Snippet: Rdio Who? ☇

James Vincent for The Verge:

As Apple unveiled its new music streaming service at WWDC yesterday, competitor Rdio responded by tweeting a welcome note — or rather, a “Welcome, Apple. Seriously.” note. Some Twitter users thought it showed “the upmost respect in welcoming competition,” but others recognized it as the backhanded compliment it was.

As press statements go it seems pretty friendly, but it’s actually a re-run of a famous ad Apple ran in The Wall Street Journal in 1981. The iPhone-maker’s original “Welcome, IBM. Seriously.” note ostensibly congratulated IBM on unveiling its first ever personal computer, but also took a moment to remind readers that “[Apple] invented the personal computer” as well as dropping some projected industry-wide sales figures into the mix. You can read it as classy, sure, but it’s also cocksure.

You can see the original on Twitter, but the whole thing gave me two initial impressions: first, even if this is a mild success, Apple will probably still make more from their service than Rdio is making from theirs; second, Rdio did get themselves some free press, although I wonder how foolish the move will look if Rdio faces the same struggles Apple did after the PC went mainstream.