Slacker

I usually think of online radio service Slacker as a direct competitor to Pandora: both offer user-customizable radio stations based around individual tastes, both are available for the iPhone and other mobile platforms, and most important, both are available for free, with optional subscription versions--Slacker Radio Plus and Pandora One--offering additional benefits.

But unlike Pandora, Slacker also has a big investment in more traditional one-to-many Internet radio, with actual humans programming stations or playlists based on particular genres. This is nice if you really don't know what you want, or simply want to be surprised. This week, … Read more

Pandora's largely undisputed reign on Palm WebOS-based phones may be over.

On Thursday, Slacker Radio released a version (.0.9.4) of its streaming radio app to the App Catalog in the U.S. and Canada. As with Slacker Radio for other mobile platforms, the free app gives you the run of more than 100 curated stations, or it lets you go into discovery mode a la Pandora and ilk by creating "custom" stations based on songs or artists you like.

Artist bios with photos are on Slacker's Palm menu, as are the buttons to rate … Read more

This week, Donald and Jasmine discuss the latest Apple tablet rumors, which deal mainly with its lesser focus on music but practical usefulness for something like iTunes LPs and the theoretical iTunes music cloud. We also ponder the possible names for the imminent device. Plus, Slacker gives Canadians something to smile about, Jasmine does a celebratory dance for small-eared music listeners, and Image S4 durability issues make her shed tears while simultaneously garnering cheers for Klipsch customer service. Also, how about those ethical and legal issues when it comes to LP copying and "backing up"?

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While I write this, I am enjoying a custom-built station on Slacker Radio, and as of last night, Canadians can do this as well. The news is a big win for both Canada and Internet radio, and is thanks in no small part to BlackBerry, which has a huge presence in the country and a growing relationship with Slacker.

No doubt, many Canadians will be thrilled with this announcement, as I've had no small number of them e-mail me about various music recommendation and streaming services. However, Slacker won't be exactly the same in Canada. Residents will only … Read more

Donald and Jasmine throw out a few tasty leftovers from CES 2010, including an upcoming Slacker iPhone app update that will cache music offline. We check out some speaker light bulbs, an amplified helmet, and cross our fingers for XviD support on the Zune HD.

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At November's CTIA show in San Diego, Slacker outlined a plan for its music-streaming Slacker Radio apps for BlackBerry, Android, and iPhone. A few months later and several cities over, my colleague, Jasmine France, takes you through a hands-on look at Slacker's embellishments to its iPhone app (caching!) from CES in Las Vegas. In the meantime, I've been tooling around the most recent beta version of Slacker Radio for BlackBerry 3.0.

At CTIA, Slacker told us that version 3.0 of its BlackBerry app would soon be able to sync cached stations over the air, through … Read more

Oh, I'm sorry...I can't hear you over the deafening chorus of angels singing "Hallelujah!" Yes, it's true: the iPhone and the iPod Touch are one step closer to subscription music and I'm pleased as punch about it. Slacker, which released an app for the devices earlier this year, is about to roll out an update that will allow for caching and over-the-air refreshing of stations.

While the new capability isn't a huge deal for the iPhone, it's a big win for iPod Touch owners because it means you won't need … Read more

Pandora's model of determining what you might like to listen to with an algorithm is being challenged by companies like Slacker, who use human music experts to build and fine-tune playlists. Songza Sets is another company that is trying to combine the human touch with an on-demand, streaming distribution model. Songza Sets presents daily, hand-picked, 12-song playlists that follow a certain theme. The result is a thoroughly enjoyable listening experience that lets users discover great new music.

The themes for Songza Sets are fairly creative to this point. For example, one set is made up of indie songs that … Read more

No matter how much music you have on your iPhone or iPod Touch, sometimes you get bored with it or just want somebody else to drive.

That's the appeal of apps like Pandora and Slacker, which build personalized radio stations based on a particular artist, then let you customize those stations to various degrees.

A new app called Effin Genius, from Seattle company Melodeo, takes a different approach: instead of forcing you to enter the name of an artist or musical genre--or anything at all--Effin Genius analyzes the playlists in the iTunes library on your iPhone or iPod Touch, … Read more