Slacker Premium Radio launches; Portable confirmed
Thursday, November 15, 2007 at 2:54 PM
Slacker Premium Radio today has officially launched. The Slacker Premium Radio service lets you skip an unlimited number of songs, as well as build a music library by saving songs that can be played anytime.
These saved songs can be played individually or as a part of a custom playlist. Saved radio songs are tied to your Premium Radio account and automatically sent to your Slacker Portable or Slacker Software libraries, where they can be played whenever they want.
"Slacker Premium Radio is for those who want even more control over their radio listening experience," said Dennis Mudd, CEO of Slacker (pictured above). "We're particularly excited by the save song feature in Premium Radio, which lets people build a library of their favorite music without having to work at it."
Of course, the Slacker Basic Radio is still free, but the Slacker Premium Radio is launching today for $7.50 per month with an annual subscription.
Here's the breakdown of features for Slacker Premium Radio:
- Ad-free personalized music
- Unlimited song skipping
- Save favorite songs to play whenever you choose or create custom playlists
- Log in from any PC or Mac to hear personalized stations in high quality
- Available on Slacker Web Player, Software Player and Slacker Portable Player
- Quickly rate favorites or ban songs/artists from any station
- Easily share stations with friends
- View artist profiles, album reviews, large cover art and visualizations
- Embed custom stations in personal blogs or favorite social networking sites
You can check out the details and sign up to the Premium Radio service here. One nice thing is that if you truly don't like the Premium service, you can cancel within 7 days and not be billed (so it's almost like a fully functioning free trial).
In addition to all this, there's now confirmation for what we heard about yesterday: the Slacker Portable is indeed available for pre-order now, with the product shipping out on or before December 13th. All the details you need about it are in this post.
Conceptually, I really like what the Slacker Portable is doing in terms of getting the content to you. Instead of depending on a constant signal (like we do with satellite radio), you pre-load all the content onto the Slacker Portable device and listen on-the-go. If you have the Basic Radio, you're limited to 6-skips per channel/per hour. But if you have the Slacker Premium Radio service, you have unlimited skips.
Think about it: in a time-shifted world of TiVo's and DVR's, is there really a difference between hearing an "encore" broadcast and hearing a "cached" version?
The only thing that "live" radio provides as an experience differentiator is lack of control - you can't skip ahead.
Now of course that doesn't apply to live sports, news, talk, etc - which is still what terrestrial radio and satellite radio bring to the table. But many satellite radio listeners catch rebroadcasts of their favorite talk shows, so they might as well be "cached replays" anyway (and in turn without the reception issues). And for folks who mostly listen to music, "time" isn't the issue... it's discovery.
See, one of my big problems with iPods is that no matter how big the storage space is, you still need to hear the song at least once. There's no discovery. There's no mystery. Yes, you have absolute control, but there's nothing new. Plus, there's a massive segment of the population who has absolutely no desire (or time) to pre-program all their playlists.
Slacker has solved that problem. You download a playlist of songs from your own custom-built stations, each matched to your personal tastes, and then listen to them at your leisure.
And since Slacker has worked out individual deals with all the major music labels (not to mention the indie labels), you're now "allowed to" save songs to the device without worry of the RIAA-cops coming after you. That's some pretty cool stuff.
...now if they could only find a way to get it into the car easily.
Thursday, November 15, 2007 at 2:54 PM
Slacker Premium Radio today has officially launched. The Slacker Premium Radio service lets you skip an unlimited number of songs, as well as build a music library by saving songs that can be played anytime.
These saved songs can be played individually or as a part of a custom playlist. Saved radio songs are tied to your Premium Radio account and automatically sent to your Slacker Portable or Slacker Software libraries, where they can be played whenever they want.
"Slacker Premium Radio is for those who want even more control over their radio listening experience," said Dennis Mudd, CEO of Slacker (pictured above). "We're particularly excited by the save song feature in Premium Radio, which lets people build a library of their favorite music without having to work at it."
Of course, the Slacker Basic Radio is still free, but the Slacker Premium Radio is launching today for $7.50 per month with an annual subscription.
Here's the breakdown of features for Slacker Premium Radio:
- Ad-free personalized music
- Unlimited song skipping
- Save favorite songs to play whenever you choose or create custom playlists
- Log in from any PC or Mac to hear personalized stations in high quality
- Available on Slacker Web Player, Software Player and Slacker Portable Player
- Quickly rate favorites or ban songs/artists from any station
- Easily share stations with friends
- View artist profiles, album reviews, large cover art and visualizations
- Embed custom stations in personal blogs or favorite social networking sites
You can check out the details and sign up to the Premium Radio service here. One nice thing is that if you truly don't like the Premium service, you can cancel within 7 days and not be billed (so it's almost like a fully functioning free trial).
In addition to all this, there's now confirmation for what we heard about yesterday: the Slacker Portable is indeed available for pre-order now, with the product shipping out on or before December 13th. All the details you need about it are in this post.
Conceptually, I really like what the Slacker Portable is doing in terms of getting the content to you. Instead of depending on a constant signal (like we do with satellite radio), you pre-load all the content onto the Slacker Portable device and listen on-the-go. If you have the Basic Radio, you're limited to 6-skips per channel/per hour. But if you have the Slacker Premium Radio service, you have unlimited skips.
Think about it: in a time-shifted world of TiVo's and DVR's, is there really a difference between hearing an "encore" broadcast and hearing a "cached" version?
The only thing that "live" radio provides as an experience differentiator is lack of control - you can't skip ahead.
Now of course that doesn't apply to live sports, news, talk, etc - which is still what terrestrial radio and satellite radio bring to the table. But many satellite radio listeners catch rebroadcasts of their favorite talk shows, so they might as well be "cached replays" anyway (and in turn without the reception issues). And for folks who mostly listen to music, "time" isn't the issue... it's discovery.
See, one of my big problems with iPods is that no matter how big the storage space is, you still need to hear the song at least once. There's no discovery. There's no mystery. Yes, you have absolute control, but there's nothing new. Plus, there's a massive segment of the population who has absolutely no desire (or time) to pre-program all their playlists.
Slacker has solved that problem. You download a playlist of songs from your own custom-built stations, each matched to your personal tastes, and then listen to them at your leisure.
And since Slacker has worked out individual deals with all the major music labels (not to mention the indie labels), you're now "allowed to" save songs to the device without worry of the RIAA-cops coming after you. That's some pretty cool stuff.
...now if they could only find a way to get it into the car easily.
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