Mfarhanonline Social Media News: At long last, music streaming service Slacker Radio is out with a premium, on-demand service. That puts Slacker in direct competition with MOG, Rdio, Rhapsody and Spotify. Slacker Radio has been teasing an on-demand offering for a while, and Tuesday users finally have access to more than 8 million songs at $9.99 per month. The app, available on iPad, iPhone, iPod touch iTunes link, Android and BlackBerry , will now let users search for specific songs and albums and add them to playlists (either via mobile or on the web). Users can also cache music and playlists for offline listening. So what makes Slacker different from all those other on-demand offerings? Says Slacker CEO Jim Cady: a focus on radio stations. “Radio is still the best discovery tool for the average consumer,” he says. Until today, Slacker’s biggest competition was Pandora. Both focused on creating stations around specific artists and songs, letting users discover new music in a more passive manner. Slacker had a leg up, in our opinion, since it let users cache music for offline listening (if they purchased the $3.99 per month Slacker Radio Plus option, that is). Looking at the Slacker homescreen, you can see that the app is much more focused on radio than search. Slacker’s 153 curated stations are near the top of the screen, followed by the option to create a playlist by typing in an artist. Cady says that app was designed so that users could drill down to find music, rather than having to search. For example, you could click on Slacker’s “Indie Station,” decide that you like Twin Shadow’s “At My Heels,” click on the song, access artist info, and find more albums to listen to on-demand and to cache. Alternately, if you like Twin Shadow, you could also just search for the artist and nab the albums, or c! heck out what stations the band is featured on and find similar artists from there. Cady says that the whole UI was designed so that the user would hypothetically never have to bring up the keyboard. Rival music subscription apps put a much stronger emphasis on on-demand than they do on discovery. All feature radio, but few to the extent that Slacker does. The app still has a few glitches. It crashed a few times during our tests and had a couple of issues playing songs we cached for offline listening — but once the kinks are worked out, we can see this kind of service appealing to lean-back users who are not wholly satisfied with always being a passive listener. However, the app could be disappointing to hardcore music fans. Slacker has about 8 million songs, while both MOG and Rhapsody have 11 million. Also, the lag time around releases seems a little longer on Slacker. For example, The Antlers’ new album, Burst Apart , came out May 10 and it’s still not available for on-demand on Slacker. You can listen to tracks via radio, but they’re grayed out when it comes to playlisting. Rdio and Rhapsody, though, already have the album available in full. What do you think of Slacker’s offering? Will you make the switch if you already use another on-demand service? Photo courtesy of Flickr, João Pedro, uai! More About: android , blackberry , ipad , iphone , Mobile 2.0 , music , music subscription , Slacker-Radio For more Media coverage: Follow Mfarhanonline Media on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Media channel Download our free apps for Android , Mac , iPhone and iPad Social Media reviews series maintain by Mayya
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