Rdio: the $125M-funded music streamer that sold for $75M and shut down

Rdio — the subscription music service launched on August 3, 2010 by Skype founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis — was one of the first serious challengers to Spotify. It reached 85 countries, was judged the best music service of 2013 by Entertainment Weekly, and raised at least $125 million from investors including Atomico and Mangrove.

The market did not reward the quality: Rdio never caught Spotify's scale, and as licensing costs and competition grew, the service ran out of runway. On November 16, 2015, Rdio filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and agreed to sell its technology and intellectual property to Pandora for $75 million in cash.

The Rdio-branded service was wound down in all markets, shutting down on December 22, 2015. The irony was complete: Pandora bought the assets to build its own on-demand service — a subscription pioneer's technology became the foundation of a competitor's pivot, at a fraction of the money poured in.