The former arch enemy of the music business, Janus Friis has created a new music service along with Niklas Zenstrum. The founders of file sharing site Kazaa and Skype launched a subscription based service this week. The service, called Rdio, is an invite only social network for music lovers. You will be able to see what you friends are listening too, and hopefully be exposed to new and interesting music. The app allows casching of music to avoid streaming excessive data over the mobile phone network, which is going to be important now that AT&T is charging for data usage.
The service will cost $60 to$120 per month, which is coincidentally $60 to $120 more than what Kazaa users are used to paying for music online. According to the RIAA, only 0.4 of the US population waswilling to pay for music subscriptions in 2009. A number which is actually decling from 2008.
But anything coming the giants Friis and Zenstrum is hard to dismiss. I'm sure Amazon and iTunes will be paying attention see if users tune into this Rdio.
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