I wasn’t kidding around when I wrote that Rdio, the latest online music venture backed by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis – the original founders of Kazaa, Skype and Joost – was assembling a killer team by hiring away top talent from some of the most promising startups in the digital music space while still in stealth mode.
The latest name to surface on LinkedIn is that of Wilson Miner, a designer, web developer and entrepreneur from San Francisco.
Miner was formerly interactive designer at Apple, where he worked on the first comprehensive redesign of Apple.com in more than 10 years. He went on to co-found and head design for EveryBlock, the hyperlocal news startup that was acquired by MSNBC for an undisclosed amount in August 2009, a mere two years after its inception.
Miner was also one of four people that helped create the original version of Django, an open source web application framework written in Python.
At Rdio, Miner will be working with Malthe Sigurdsson (former lead designer and creative director for Skype) on the design of the online music service, which will conceivably be available both as a desktop, web and mobile application. ReadWriteWeb recently got its hands on some screenshots, although I’m told the actual product will look distinctly different from these early design mock-ups.
I’m left wondering how much capital has already been invested in Rdio pre-launch, considering that the startup has quite some top talent from all over the world working for them (some for about a year and a half already) while its first public beta has yet to ship.
And of course I’m curious about the fate of the company: will Rdio prove to be another Skype (lots of hype, solid product, disruptive, successful and a moneymaker) or another Joost (lots of hype, full stop)?
(Photo cc Flickr / yaili)
When will the public beta be? Is there any way to get in and check it out before that?
hopefully he can design a better domain name for them. everyblock made sense.
Isnt this what they did with Joost …employ a whole lot of high profile developers and make a lot of noise about it .
At least a music streaming service is doable as a sustainable business model even without a p2p client on users computers .
With Niklas and Janus track record, rdio is as sure to be a genius application as when James Cameron makes a new film (Avatar), you just do not bet against the masters.
Joost was genius when it was in closed testing, but the issue is again, these guys create an application WAY ahead of it’s time and most people are just now getting the broadband speeds needed (FIOS) to make th eoriginal Joost P2P technology viable.
Miner is a designer beast so one thing is for sure, rdio will look macnificent.
How Niklas and Janus pockets are looking these days, they are not into wasting any time with any project because they do not need to. For them to go this hard this early means they believe whatever they have in store will change the computing world, again.
“macnificent” used on purpose due to my like of th eapple.com site design
Any other typos found, please blame it on my iTouch.
You should stick with graphic design and not try to analyze businesses.
Wilson Miner is a great designer. Its awesome when you go to the right school and meet the right people and have the right talent at the right time. He’s a lucky designer. I’m happy for him.
In the design world, as in many worlds, it really is a mixture of the above that can make or break a career.
Sincerely, A very jealous graphic designer.
As a graphic designer myslef, I can understand where you are coming from.
In NYC there are soooo many talented artists here and you have to really just be happy when someone working in the field gets a good break because it takes so much more talent to keep the gigs.
Sometimes it takes a bit more of a road to travel for some of us rather than others, but I always say just make sure you are ready with skills and temperment when your big break comes calling… All of us do get that break, it’s just that 98% of us are never ready to take advantage of it.
Your portfolio is very good BTW.
check your sour grapes at the door baby
Could start with that god-awful logo. Good to see designers getting some press love. This needs to be the norm. I mean, CTOs are a dime-a-dozen these days. Let the creatives (*ahem* thanks, Don Draper!) get some shine.