Slacker Radio (2013)

Slacker Radio has changed in a very significant way. Don't worry, the streaming music service?still offers compelling mix of customizable, curated channels, playlists, news and sports talk, and on-demand streaming. The change is to the site itself. Slacker has undergone a redesign that gives it a fresh look, simplified navigation, and a new "Music Guide" section which offers music industry-related news and videos. Long-time Slacker listeners may be left bewildered as they try to wrap their heads around the new layout, but newcomers?and those willing to explore?will find a lot to like.

A New Design, A Few Problems
The revamped Slacker ditches the slick, black design that's been the service's face since its 2007 debut for a mostly white page that's interspersed with a soft blue. Although Slacker now looks like it could be "baby's first streaming music service," there are benefits to the new design. If, like me, you spend the majority of your day staring into the white void that is Microsoft Word, glancing over to a white Slacker is easier on the eye than the black one.

The tabbed area that contained the "Home," "Now Playing," "Create Your Own," and "Devices" sections are no more. Slacker has a new panel-driven interface that features large, square icons that make identifying items far simpler. The upper-most section that houses album art, song title, and playback controls crib elements from the Slacker iPad app's original design. The area is larger and easier to read, but it has a few issues. The volume control is positioned a bit too close to the "Up Next" preview square that lets you take a peek at an upcoming track. As such, I'd sometimes preview instead of adjusting the volume.

The slider itself is problematic at times.. I actually had trouble raising and lowering the volume without accidentally muting the audio when using Slacker in the Chrome web browser (it worked fine in IE and Firefox). It proved so frustrating that I left the player volume at maximum and used my PC's audio control to tweak the sound level. On the upside, I like that you can view artist info or lyrics by clicking the artist name or song title, respectively, but that requires some exploration to find. Unlike Slacker's previous design, the new build lacks an indentifying icon.

Customization and Discovery
Slacker Radio has three main areas: "Slacker Stations," "Music Guide," and "My Music." Visiting/logging into Slacker takes you to Music Guide by default?don't worry, you can still play tunes there. Music Guide is a new information hub that fills you in on the latest music happenings and points you toward cool content. For example, Fall Out Boy?at the time of this writing?had just released a new single after a three-year hiatus. Music Guide prominently featured the band by providing a blog entry-like summary of the news and linking to the band's artist page where a bio, popular songs, albums, and featured videos live. It's a convenient way to discover music beyond the basic related songs you'll hear within your music stream. Fall Out Boy is touring, FYI.

Slacker Stations houses the services many news, talk, comedy, and music channels and displays them as large panels with eye-catching art design. There are over 40 top-level (including Alternative, Blues, Chill, Comedy) and multiple sub-genres within each. You can, of course, key in an artist name or song title into the search engine. Typing "Hendrix" and then clicking the search icon returned numerous results, but I liked that I could filter by artists, album, song, or station by clicking a tab to the right of the results.

My Music is where you'll find your playlists, custom stations, and recently played stations. The playlists and custom stations areas have large, hard to miss icons that let you build fresh playlists and custom stations. A diagram displays how you go about build either when you click the respective icons.

I fine-tuned my "The Wind Cries Mary" channel by clicking the "Fine Tune" icon, which is now located in the same area as the playback controls (the old Slacker design buried it in the settings menu). New fine tune options include a keyword stream that displays an artist's most popular songs and their relative number of songs based on the popularity and size of the keyword (color represents popularity and size represents number). Like the SiriusXM MySXM?beta I recently tested, Slacker Radio now has sliders that you can use to tweak playback metrics in the related artists, favorite songs, popular songs, and new/older song categories. Unlike SiriusXM MySXM, on the new slacker, the sliders remained the same from station to station. Still, the new customization options open the door to more tightly crafted custom stations.

As always, clicking the "Ban" icon prevents a song/artist from appearing. Clicking the heart-shaped "Favorite" icon, however, gave a song extra weight, causing Slacker to play it more frequently. You can also turn on/off Slackers DJ, ABC News, and ESPN updates.

Subscription Plans
Slacker offers three listening plans for music fans. With Slacker's free, basic plan you can skip a maximum of six songs per hour and must endure audio advertisements. Subscribing to the $3.99 per month Slacker Plus lets you remove advertising, and skip an unlimited number of songs. The $9.99 Slacker Premium (which we used for this review) lets you cache stations, create stations based on a specific artist, and play songs and albums on-demand. The on-demand playback is easily the coolest feature, as you no longer have to wait for Slacker to serve up tracks; I simply keyed a song title into the search box and listened to my favorite tunes. Some songs, however, aren't available via on-demand due to licensing reasons.

Slacker Plus and Premium are more expensive than Pandora's $36 annual subscription, but its free, basic service gives you unlimited free streaming (Pandora will charge 99 cents for the remainder of the month once you pass 40 hours of listening). You can play an entire individual album?in sequence?from beginning to end, or rifle through all of an artist's tracks that are in the library.

Slacker's latest additions are excellent: ESPN, and ABC Radio's Men's Life and Women's Life channels. ESPN Radio streams live audio to listeners in select cities (Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York) that include not only the brand's staple shows (like Mike & Mike in the Morning), but sporting events as well (such as Wimbledon 2012). The Men's Life and Women's Life channels feature content from the likes of Car & Driver, Complex Magazine, and GQ. Here you'll find tips for night driving, easing a hangover, fashion advice, and more. The additions, when combined with ABC News and the four comedy channels, push Slacker into a realm beyond just streaming music; Slacker has become a streaming audio juggernaut that appeals to radio lovers of all types. Clicking the share button lets you share either a song or album to Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr, or email.

Music Selection, Sound Quality, and Mobile Apps
Slacker streamed crisp, hiccup-free audio (at 128 Kbps) over my home and office network connections. Unless you're an audiophile, Slacker's sound quality will satisfy even when the audio is pumped through computer speakers. A Razer Star Wars The Old Republic headset revealed Slacker's excellent audio quality; bass lines were full and bouncy, and there was a good separation of high and low sounds.

Slacker also offers a wide selection of portable options. There are free apps available for the Android, BlackBerry, and iOS devices and, yes, they too receive the redesign. If you subscribe to a paid account, you can cache stations for offline playback.

Tune Into Slacker Radio
Slacker's revamped Web design, quality streaming audio, on-demand access, live radio, and deep customization options make it the Editors' Choice pick among premium streaming audio services (despite the volume slider issues). Songza?remains our Editors' Choice among free services, thanks to its excellent music-discovery features, but if you love radio and don't mind opening your wallet for great music, Slacker is our Editors' Choice for premium streaming music services.

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