Rdio (free; $9.99 per month for full song plays) is the cool new kid among streaming music services, with a trendy but usable design and a full-featured Web interface. The service's Windows Phone app brings some of this slickness, along with Rdio's large selection of music, but it's pretty deficient compared with the Web and iPhone versions of the service. Missing are basics like similar-music radio station creation and adding social contacts. And the free version is little more than a song-preview service.

Getting Started With Rdio

You get the free Rdio app from the Windows Phone Store. It's a very small 2MB download, though its storage usage will balloon if you download a lot of songs for offline listening. I tested the app by installing it on a Nokia Lumia Icon. You can sign up with any email address or with your Facebook credentials. Next, you accept the terms of service, and choose whether you want Rdio to take over your lock screen with album art for currently playing songs.

The first thing you'll see is the upgrade option, but you won't need this for three days: The app automatically starts as a trial of the $9.99 per month Rdio Unlimited subscription, which offers on-demand song playing and offline listening. If you're not a paid subscriber, you can't do much besides play 30-second previews of songs you find. By comparison, Slacker and Spotify's free versions at least let you play shuffled albums and related songs in Pandora style. While Rdio's Web and iPhone versions do this, too, the Windows Phone app doesn't.

Interface

Rdio has a classic Windows Phone interface, with left-to-right swiping between functions. In this case your choices are the home screen (with links to your profile, collection, playlists, queue, and Now Playing), Heavy Rotation, Recent Activity, Top Charts, and New Releases. Under all these pages is a Search button that lets you find any artist, song, or album.

On your profile page, you can see your collection, playlists, followers, and following list. Swipe right and you'll see your top albums and recent activity. One thing I prefer about Spotify's interface is that you always see the currently playing song across the bottom no matter what you're doing in the app. With Rdio, you have to navigate back to your home screen and choose Now Playing just to pause or skip.