Rdio, the music streaming service founded by Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström and launched to the public in August 2010, ceased operations on the 22nd of December 2015, following the company’s filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in November of that year and the subsequent sale of its principal assets to Pandora Media for approximately seventy-five million dollars. It was five years in existence. The service was distinguished by the clarity of its design, the intelligence of its social features, and a collection management philosophy that treated the listener as a person of taste rather than an algorithm to be optimised.

Rdio did not lack for admirers. It lacked, in the end, for subscribers sufficient to sustain it against a market in which Spotify had established an early and commanding dominance. Those who used it regularly regarded its passing as a disproportionate loss — a conviction the years since have done little to dispel. It is survived by the memory of what a thoughtful streaming service might have been, and by the quiet dissatisfaction of those who have been looking, without success, for its equal ever since.