Now that they got what they wanted – a renewed stake and board representation in the Skype that will be spun off eBay soon – the Scandinavian duo Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis can divert more of their attention again to the latest Internet venture they’re putting their weight behind: Rdio. The yet-to-launch digital music startup was first talked about publicly a couple of weeks ago in a New York Times article but we haven’t heard any further information about the startup.
I’ve been keeping busy this weekend doing some very basic research – I love you, Internet – about Rdio and discovered a couple of interesting details that have emerged on the Web since the stealth startup got its first dose of media attention.
First of all, a search on LinkedIn used to surface only Malthe Sigurdsson, a London-based designer who used to be Creative Director at Skype, as one of the people hired by Rdio – as VP of Design. He can stop hiding that now. 
Today, that same search on the business social network yields more results:
– Carter Adamson (COO, Rdio) – former General Manager of Desktop Products at Skype and prior to that Director, Product Strategy/Business Developement at AOL and before that Senior Program Manager at ICQ. His recruitment seems to suggest that the Rdio service will not be exclusively browser-based.
– Todd Berman (VP of Engineering, Rdio) – first hired as Software Engineer at imeem in 2005, Berman served as VP of Technology at the venture-backed social music startup until switching to Rdio back in August 2008. During his tenure at imeem, Berman undoubtedly learned a lot about what it takes to distribute music on the web and scale the service for a large user base.
– Craig Kimerer (Senior Software Engineer, Rdio) – also an ex-employee of music startup imeem, where he worked as Software Engineer. At imeem, he seemingly kept busy with ’scaling, new feature data-model designs and micro-payments’ according to his LinkedIn profile. It’s fun looking at his Twitter account, where he recently proclaimed open source media software sucks.
– Manish Singh (Senior Software Engineer, Rdio) – once a senior member of Oracle’s technical staff, Singh was hired by social browser startup Flock in September 2005, where he held a number of technical roles before becoming the company’s Director of Technology. His recruitment (Feb 2009) suggests Rdio won’t exclusively run on desktops but also inside browsers.
– Matt Crocker (Senior Software Engineer, Rdio) – spent a couple of years developing software for Pioneers of the Inevitable, the startup behind customizable open-source music player Songbird. The University of Victoria graduate joined Rdio in March 2009.
– Joshua Miller (Senior Systems Engineer, Rdio) – held senior Linux/Unix system administration roles at IBM and Pay By Touch before moving to a similar role at social network Tagged (which boasts very high traffic numbers). Miller joined Rdio earlier this year.
Pretty skilled team, right?
Now pay a visit to the Rdio website. Not much to see, right? If gives you an option to sign in to your account if you happen to be lucky enough to have one (if you do, we have a special space reserved in our inbox for screenshots of the service) and an option to sign up for updates to your e-mail address. Other than that, there’s nothing but a link to an e-mail address, which actually bounces messages when you send e-mails to it, rendering it gigantically useless.
But then there’s a copyright notice at the bottom right that reads ‘©2009 Pulser Music Services Inc’. A search on the Web reveals that this appears to be a subsidiary of private equity investment firm Europlay Capital Advisors, which cites a preference to invest in “cross-border media transactions and in interactive entertainment businesses”. If you want to know more about Europlay from when it was founded in 2007, here’s the SEC filing.
And guess who’s Chairman and Managing Director of Europlay Capital Advisors? None other than Mark Dyne, the former CEO of Sega and Virgin Interactive Entertainment who was one of the first people to invest in Skype – he was also a member of the company’s board from 2003 to 2006 – and until recently sat on the board of another venture started by Friis and Zennström: the ill-fated Joost.
Rdio CEO Drew Larner is also connected to Europlay, where he apparently recently served as Managing Director. Prior to Europlay, Mr. Larner spent over twelve years as an executive in the motion picture industry, most recently as Executive Vice-President at Spyglass Entertainment Group. In that role, he was involved in all operations of Spyglass with specific oversight of business development, international distribution and business and legal affairs.
So we have some serious veteran media executives investing time and resources in Rdio, which based on my findings already boasts a highly diverse and feathered team of engineers, developers and managers with a track record in digital music companies and carrying experience in working for venture-backed startups. Its earliest hire – that of Todd Berman – was made in August 2008 according to his LinkedIn profile, so apparently they’ve been building this company for nearly a year and a half now.
All that, combined with what Janus Friis recently told Bloomberg regarding Rdio, makes this a company to watch closely:
“We have watched many ad-supported music businesses come and go. We felt the time was right to revisit this space, this time with a compelling offering and a sustainable subscription model.”
It’ll be very interesting to see what they come up with – the service is said to be on track for beta launch in early 2010 – and if they’ll be able to steal some of Spotify’s momentum when that company finally makes its way to the United States.
