Today I listened to Slacker Radio. The iPhone app is odd, mimicking Android 4 use of a "menu" on the top-right, which isn't very convenient and feels out of place on the iPhone. Also, worryingly there's no way to prevent it from using 3G data, which makes the app quite risky to use. No sleep timer too. And thrice during the day the streaming couldn't move to the next song, and I had to open the app and manually go to the next song (it happened even as I'm writing this).
For the music stations themselves, they are quite good, with an excellent selection. Unlike a MP3 radio station you can mark which tracks you prefer or dislike to customize it. Oddly, there are no classical music stations, and talk and sport radio stations are for paying users only. Track skip seem to be limited to 6 per hour. It keeps a list of previously played tracks, but you can get the track info only for the current track. Audio ads are reasonable, but visual ones are intrusive.
As for the paid service, the cheap "plus" one for offline radio, talk radio stations and removal of adds seems too expensive at $4 a month. The "premium" brings it closer to Rdio, but glancing at the available selection for on-demand playing, it seems to be only half of what's available for the radio stations, and far less selection than Rdio for the same price, so I wouldn't recommend it.
So, I can only a give lukewarm recommendation for Slacker. Too buggy, clumsy, expensive and dangerous for accidental 3G usage. The radio stations are pretty good, but not enough to make it worth the hassle.
Published on August 14, 2012 at 20:20 EDT
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