Slacker Radio

Written by Walt in Music

Slacker Radio - Screen Capture - 1

A couple of months back, I posted a writeup on the Last.fm service. Since that time, I have gradually moved away from that service and found another that was more to my liking. That service is Slacker RadioOpens in a new tab. and it was first introduced to me by Guy via TwitterOpens in a new tab..

The most important feature about a music service, to me, is that it not be too repetitive. For this reason, I can’t stand listening to traditional radio for an extended period of time. I also want a service that isn’t littered with commercials, another reason I don’t bother with traditional radio.

These two requirements are what have me turned on to Slacker, although the commercials can become rather annoying at times. Unlike Last.fm which seems to plays music by popularity and tags, Slacker separates their music into categories. These categories give you the feel of traditional radio and allow you to tune into the classic rock or metal station. You can go even further and listen to rock hits from the 1990’s and so on and so forth.

While Slacker is not perfect, it does seem to have a vast library of music at your disposal. When listening to one station for an extended amount of time (like my nine hour work day), you may hear the same song two or three times. While this doesn’t beat an 16GB iPod on shuffle, it is enough variety to keep me interested.

The one annoyance with this service has been the frequency of commercials. I’m unsure what the song count is before the commercials begin, but when the same commercial is played two times in a row, it drives me crazy. I could pay a few dollars a month to rid myself of these commercials, but I don’t know that Slacker is feature rich enough to command a higher price than Last.fm and Pandora.

I don’t plan on moving away from Slacker anytime soon, unless I start hearing the same commercials three times in a row, in which case I’m out of here! One of these days I think I’ll give the premium service a try. Giving it some more thought, using the iPhone app commercial free, in addition to a commercial free work day, might very well make the service worth it to me.

Walt

Hi There, My name is Walt White and as the name of this blog suggests, I am a Pennsylvania resident. In addition to having numerous hobbies that I discuss on my blog - Iā€™m also the father of three little girls and a pitbull.

5 thoughts on “Slacker Radio”

    1. I have an iTouch and Blackberry. I also have apps for both, however, I have never tried the Blackberry App. The iPhone app on my iTouch gets used anytime I am working around the house.

  2. Weird thing – I dont hardly listen to ANY music anymore! I cant stand most of the new stuff and rap/hip-hop/dance/whateveryouwanttocallcrap has always been a big ZERO in my book.

    I like that old time a rock n roll šŸ˜‰

    Mike

  3. Hey Walt,
    I know this is an older post, jus checking out your blog. Have you tried Pandora? The will offer you suggestions and play similar music. And of course my favorite Groove Shark. You can select pretty much any band or song and it will create a playlist for you. Sorry fi this is redundant information.
    Peace,
    Great site!

    1. Tadd,
      I bounce back and forth from Pandora to Slacker to Last.fm. Each service provides something a little different but none of them are a perfect match for me. My issue becomes repetitive music after extended listening during work hours. While all of them are far better than conventional radio, they become predictable after hours upon hours of listening.

      These days I listen to Pandora less and less because of their cutoff of 40 hours of free music. I hit that mark before the work week is up. If they played more variety I would consider paying for a subscription but at this point I’m just better off bouncing around.

      I’ll have to check out Groove Shark and see about adding it to my rotation of services.

      Thanks for the comment
      -Walt

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