Rdio Introduces Personalized Stations

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By Sean Fitz-Gerald2013-08-08 20:59:13 UTC

Rdio, the ad-free subscription service geared toward music discovery, just fired off a string of updates including more personalized functions like an improved stations component and a new player.

The company made the announcement on Twitter and in a blog post on Thursday.

See also: The Beginner's Guide to Rdio

The update focuses on the stations feature, which has been promoted to the left-hand navigation menu. It also adds new popular genre stations and You FM, where the songs and artists are influenced by the listener's tastes.

You FM leverages taste profiling technology from The Echo Nest, which compiles data and works with Rdio to bolster user profiles. It incorporates listening history and tracks voting, Facebook likes and Twitter follows to create a unique listening experience.

"As your tastes grow and evolve, so does You FM," the Rdio blog post read.

Additional features include 10 different station types, approximately 400 sub-genre stations and a redesigned album art-centric player that lets you vote on individual songs, tune stations toward certain sounds and pivot stations based on favorite tracks.

See also: Pandora: iTunes Radio Is 'On Par' With Existing Streaming Services

Rdio users will also be able to play stations based on their friends' aggregated listening histories using the Heavy Rotation Station.

The changes build on Rdio's mobile app redesigns (navigation, remote control and infinite scroll) as well as major modifications to its website and desktop apps from 2012.

A spokesperson from competing music streaming service Pandora released the following statement:

Personalized radio is not simply a new feature for Pandora — we have spent the last 13 years singularly focused on completely redefining radio for listeners, for artists and for advertisers. Pandora benefits from unrivaled intellectual property, deep experience in delivering personalized playlists, ubiquitous product availability across every platform, and unmatched experience in monetization. Our sole mission is to make it effortless for our more than 200 million registered users to connect with the music they love anytime, anywhere.

The new stations feature for Rdio is available now on Android, iOS and web platforms.

Images: Mashable; Flickr, Joseph Thornton

Topics: Apps and Software, Entertainment, Music, pandora, rdio, streaming