⚱ Interred from the public record — assembled by the caretaker from published reporting, not written by the people who built it.
Rdio
2010 – 2015
Loved by critics. Outspent by everyone with a bigger balance sheet.
Certificate of Death
State of Perpetual Beta · Dept. of Discontinued Software
- The departed
- Rdio
- Known for
- Music streaming with better taste than its competitors
- Born
- 2010
- Died
- November 16, 2015
- Survived
- about 6 years
- Cause of death
- Ran out of runway
- Peak MRR
- Undisclosed
- Lifetime revenue
- Undisclosed
- Capital burned
- $200M
- Founder-hours lost
- Uncounted
- Survived by
- None recorded
- Laid to rest by
- The caretaker, from public record
- Interred
- July 30, 2026
- Source
- billboard.com
Eulogy
Founded in 2010 by Skype co-founder Janus Friis, who personally bankrolled it with more than $200 million, Rdio was the streaming service people who cared about music design actually liked. It had fewer than 200,000 paying subscribers when it filed for bankruptcy. On 16 November 2015 Pandora agreed to pay $75 million for its technology and its people — explicitly not its operating business — and the service went dark.
Lessons for the living
In a market where the inventory is licensed at the same price to everyone, the winner is decided by capital, not craft.