Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

As a die-hard Pandora fan I am not sure if the folks at Slacker were seeking me out to try and convert me, or they just didn’t know what they were getting themselves into. Here are my thoughts after using Slacker.com’s streaming internet radio for a little over 2 months.

Things I like:

• A very large library of music
• Being able to save songs for playback later
• Ability to search and play and artist on the fly
• Unlimited song skipping
• Good streaming quality
• No advertising whatsoever
• You can ban a song or ban the artist, you are not forced to ban both the artist and song. (I would like to be able to rate each a song and artist separately in a positive light as well)

Things I don’t like:

• There is no option to move songs to another station. A jazz-y song on jam bands “Brother Soul by Soulive” can fit within the station for some, but i like jazz as well so I want it to go there. (Pandora does this)
• I may not like a song or artist but I may not want to ban them completely, just reduce their presence. Pandora actually added a feature when you mark a song negative twice, it bans the song. That is’t the right option either. Maybe a sliding scale would work best: favorite, like, ehh, ban.
• The webpage/interface could be improved (it can be hard to read on the dark background)
• There is a lack of a mini player that pops out

Overall Recommendation:
There are a host of features that raise Slacker above the crowd, but you have to pay for them. If you are as addicted to internet radio as I, Slacker is a great alternative to some of the other major sites out there and is highly recommended.