Founders KaZaA develop subscription based music service

Janus Friis and Niklas Zenström, who previously developed Skype and KaZaA, now aim to create a service that will legally distribute music online. They call their new service Rdio. Few details are known, but it will likely be a service based on streaming music. For a fixed monthly fee, users gain access to Rdio’s catalogue from their PCs and mobiles.

Rdio is based in the United States. That goes for nearly all services that offer online access to music, with Spotify and the French service Deezer.

Next year, the American market will see the arrival of several new players, besides Rdio, experimenting with business models based on online distribution of music. That is an important development. I think easy, reliable and fast access to online media is the best answer to file sharing. This is a time where supply and demand of online media can co-develop. Much variation with different models enhances this process and provides input for companies and consumers in selecting the fittest.

Still, new services that allow unlimited access for a flat fee, such as Rhapsody and former pirate Napster, do not have an easy time, according to The New York Times. So far, they aren’t nearly as popular as the king of online media, Apple iTunes. And they hardly succeed in winning the hearts of file sharers.