Entered CNET Catalog: 03/21/2007
SKU: CNETSlackerWebPlayer
Manufacturer: Slacker, Inc.
CNET editors' review
- Editors' Choice: No
- Reviewed on: 03/21/2007
Photo gallery:
Slacker Web Player
So what exactly is the Slacker Web Player? Put simply, it's a free Internet radio streaming service that allows you to create customized stations. But what distinguishes it from the plethora of other options out there (Pandora, Last.fm, and so on) is the fact that, down the road, it will be offered in a portable form via the Slacker Portable Player (and others eventually). That's right: a completely free music service that you can take to go.
Well, not completely free. In order to keep the experience gratis to the user, the Slacker Web Player will be ad-driven and will feature certain limitations. You'll be able to skip only six tracks per hour (the same goes for banning songs: you get six per hour). To do away with the ads and limitations, you can opt for Slacker's premium service, which is set to cost a very palatable $7.50 per month--half that of competitors, for those who are keeping score.
As for usability, even the most technically inept should be able to navigate the Slacker Web Player with ease. As the name suggests, the player is Web-hosted, and you can access it at www.slacker.com, where the majority of that page is dominated by a nicely shaded jukebox. The top section is a playback bar with play/pause and track-skip buttons, a volume slider, and Heart and Ban selectors, as well as various information about what's playing: album art, song and artist name, time elapsed and remaining indicators, station name, and the upcoming artist. Most of that is self-explanatory, but the Heart and Ban selectors warrant some illumination. These are both used to help personalize your stations. If you "heart" something, you make it a favorite, and it will (generally) come up more often. If you ban a track, it will never play on that station again.
In the left column below the playback bar, Slacker offers three buttons for switching between views. Now Playing shows you large album art of the current track, as well as the station name and what's played so far. If you click the album art, you can toggle between views: extra large album art, an artist bio, and an album review (if available). It seems like a minor feature, but the interactive experience is a nice touch. The next button down, Stations, shows a list of preprogrammed stations--mostly genre-based--as well as any custom stations you've created (check back soon for more info on custom stations). The Preset button takes you to a list of presets and offers simple instructions on how to save them.
Now for the in-between area: That little strip between the main view window and the playback bar. The two things of note here are the artist search box and the options dropdown. The former is self-explanatory: type in an artist you like to find their station on Slacker. Two of the major labels (Universal and Sony/BMG) and more than 100 indies are represented in the catalog, so you probably won't find everything you like at this time, but it's certainly a decent selection. The options dropdown offers various view modes (as mentioned earlier), access to account settings, and a selection called "stations", which is the most important for listening purposes, as it lets you further customize your stations. Go to Edit Station and you'll see a screen that shows you your banned and favorite songs and also an area that lets you fine-tune the station. You can adjust the popularity and time period of songs played, as well as select how often you want your favorites interspersed.
Of course, none of this does much good if the station programming is shoddy. Luckily, Slacker has real, live DJs selecting the songs, so the stations have been great to listen to so far. While I tended to like most of the tracks, I found myself questioning some of the artist stations. Rick James on a Lily Allen station? That seemed out of place to me. As did Eminem on the Ludacris station, if only slightly. They're both party rap, but it seems a Ludacris station should be more heavily weighted toward the Dirty South. Frankly, though, I'm taking the picky standpoint: I still liked the stations overall, and I'd rather hear variety over genre inclusion anyway. I think once Slacker gets some more labels, the programming will improve even more. Another minor complaint I have is that certain premade stations seem to disappear--there was a SXSW 2007 one that's no longer available, and that seems like a waste to me. Oh, and I wish there were more sub-genre stations so you could really dig down into preferences, but that is probably something that will improve over time.
As for the streaming performance, I experienced mixed results over a week of testing. Yesterday, for example, was flawless, with no pauses for buffering between tracks. Today, however, the stations refuse to play straight through: I actually have to skip to each next track, which is an immeasurable pain. But as Slacker is still in beta--and did I mention free?--we'll have to cut it some slack here. Audio is streamed at a variable bit rate in AACPlus v2, which sounds great to these ears, and significantly better than Yahoo's free radio streaming.
User opinions
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User Rating: 
10/10
Can Internet Radio Get Any Better Than This?
