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Hype Check: Slacker Radio for the iPhone

by Terrence O'Brien on January 21, 2009 at 08:10 AM

Hype Check: Slacker Radio for the iPhone

What It Does:
Slacker Radio is an Internet radio application that can create custom playlists based on your taste in music. Until now, to take advantage of Slacker, you either had to be sitting in front of your computer or cough up $199 - $299 for a dedicated Slacker Player. Now, Slacker is expanding to the iPhone and offering a free application -- similar to the much-loved Pandora -- that allows you to stream music from online "stations." You can choose preset stations based on genre (like indie rock or bluegrass), or you can create your own by entering an artist or song you like and allowing Slacker to build a station around your choice.

What We Like:
The preset stations are decent options when you just don't know what you want to listen to, but, like Pandora, the real value of Slacker lies in helping you discover new artists based on things you already like. Just as you can with the Web app, you can skip tracks you don't like (limited to six on a free account) and ban individual songs, or entire artists' catalogs. You can also mark songs as favorites. While this doesn't appear to have any immediate impact, we assume that doing so improves Slacker's accuracy when determining what artists and songs you'll like.

Over Wi-Fi and 3G, streaming was reliable and sounded good, though searches over 3G often took forever to return results. Slacker was much better than Pandora at finding a specific song for the basis of a station, which is nice, though not really the point of either application.

What We Don't:
Though we're sure some of the blame is to be laid at the feet of exclusive iPhone carrier AT&T, the slowness of searches over 3G was infuriating. We also encountered a few bugs that caused Slacker to crash when trying to change stations or create new ones while music was already playing.

The real test of the app, though, is in its station creation. Slacker did a decent enough job of finding other music we enjoyed when entering songs like 'DLZ' by TV on the Radio, 'What's Up' from the Clipse, or 'Lovely Day' by Bill Withers, but primarily served up tracks that we already knew or that were obvious choices (like 'Let's Get It On' after 'Lovely Day' and 2Pac's 'Dear Mama' after Dr. Dre's 'Nuthin' But a G Thang'). Pandora provides more surprises, playing tracks from obscurer acts like Woven on the 'DLZ' station and selecting Outkast's 'So Fresh, So Clean' on our Clipse station (because of it's "trippy soundscape" backing track and "bumpin' kick sound"). Pandora is also more of a musical journey, taking you from Dr. Dre to Mandrill and spelling out the connections -- such as subtle stylistic similarities, influences, and tone -- along the way.

Bottom Line:
There is something to be said for the approach of both Pandora and Slacker. Slacker's safer choices actually turned up more songs that we liked, such as Arcade Fire's 'Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)' on the TV on the Radio channel and 'The Nigga Ya Love to Hate' from Ice Cube on our Dr. Dre channel. Pandora is more effective as a tool for discovering new music though. Before Pandora, we had never heard of Fish or Woven and had almost forgotten how much we loved the Geto Boys.

Slacker is no better or worse than Pandora. Pandora is better for discovering new music, while Slacker is better at reliably serving up track after track that you'll like. There really isn't even a need to choose one or the other; we'll be keeping both on our iPhones and switching back and forth as the mood strikes.

The iPhone app is a great alternative to a dedicated Slacker Player, however. Not only is the app two hundred bucks cheaper, but it also allows you to create and update stations on the move, an opportunity not afforded by the Slacker G2, which needs a Wi-Fi connection and a significant block of time to update.

Slacker Radio is available now as a free download from the iTunes App Store.

Tags: app store, AppStore, features, hypecheck, iphone apps, IphoneApps, slacker, slacker radio, SlackerRadio

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