It’s only been six months since Rdio launched its video-streaming platform Vdio to the world, but it appears that the company has already decided to give up on that experiment. In an email sent to customers today, the streaming media startup announced that it has decided to discontinue the service.
While Vdio was only just introduced over the summer, it followed nearly two years of speculation that Rdio would compete against Netflix and Amazon with a streaming video product. When it finally launched, Vdio was less of a Netflix clone, and more of a competitor to traditional on-demand video rental services like iTunes or Google Play.
The shutdown of the service follows a layoff that affected 35 people at the company. At the time, Rdio didn’t comment on how the layoff would affect the video service.
In an email sent out to customers, the Vdio team said it was not able to “deliver a differentiated customer experience,” and is offering users Amazon gift cards as reimbursement for purchases made on the platform.
According to several reports on Twitter, Vdio sent the following statement:
Hi [NAME],
We are writing to inform you that we have decided to discontinue the Vdio beta service.
Despite our efforts, we were not able to deliver the differentiated customer experience we had hoped for, and so Vdio is now closed. For more information, please read the Vdio FAQ.
As reimbursement for any content you purchased and any rental content that has yet to expire, we’d like to give you an Amazon gift card. To redeem your gift card, please visit Amazon.com/redeemgift and enter the following gift card claim code:
We want to thank you for trying Vdio, and we wish you a very happy New Year.
The Vdio Team
We’ve reached out to Rdio for comment and will follow up once we learn more.