Pros: Awesome variety of songs; incredibly easy to use
Cons: Barely anything
If there was one thing I would change about it, it would be to make the Heart system a little more specific. You have the option to click either a Heart, meaning you love the song, or a Ban symbol, meaning you never want to hear it again, and there's no middle ground. If they changed it to a 4 Heart system, maybe, it might bring in a whole new level of accuracy.
But that's just an almost-meaningless idea on my part. Realistically, I can't think of anything important to improve the way it exists now.
User Rating: 
3/10
Great potential but limited library & tedious interface
Pros: Slacker is easy to train as it offers up suggestions to you.
Cons: Too many requested artists are not yet in the database, and the training mode should be separated from the playback mode to minimize crashes.
User Rating: 
9/10
The Best Radio Service Ever
Pros: Endless selection, free, learns what I like, free
Cons: want more portable options
I create stations all the time now and share them with my friends. They are all hooked now too.
User Rating: 9/10
Effortless Custom High Quality Radio. Period.
Pros: High Quality Formats, Personalization, Solid Performance, Excellent Customer Service
Cons: A few albums had low resolution covers.
User Rating: 10/10
Perfect Desktop Music Player
Pros: Music is free and you choose what u want
Cons: None that i can think of
User Rating: 10/10
really, really nice
Pros: I can find any band, it plays similar music, i get to customize music i hear
Cons: I cant buy the portable, it should be out now.
Final opinion: desktop app is free, better than lots of web radio that I've seen people pay for, the app is pleasant to look at, and works very well, I recommend getting it ASAP (http://www.slacker.com/company/products.html)
I recommended it to all my friends already, and would even recommend it to really old ladies (its that easy to use)...'nuff said
User Rating: 9/10
Experience has been great so far
Pros: Stations easy to set up. Presets are a nice touch and easy to switch between depending on your mood
Cons: Stations do require some fine tuning
User Rating: 
8/10
Classic Rock station is pretty amazing
Pros: Free; good programming; nice customization features; eventually portable
Cons: Some performance issues still need to be worked out; certain categories aren't as flushed out as you would hope
User Rating: 
7/10
Slacker to Pandora comparison
Pros: music selection
Cons: no written play lists, limited portabilty, buggy
On the downside the current Slacker interface crashes on me consistantly after an hour or two. This doesn't happen with Pandora. I am not going to buy the Slacker player just to listen to Slacker - I allready have another player I intend to keep using and I am not going to carry two around. They need to make the Slacker content available with written playlists for other players like you can do with Pandora using the Pyrrah or Replay Radio utilities.
User Rating: 8/10
Great service that has taken the place of my iPod at work. No more switching speakers back and forth
Pros: Good music, all day long. Easy to use. Sleek interface.
Cons: Froze a few times, no ability to "heart" or "ban" bands
The great thing about Slacker is that it really does give you what you want. Unlike Siruis and terrestial radio, if you are looking for a specific band, there's a good chance you will hear them more than once an hour (depending on the record label). I typed in Nirvana, got a Nirvana track right off the bat, another a few songs later, and another 10 songs later, etc... and it isn't always a hit single (although they are in there). Sometimes it's a lesser known album cut, which is cool for fans. Personally, as much as I love Nirvana, I'm totally tired of hearing "All Apologies", thanks to radio.
There are only a few downsides I can see currently:
1) A little buggy: It didn't happen a lot, but sometimes Slacker would freeze in between tracks. Easy enough fix, as you can just hit "Ok" then the forward button. Didn't happen enough to make me stop using it.
2)Overall selection. I typed in Hoobastank, and heard Supergrass over and over. Not that big of a deal, but then again, I don't like Supergrass. Even if I ban songs, the band still pops up. It would be amazing if I could "ban" an entire band, thus removing its whole catalog from my customized station. Also, I'm sure the problem will be remedied when more labels sign on, as the "DJ"s will have a bigger catalog to choose from.
Overall I really like this service and will continue to use it. Will I pay for it? Probs not. I already pay for Sirius, and I use Amie.St and Yourmusic.com to stock my already paid for 80G iPod. Will I continue to use it at work and maybe use it to play at parties or get togethers. Definitly. It's worth a few ads as far as I'm concerned. I am very curious to see where it goes from here.
User Rating: 9/10
Awesome music selections!
Pros: Great variety of artists and music
Cons: Doesn't compare to satellite radio
