I was one of Rdio&#x27;s first employees (3rd) and have been a happy subscriber since Craig got billing to work. After FB employees got free Rdio, they gave Rdio employees free Rdio as well, but I kept paying—to retain the right to bitch. (I got a free account for my wife though.) My entire extended family have been paying for and swearing by Rdio for years.<p>I was introduced to Erlang at Rdio (this shaped the future of my career) and worked on the original implementation of the Heavy Rotation feature. I walked around the office asking people &quot;Does this look right? How about this?&quot; I&#x27;d upgrade Erlang code in production by hot-reloading the heavy rotation module, and walk around some more. It was fun!<p>In 2011, I realized that Rdio will never succeed due to lack of fanatical leadership—you can&#x27;t have a company with absent founders, that&#x27;s just not how it works—and left. I&#x27;ve been expecting this sort of an &quot;exit&quot; for a while.<p>Today I work at my own startup (sameroom.io) and every single day I&#x27;m grateful for the Rdio experience—mostly as a cautionary tale, unfortunately.<p>And now, we have to deal with this:<p>&quot;Are we really going to start using Spotify after so many years of hating on it?&quot; —our 15-year-old.