Review: Slacker Radio

It seems as if Internet radio was once a fringe technology relegated to being utilized by a niche segment of the population. However with the ubiquity of broadband Internet access and mobile devices with apps, Internet radio providers like Pandora and Last.fm have become very popular. The basic premise is that users can sign up for a free account and can create radio stations based on artists, songs, and/or genres. Listeners can further fine tune their newly created station(s) by approving or disapproving of songs that play. Not only are these services available for online streaming but have also created their own iPhone and Blackberry apps for listening on the go.

Slacker Radio is an online radio service that has joined the ranks of Internet radio providers with some amazing results. I tried Slacker radio and found that it has some great things to bring to the Internet radio table; things that the other guys just can not seem to get right.

About Slacker Radio
As mentioned above, Slacker works the same as most other Internet radio services. A Slacker account is free and you can begin listening right away. The layout of the Web site is straight forward. Displayed prominently in the center of the page is the player which shows the song title and album artwork for the current track. There is a skip button, play/pause button, "ban" button, and "favorite" button.

Located vertically to the left of the player are the station management buttons. "Now Playing" will display details about the current track including a short Bio on the artist. "All Stations" will display the stations you have created. "Create a Station" presents a field into which a song title or artist name can be searched for. A station will then be created based on the style and aspects of the selected song/artist. Slacker will play artists and songs that go well with the base song/artist.

Once you have created your station you can control what you hear even more by "banning" or "favoriting" songs and artists that are played so that over time your Slacker station learns more about what you want to hear on your station. And if you do not want to ban a song but just skip it for now, you can do that with the skip button. Keep in mind you are limited to 6 skips/bans per hour.

Strengths
What makes Slacker worth mentioning among the several other services? For me, it was because I have had many complaints about Pandora and Slacker gets those things right.

First there is the skip count. Whether you are using Slacker on your iPhone, Blackberry, or online, with each song that your station plays you have the option of telling Slacker if you like or dislike that song. This is how you tell Slacker what you like and thus it learns to play only what you like. Other services, Pandora for example, have this same feature. But Slacker takes it one step further. Located right in the player is a counter that keeps up with how many skips you have left for that hour. Furthermore you can see the album artwork of the upcoming track. So you can decide if it is worth it for you to skip the currently playing track. This is a very useful feature and helps you to use your skips more wisely.

Let us suppose you like the band Metallica and you create a station based on Metallica. But what if while listening to your Metallica station Slacker plays a song by Motörhead. However you may dislike this particular Motörhead song. You can select the "ban" button and you will be met with two options. You can ban that song from ever being played on your Metallica station again or you can choose to ban Motörhead from being played on your Metallica station ever again. With competitors like Pandora, a user can "thumbs down" a song, but not an artist. This is a huge improvement and gives Slacker a leg up on the competition.

The next strength that Slacker has that puts in over the competition is my personal favorite feature: the ability to fine tune a station. While playing one of your stations, choose the "Now Playing" button on the left side of the player. Then select the Customize option and then go to the Fine Tune tab. Here you can fine tune the behavior of your station according to three parameters, Popularity, Favorites, and Year. The Popularity parameter allows you to dictate to Slacker that you would like your station to play more familiar hits or you can choose the option to play more "Fringe" tracks for a "deeper" listening experience. "Favorites" is an extremely useful parameter. As you play songs and select them as "Favorites" by pressing the heart button in the player, Slacker records this feedback. And with the "Favorites" parameter in the Fine Tune section here you can tell Slacker to play more of the artists/tracks that you have selected as favorites. This means that more of the music that you love. The third parameter, "Year," tells Slacker that you would like to hear more modern or more classic tracks.

And unlike Pandora, all of these features can be taken advantage of for any station (not just ones you create). That means you can take pre-programmed Slacker channels and tailor them to your specific tastes.

Weaknesses
Even though Slacker is head-and-shoulders above the competition in my opinion, it is not a perfect choice.

First there are the commercials. Once or twice an hour a short Slacker commercial is inserted in your playlist. It is not terribly distracting to me but some listeners may be put off by it. However the service is free and Slacker must stay solvent somehow. Of course Slacker offers a premium subscription service which is ad-free. Rates are $19.99 for 4 months or $47.99 for 12 months.

The next weakness I will mention involves the iPhone/iPod Touch app for Slacker. One feature that I miss about Pandora is its ability to remember where you left off. If I am listening to Pandora on my iPod Touch and I exit the app to do something else. When I return, Pandora will pull up the last station I listened to. And if it has not been too long, it will even continue the same song. If I do the same with Slacker it takes me back to the Slacker home screen and does not remember even what station I was on and I have to go select it again.

Bottom Line
After about a week of listening, Slacker radio dethroned Pandora as my Internet music service of choice. The features, the ability to keep up with skips, to fine tune any station and the very smart music-selecting power of Slacker make it the service to beat. So whether on your Blackberry, your iPhone, your iPod Touch, or online go take Slacker for a test drive and comment and let me know what you think. Good luck!