One thing is guaranteed: Rdio won’t be one of those online music startups who manage to fly under the radar and whose leaders lack the experience and negotiation skills to effectively deal with the music industry juggernauts who control the majority of rights to the music this world has to offer.
Which isn’t necessarily a recipe for success of course – the tale of Joost proves as much.
Wow you could’ve copied the Joost stories from few years ago and replaced “video” with “music” and you’d have this story.
Good luck to this.
Fair point
– It’s also very interesting to see them ‘revisit this space’ considering the history of Kazaa.
Wouldn’t have my hopes up on this release? Why, lets just say Google will release Google Music on 1st quarter of 2010
sources: http://bit.ly/g...ing-Yahoo-music
rumor has it that it will kill Y! music, imeem, myspace music and all the audio app entertainment goodies you have before.
Now, I wonder is this the next big thing of “skype” or they are just hiding their asses from the impending lawsuit they have from EBAY?
nice alibi!
Agree. Joost Mk. 2
“sustainable subscription model” huh… presumes RIghts holders will place themselves appropriately in the value equation. End-users will be empowered by the subscription mechanism itself to consume, share, profit, (PARTNER) in the successful use of content. End-users represent privately owned markets… give them their due empowerments and the negotiation will be sustainable… all else fails in time. The “Less-Than-Free” model evoked in B2B Terms.
Dont get too excited. This music startup will most likely have the same fate as JOOST.
Raise lots of money, gain lots of press attention and fade away .
magnificent duo..always able to raise money
Do some digging on Mark Dyne and Kazaa, all will become clear…
sounds like another joost to me. These guys have ONE major success along with a lot of carnage.
Nice digging, Wauters. Quite a corporate structure they have there (natch’).
I believe this venture will succeed. For no other reason but because most of the people above are saying it will fail.
After the stunt they just pulled with ebay don’t know why anyone would ever work with them again.
Great to see Janus and Nicholas return to the music scene. There’s much to be innovated, and digital music services may just be back and high on the agenda soon!
Isn’t the online music market saturated, their hundreds of different options. All the music I but in digital format comes from iTunes anyway. I the domain name is poor also.
yippee. another ‘me, too’ music service.
Doesn’t anyone (else) think outside the box?
Kazaa, bearshare, limewire, itunes? What’s next this one “RDIO” ? can we yawn now.. I mean, could they think of something new
I would rather be delighted on the google music release this 2k10 than this so called “next big thing by skype”
sources: http://bit.ly/g...ing-Yahoo-music
who happens to be on a slippery slope now that their company is having the biggest lawsuit charges against them (EBAY vs Skype)
You would think with all of the resources at their disposal, they could at least get a different domain name for this project.
Another Joost in the making
Skype users: 521 million worldwide, get them on the new service and you’re moving
And their http://blog.rdio.com
forgotten before it even gets off the ground.
“So we have some serious veteran media executives investing time and resources in Rdio”
Nope
“Pretty skilled team, right?”
If the intellectual property had to do only with tech patents.
Why would I switch from iTunes over to a new service? Convince me.
unlimited songs for $4.99/month?
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Wow, really? Someone from India spamming forum post comments??
Seriously, and you wonder why no one likes you online. India should get it’s own internet and just stay away..
@Daniel,
So Indians should move to another internet and leave all the spamming on this Internet to Americans exclusively? That will make the Internet bland and boring. You wont get to see gems like the one above…
Seriously, Chandra, I’m thinking you may have written this blatantly unrelated self-promoting post in a moment of passion… but contact TC and ask them to take it down… for your own self-respect.
Wow. You have put in a lot of time for writing the article. But, given their reputations as eBay harassers, will anyone be buying a company from them in the future?
Wow, looks like they have a killer team on board
“RDIO” is a new low in brand naming. You guys have at least enough money to buy a vowel… Perhaps find the services of a naming firm before its too late…find something with some phonetic transparency. Drop a line if you need advice…
The CEO pick is troubling. Their mistake with Joost was outsourcing the CEO spot to people whos main qualification was that they were trusted/inner-circle rather than running it themselves or getting the kind of scrappy, creative CEO a startup needs in it’s early days.
Wonder why these guys like to hire so much people and burn so much cash at the beginning.
Usually successful tech companies start with a handful of people and they grow their staff as need be.
Skype was probably a hit because they pretty much bought it. Joost failed among other things because there was way too many people involved, it almost seemed like a cash burn for tax deductions (and let’s see if it happens)
Great research! Sky Songs (UK), Spotify, MOG, iMeem…. there are only a limited number of subscriptions to go around and my guess is people won’t see Skype’s brand lending itself to music.
Might not be as big a failure as Joost cos that’s a good team they’ve got there, but it doesn’t feel like it’s going to be very inspiring.