If you use your phone as a media player, you’re probably familiar with Pandora radio, but you might not have heard of Slacker. The concept behind the two apps is similar: provide users with an online radio station suited directly to their tastes. The execution, however is a little different.
Like Pandora, Slacker lets you create a station based on an artist, and from there, you can choose to block songs, or “like” them so that they’ll play more frequently. When you’re setting up a custom station, Slacker really shines.
You can “like” multiple artists and songs right from the start in order to get a station more closely tuned to what you’re looking for. Unfortunately, to take advantage of all of these customization options, you’ll need to set your station up through your PC. Still, while you’re listening, you can “like” a song, and it will be put into heavy rotation.
You can have Slacker cache your favorite stations whenever your phone is connected to Wifi so that you won’t have to worry about streaming issues if you find yourself in an area with low signal strength.
You can also set it to cache stations over your 3G connection, but the process tends to be data heavy, so we don’t recommend it.
The biggest difference between Pandora and Slacker is the music selection. If you’re interested in listening to a lot of foreign music, then you’re probably going to want to stick with Pandora.
Slacker just doesn’t have the international circuit covered very well. What they do have, is a great selection of Indie and Punk Rock that you won’t find on Pandora. If you’re into more mainstream genres like pop, and rock, you’re probably going to be happy with either service.
It’s hard not to recommend Slacker. It’s got a solid feature set, and a great music selection. The free version seems a little more ad heavy than some other online radio stations, but a subscription only costs $5/month if the ads are really getting you down.
The caching feature is particularly useful to users that might be taking their phone into a gym where reception might not be great, and the ability to block and like songs means you can build a strong station.
The Slacker app is free, and available now on the Android Market.

September 1st, 2010
Miles 






