Don’t panic: Rdio mobile downloads are not going away

One of the nice things about most streaming services is the ability to download songs and albums to your mobile device for when your out of range of a network, like on a plane, hiking in the wilderness or in any building in a large city. Today, it looked like Rdio might be taking that feature away.

First noticed by Chris Messina (well probably noticed by others, but we saw his tweet first), the Rdio for Mac app was updated today with a curious release note: “Removed the Downloads window as Download functionality has been disabled.” For anyone that uses Rdio, that’s a slightly confusing thing to read.

Oooo…. @Rdio dropping downloads? pic.twitter.com/u5BfbbPMUm

— Chris Messina ? (@chrismessina) December 16, 2014

Before you freak out, Rdio is not taking the ability to download music to mobile devices away.Even after the update is applied you can still manage your mobile downloads via the desktop and mobile apps.

What happened is that you used to be able to purchase tracks from Rdio and download them to your desktop. That service went away a while ago. But, that legacy feature was still in the desktop app. Today it went away with the update.

So continue your music downloading ways to mobile on Rdio.