New Zealanders may be at the back of the queue in getting the latest movies and television programmes over broadband, but music is becoming more accessible online after the local introduction of United States music service Rdio and the impending arrival of its better-known rival, Spotify.

Both provide "all-you-can-eat" access to a massive amount of music for a monthly subscription.

Rdio, a privately owned company bankrolled by Skype co-founder Janus Friis, has a growing catalogue of more than 12 million songs that subscribers can listen to over the web for $8.90 a month. For $13.90, subscribers can also download music to mobile phones and devices such as the iPod Touch so they can listen to music offline without gobbling up expensive mobile data.

InternetNZ chief executive Vikram Kumar said Rdio established a price point in the New Zealand market and any rival that followed would not be able to charge more unless they differentiated themselves in some way. "That is a good thing."

Rdio was working with New Zealand labels and distributors as well as with "every major music company" which could set it apart from competitors, he said.

Speaking from the company's head office in San Francisco, Rdio chief operating officer Carter Adamson said the music industry had a huge problem with piracy and people who weren't spending much on music.

Consumers had divided into three distinct groups, he said. There was "a tiny segment", who spent an inordinate amount on music every year; a big segment, who might spend $25 to $30 a year "getting an iTunes gift card in the holidays"; and a massive segment, who spent "nothing at all".

Subscription services such as Rdio could bridge the divide and entice the mass market to turn away from piracy.

Adamson said Rdio had decided to quickly go global after its US launch in 2010. "The intent from the beginning was to create the world's first truly global music service. The reason we put New Zealand and Australia at the top of the list was we saw a tremendous heritage in terms of music and an underserved market with early adopters of technology."

Rdio uses a technology called "bit rate peeling" to play tracks at the highest quality that the consumer's internet connection will allow without having to stop and pause songs being played, up to a maximum bit rate of 320 kilobits a second. It lets subscribers follow friends and artists and share playlists with others.

Subscribers can't play music on MP3 players that can't directly connect to the web, but Adamson said these were on the way out. "We are quickly moving to a world of internet-connected devices."

Rival Spotify is expected to start up in New Zealand in the next few months. An advantage of Rdio in a country where most internet users have comparatively meagre datacaps is that, unlike Spotify, Rdio does not use peer-to-peer technology, so there is no risk of subscribers' broadband allowances being eaten into by fellow subscribers accessing music stored on their computer.

However, some US commentators say there can be a performance trade-off; for example, when clicking ahead to listen to different parts of a track.

Kumar said it was frustrating that television equivalents such as Netflix had not yet made it to New Zealand. "It would be brilliant if they did."