashboard’s Queue tab, or directly within the flyover view.

And here’s one of our Secret Hidden Features: holding Command (on Mac) or Control (on PC) when you click a play button will play the new track or album, but also add whatever was just playing to the top spot in your Queue, where it will resume once the new tunes finish.

While you’re adding and organizing, don’t forget to look for the “In Queue” badge on the Action Menu, it’ll help keep your Queue under control.

Need a crash course in Queuing? Read all about it right here. And if you’ve still got questions, don’t hesitate to ask.

This week’s Tips and Tricks feature is here to show you how to share your impeccable taste in music with people you like. With so many tunes at your fingertips and a vast network of listeners and tastemakers by your side, you’re bound to come across something that’s simply too good to keep to yourself.

Rdio makes it easy for you to share that great new find on Twitter, post it on Facebook, email it to your buddy, or even embed it on your blog or website. While you’re busy earning trendsetter-cred by showing off that awesome unknown band, Rdio will scrobble all your listens to Last.fm.

The first step to sharing is connecting your other accounts to Rdio.

Go to your Settings (don’t know how? Just mouse over your name in the upper right corner of the site and click Settings) and click External. From there you can connect your Facebook, Twitter, and Last.fm accounts.

Once you’ve got them connected, go to any artist, album, song, or playlist and click the little dropdown menu (see below). At the bottom of this menu you’ll see, “Share this album.” On artists pages, Sharing is in the right sidebar, above the artist’s description.

And voila! All your sharing options are in one location.

Link to it: Copy and paste the short link anywhere you’d like to share it.

Embed it: You can use the Embed code to put a customizable embedded music player on your blog or website.

Share on: Post your music on Facebook by clicking the Facebook button—you’ll be able to add a message that will appear with the album art on your wall. You can even post on a friend’s wall by typing their name (in the bottom of the Share menu) and selecting their Facebook profile.

Tweet the album by clicking Twitter. (Tip: Rdio will auto-generate “♫ Listening to” and a short link of your music to tweet for you. You can delete the message and customize the text if you’d like.)

Recommend this album to a friend: Want to email the album to one of your followers on Rdio? Type their name and choose their Rdio profile from the menu. Select “Add a Message” to send a note along with the recommendation.

Extra bonus: Once your external accounts are connected to Rdio, you’ll also have the option to let everyone know about the fantastically clever review you’re writing. Select Post to Facebook and/or Post to Twitter then click Post to broadcast your brilliance.

And thus concludes this installment of Tips and Tricks. We hope this information will change your life as you know it. Or at least we hope you’ve learned another fun way to connect with your network of music-loving friends.

If you’ve got any questions, comments or suggestions, do let us know.

We’re back with another edition of Rdio’s Tips & Tricks series. This week, Rdio Stations are up to bat — you might already recognize this little black “Play Rdio Station” box from your Heavy Rotation, Collection, or favorite Artist’s page, but, if you don’t, we’re here to fill you in.

Rdio Stations were designed for folks who like to ‘sit back and listen.’ To make this even easier, this post has three sections: Collection, Heavy Rotation, and Artist Rdio Stations.

Collection:

Use an Rdio Station from your Collection (or anyone else’s) to play a mix of songs—just click the Play button to hear a shuffled mix of 25 tracks.

To customize your Rdio Station, use the down-arrow button to select the number of songs (25, 50, 75, 100) or, add them to your Queue.

(Super-secret tip: if you enable Repeat on your Web Player, the music will continually refresh. Don’t stop ‘til you get enough!)

Heavy Rotation:

Want to hear a sample of the great tunes your Network is listening to? Can’t get enough of your own top picks? If so, Heavy Rotation Rdio Stations are for you.

Again, just click to add (or customize), and get listening.

When you play the Heavy Rotation Rdio Station for “Everyone”, you’ll hear a mix of songs from Rdio’s current Top 20 albums.

Artist:

With Artist Rdio Stations, we’ve added even more variety by adding the choice to turn Recommendations On or Off.

With Recommendations enabled, you’ll get a mix of songs from both your selected Artist, and similar Artists. If you leave them Off, you’ll only hear a shuffled mix of that Artist’s songs.

Questions, comments, suggestions for our next post? You know where to reach us.

There’s never a dull moment here in the Rdio office. Since our launch in August 2010, we’ve been working full-time on a slew of exciting projects, including expanding our catalog, streamlining our fleet of mobile apps, and continuing to update and improve the site.

We wanted a way to keep our ever-growing community of music lovers in-the-know about the latest new features, so today marks the launch of Rdio’s Tips & Tricks series.

Every few weeks we’ll highlight a feature—it might be brand new, it might be top secret, or it might be just plain cool.

This first trick we’re spotlighting is the latest addition to Rdio’s keyboard shortcuts — Command (on Mac) or Control (on PC) + U will instantly show your Queue.

Designed for easy access and managing your queue, this “flyover” shows you what’s playing now, and what’s coming up. Drag and drop any item to change the order, or hit the “x” to remove it completely. This is also a fantastic way to manage your Rdio Stations—the flyover gives you the power to adjust the number of songs, mix in artists, or totally veto any recommended tracks. Just hit Command (or Control for PC) + U another time to hide the flyover, and sit back and enjoy your finely crafted Queue.

If you’ve ever said, “I just want to click Play and listen to something,” now you can, using Rdio Stations.

Starting today, listen to a shuffled mix of music from your Collection, Heavy Rotation or any Artist using Rdio Stations. Clicking Play on an Rdio Station means an instant mix of music. If you’d like more control over playback, use the fly-over controls to select 25-100 songs and play them instantly, or add them to your queue.

Additionally, if you enable Repeat on Rdio’s web player while listening to either Heavy Rotation or your Collection’s Rdio Station, you’ll get a continuous selection of music. Yep, music that won’t run out.

Go ahead, treat your Heavy Rotation or Collection to the ultimate shuffle. When you’re done, let us know what you think and if you’re looking for the nitty gritty on how to use Rdio Stations, you can read more at Rdio’s Help site.