dear rdio: a wishlist

Dear rdio,

Congrats on your coming out party today.  I’m loving your service so far, but here is my wishlist for your future.

• Privacy. You need privacy settings. I searched for how to limit what other users saw of my music collection and listening history, but found no way to do it.
• On a related note, please let me delete artists, albums or songs from my collection and from my listening history. I know that I shouldn’t care if people see that I own Train’s “Drops Of Jupiter”… but I do. I have never trusted people who say they “don’t believe in guilty pleasures.” I do, because they exist. “Drops of Jupiter” gives me goosebumps, and this fact deeply, deeply embarrasses me. There’s no contradiction there; it’s just the way it is. Allow me to hide this fact from people who know me. Please.
• iTunes playlist support. My playlists are how I organize my music listening life, and they’re hugely important to me. I’d love to be able to have them sync up to rdio just like my music collection does.
• Allow “add to playlist” from artists and albums, not just songs. How else will I make the requisite Bob vs. Bob playlist?
• iTunes rating support. I neeeeeed to be able to keep track of what songs do it for me and what songs don’t. It forms the basis for all my future listening, not to mention the structure for all of my smart playlists. (I realize I’m asking for iTunes features where you’re trying to create a whole new listening experience, but I think there’s room for both. And I think you should support my current listening habits– they’re actually really important to me– as a gateway to getting me to change them in the long run.)
• Enable more connections between my collection and your catalog. You have so much great music by artists in my collection that I don’t have already, but there’s no way to find it short of searching the artist’s name. If I could see an “All Artist Albums” option when an artist is highlighted on the site or in the app, that would be unbelievable. Come to think of it, the “Play Artist Radio” option should be there, too.  My listening experience needs a starting point, and that starting point is often going to be my collection. Poke and prod me from there to branch out and explore based on things I’m looking at or “own” already.
• Make your desktop player a player, not a remote control. I think it’s elegant and beautiful, but robust it ain’t. Please allow me to browse to and start other music without using a browser. For that matter, please allow me to open the player and start music without having a browser open and logged in to your site.
• Genre-specific Top Album charts. Get Eminem off my computer screen.
• Pavement. Arcade Fire. You get the point. More rights, please. I’ll do my part to make it worth your money.

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