Streaming music firm Rdio has unveiled its latest redesign, while launching the free version of its service in 20 countries.

Both moves are an effort to reach a wider audience by Rdio. It has regularly been praised for its technology and design since launching in 2010, but has never published user figures, and is thought to be much smaller than rivals like Spotify and Deezer.

“One of the primary goals here is to be more mass-market,” Rdio’s senior vice president of product, Chris Becherer, told The Guardian, ahead of the relaunch.

“A lot of our users are very fanatical and passionate: they love Rdio, love the design and the UI [user interface]. But we need to go wider with our reach, and free is a way to do that.”

Rdio’s relaunch puts the emphasis on its “stations”, streaming radio stations based on specific genres and artists; on the past listening habits of individual users; and now also on themed playlists created by the company’s internal team of curators.

In the 20 countries where Rdio is now available for free, these stations will be what people can listen to, with the company making its money from audio advertisements in between tracks.

Rdio will also try to upsell people to its existing £9.99-a-month subscription service, which provides “on-demand” access to its catalogue of 30m songs, with people able to choose specific songs and albums to listen to, as well as creating their own playlists.

“The theme of this update is stations first. We’ve had these stations since last year, but we’re moving them to the forefront of the Rdio experience for the first time now,” said Becherer.

He added that Rdio has stopped thinking about “two camps” of streaming music users: those who want personal-radio stations, and those who want to choose songs on-demand.

“We really don’t see the customer experience as being separate. At different points in your listening, you’re going to have an appetite for one or the other. Some times, you just want to ‘turn on the radio’, and other times you want to listen to your favourite band’s new album from start to finish,” he said.

“These are two sides of the same coin, and we don’t think any service out there is doing a good job of pairing those lean-back and lean-forward experiences.”

That’s an optimistic claim. Pretty much every streaming music service is working hard on radio-style stations as well as on-demand access. The likes of Spotify and Beats Music already have editorial teams curating stations and playlists, which are increasingly prominent in their apps.

In that sense, Rdio’s changes are part of a wider trend, rather than forging a new path. However, this week’s redesign of its website and apps shows that it’s still one of the leaders when it comes to figuring out how to put all this music in front of people.

Users firing up Rdio will now see something called the Home feed, which presents them with “stories” of music they might like to listen to: “Essentially a music recommendation or set of recommendations, wrapped in some explanatory context,” as Becherer put it.

For free users, these stories will be stations based on artists, genres, tastemakers, friends and what’s trending among other users, interspersed with tips on how to get more out of Rdio – for example, encouraging people to follow other users.

“As you scroll through, you’re going to get this evolving set of recommendations. We think of it as your own personalised music magazine based on you, from our algorithms and our own curation team,” said Becherer.

A new heart-icon button to “favourite” stations, albums, songs, playlists and artists will tune Rdio’s recommendations further.

Paying subscribers will see all these features, but the stories in their Home feeds will be more varied: recommended albums and playlists, for example, as well as emerging artists picked out by Rdio’s editorial team.

“The amount of music you’re exposed to should be much wider than it is in today’s Rdio,” said Becherer, speaking before the update went live.

The new Home feed could help Rdio make money from its free service. While the revenues come from audio ads only for now, it’s not a big leap to imagine sponsored stories, whether they’re ads for music paid for by labels, or very-on-trend “native” advertising through playlists created by brands.

“It’s a really good point: the Home feed is the type of UI that would lend itself well to certain advertising: Facebook has it in the feed, and Twitter too. It’s definitely something we’re working on, but we don’t have any plans to release that any time soon,” said Becherer.

“Some of the advertisers we’re working with are very interested in how they could promote a branded station. At the same time, we don’t want to give you spam: we want the user to trust our personalised recommendations.”

Rdio’s redesign certainly looks impressive, although it will take time to understand just how well it works: is the station curation better or worse than that of Spotify or Beats Music, for example, and are the recommendation stories more relevant?

Going free in 20 countries is a big deal for Rdio, though: the company has done some smart marketing in the last year with mobile apps like Shazam and SoundHound to persuade people to download its app. Now it has a better chance at converting them into users (and perhaps, in time, paying subscribers).

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