Just this morning we explored some streaming music apps for your BlackBerry, which caught a bit more buzz on Twitter than it did in the comments. What stuck out to me while writing it was that no where on this site do we have a review or walkthrough of Slacker Radio. The app has been around for a while now, and I feel like I’m biased against it because of my Pandora favoritism. So, to remedy that, we’ll take some time this afternoon to take a stroll through a different brand of streaming radio.
Creating an account
In order to use Slacker, even the free features, you’ll need to create a user account. You can do this right from the application when you first boot it up. But if you’d rather enter information on a larger keyboard you can sign up for an account at Slacker.com. Once you fill out that one form you’ll be ready to stream some tunes.
Preset stations
The main difference between Slacker and Pandora is that Slacker directs users to their preset stations. You can find stations through Slacker’s Top Stations or Spotlight channels, or you can find them by genre. These include Alternative, Blues, Classical, Comedy, Country, Electronic/Dance, Hip Hop/R&B, Hits, International, Jazz, Latin, Rock, Seasonal, Spiritual, Standards/Big Band, and Youth. Just click on the genre heading and select from among the stations within.
As you can see, you have six skips that reset hourly. This also gives Slacker an edge on Pandora. While Pandora gives you the same number of skips, they reset daily. I also haven’t seen that number readily displayed. Slacker puts it right for you there on the skip button. Make sure you use those six wisely, too. You don’t want to skip too many “meh” songs, lest you run into one your really dislike.
For the most part I am enjoying Slacker’s preset stations. They let me play music within a genre without having to think of a specific artist in mind, and without having all of my selections based on that single artist. For instance, the Traditional Blues channel seems to provide me more variety than my Willie Dixon channel on Pandora.
Custom stations
On top of its dozens of preset stations, Slacker also offers users the option to create their own custom stations based on artists of their choosing. This is along the same lines of Pandora’s offering, though Slacker doesn’t allow for quite the level of customization. For instance, you can use just one artist as your base, whereas with Pandora you can add many artists to help create a more specific station. Still, the custom station has plenty of uses, even if it is rather basic.
Custom stations work because Slacker has a limited number of preset channels. For instance, there is just one metal station. Yet there are hundreds of awesome metal bands. I doubt that the metal station covers all of them. Beyond that, there are many sub-genres of metal, so chances are it misses at least a few of them completely. To remedy this you can create custom stations based on your favorite bands. As you can see, I created one for Amon Amarth, a band I didn’t see come across while listening to the metal channel.
To create a custom station just click on the search button atop the screen and enter in the band you want to hear. Slacker will list band results, indicated by the person icon, and songs, indicated by the music notes. Just select the appropriate one and you’ll have a custom station starting up. I would recommend setting them as favorites so you can easily recover them the next time you start the app.
Sharing your musical tastes
The music you listen to is clearly better than the crap everyone else listens to. In fact, the works would be a lot better if everyone shared your musical taste. So why not share that taste with the world? Slacker allows you to do that in a number of ways.
If your friends also use Slacker, you can share your custom stations with them. When you’re in the station, click the menu button and select Share Station. That will allow you to send the station via email or SMS. Then your friend load up that station for himself and experience your impeccable style.
Want to share your music with an even wider audience? Slacker can also integrate with your social networking feeds. In the main menu click the menu button and then go to Settings. From there you can scroll down and edit your Slacker Community settings. That will open your web browser and send you to a login page. Enter in your username and password and you can tell Slacker how often to update your various social accounts, including Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook.
With Twitter you can automatically tweet every time you play a station, favorite a song, ban a song, or ban an artist. MySpace allows you to add a Slacker player to your page. Facebook seems to have the lowest level of interaction.
Slacker Radio Plus
As you browse through the Slacker Radio app and website, you’ll notice more than one place where you can upgrade to Slacker Radio Plus. This provides one excellent feature: station caching. By selecting Cache Station from the station menu, you can have Slacker download hours worth of songs, which you can listen to even when you’re out of cell signal reach. Caching also comes in handy if you want to save battery life. For instance, if you’re headed out for a while and want to have songs on hand, you can just cache a station before you’re done charging up. That way you can listen to music without killing your battery.
The Plus feature also removes all ads and allows for unlimited skips. For those who want to listen to specific songs, the Plus version allows you to select a song and add it to a custom station’s rotation. If you want to view the lyrics, you also get access to the complete lyrics for each song.
Getting Slacker
Many BlackBerry devices, including those issued by Verizon, come with a Slacker icon ready for you to click. This brings you right to the download page. If your Berry doesn’t have one, you can get Slacker at Slacker.com or at App World.
Slacker Radio Plus can be purchased at Slacker.com. It costs $4.99 per month, but if you sign up and prepay for 12 months you can get a $1 per month discount.
