In the digital world, we now have unprecedented access to the world’s music, and many companies have risen to bring this smorgasbord to our ears through digital radio stations, satellite radio, music subscription services and online music stores.
Pandora Radio, one of the free online service, allows you to create a customized radio station, based on an artist or song of your choice, and plays music with a similar feel. This saves you from having to curate your own playlist and it also introduces you to new music. The concept has been very successful and has caught on with 45 million users.
Slacker Radio steps up to improve on this concept by providing a much larger music library from which to build your custom station, and allows fine tuning control over how the station is populated.
There is a setting for Song Popularity so that you can listen to only hits or more fringe songs. Additionally, there is a setting for the year, which allows you to choose from current songs or older songs. When it comes to banning songs from your station’s playlist, you are given the option of banning just one song or all songs from that artist.
The game changing function in Slacker Radio is that it can cache your music so that you can listen when you anticipate being in an area without a network connection. That feature does require a monthly subscription though, but if you are frequently out of network range then it could be worth the price.
Subscriptions start at $14.99 for three months or $47.99 for a full year. Subscribers also can skip or ban as many songs as they want. Listeners without subscriptions must listen to ads after several songs and can only skip six songs within an hour. That’s a small inconvenience since you can just switch to another station and get an allotment of six more skips.
The Slacker Radio app has been updated for iOS 4.0, can play in the background, and uses the native iOS music controls. Aside from functions, the app is easy to use and seems to be done well. It did crash once while playing unattended in my testing and many others have noted this in their iTunes reviews—so stability will be an issue that the developers will need to address.
With more features and more music than Pandora, and with ambitious expansion plans, Slacker Radio may soon catch up with Pandora.
Slacker Radio is free.
[etRating value=“ 4”]
Pandora Radio, one of the free online service, allows you to create a customized radio station, based on an artist or song of your choice, and plays music with a similar feel. This saves you from having to curate your own playlist and it also introduces you to new music. The concept has been very successful and has caught on with 45 million users.
Slacker Radio steps up to improve on this concept by providing a much larger music library from which to build your custom station, and allows fine tuning control over how the station is populated.
There is a setting for Song Popularity so that you can listen to only hits or more fringe songs. Additionally, there is a setting for the year, which allows you to choose from current songs or older songs. When it comes to banning songs from your station’s playlist, you are given the option of banning just one song or all songs from that artist.
The game changing function in Slacker Radio is that it can cache your music so that you can listen when you anticipate being in an area without a network connection. That feature does require a monthly subscription though, but if you are frequently out of network range then it could be worth the price.
Subscriptions start at $14.99 for three months or $47.99 for a full year. Subscribers also can skip or ban as many songs as they want. Listeners without subscriptions must listen to ads after several songs and can only skip six songs within an hour. That’s a small inconvenience since you can just switch to another station and get an allotment of six more skips.
The Slacker Radio app has been updated for iOS 4.0, can play in the background, and uses the native iOS music controls. Aside from functions, the app is easy to use and seems to be done well. It did crash once while playing unattended in my testing and many others have noted this in their iTunes reviews—so stability will be an issue that the developers will need to address.
With more features and more music than Pandora, and with ambitious expansion plans, Slacker Radio may soon catch up with Pandora.
Slacker Radio is free.
[etRating value=“ 4”]
