infoTECH Feature

December 30, 2013

Rdio Shutters Vdio Video On Demand Service

Considering just how competitive the streaming music industry has become, it shouldn’t come as much of a shock that Rdio is continuing to struggle. Late last month, the company announced that it was going to have to lay people off. While the company claimed that the layoffs were because it wanted to be more “scalable” its latest move seems to be one that underlines it is struggling to keep up with its competitors. Late last week Rdio announced that it was shuttering its Vdio service.

Vdio was an on-demand product that allowed people to rent television shows and movies. The company announced the move on Friday, adding that any customers who made purchases through the service would see their money refunded and they would not be able to stream the videos they bought. The company sent out an email to its users, trying to explain why Vdio was being shut down, effective immediately. “Despite our efforts, we were not able to deliver the differentiated customer experience we had hoped for, and so Vdio is now closed.”

The company will apparently offer up Amazon Gift Cards to customers who may have made higher purchases and unused rentals. Rdio had launched Vdio as a direct competitor to services like iTunes, Amazon Video and Google Play. Just like Rdio has tried to become a direct competitor like Pandora (News - Alert) and iTunes radio, the company’s endeavor fell fall short of better known companies. The Vdio service was made available in the US, UK and Canada and could be accessed either through the web or through a native iPad app. There was a time when the company was actively working on bringing more mobile applications that would have allowed access to Vdio.

Companies like Spotify (News - Alert) and Pandora have been eating into the success that Rdio employed was it first launched a few years ago. When Spotify announced that it was offering a free version of its service, it served as a bit of a death sentence to smaller competitors.




Edited by Cassandra Tucker
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