Should you be a Slacker?
On Sunday, I wrote in my Spending Smart column about whether satellite radio is a good value, especially for those who are cash-strapped nowadays. So far, I’ve gotten less hate e-mail from satellite-radio fans than I anticipated. However, I did get a note from a public-relations representative for Slacker.com.
In the column, I talked about how a digital music player is a good substitute for a lot that satellite radio (Sirius XM) offers. Slacker.com is a part-software/part-hardware solution. While the concept is really cool and received rave reviews, its debut device did not. See the Cnet.com review here, for one.
Slacker.com is an online radio service, similar to Pandora.com, which I recommended in the column. You can listen to different genres of music and then customize your radio stations over time by voting on songs, either approving them or disapproving them. But Slacker also has an iPod-like hardware device, a suped-up mp3 player that wirelessly – when it’s in range of a wireless Internet signal – updates your personalized radio stations and stores them on the device so you no longer need to have Internet access. You could hook the device to your car radio station through a direct wire or with an FM transmitter, thereby taking your personalized radio stations with you.
Unfortunately, the device itself apparently doesn’t fully live up to the great concept, according to reviews. Besides being relatively expensive, it apparently has poor battery life, some unintuitive controls and occasionally jumpy playback. However, it received positive reviews too, like this one. And next-generation devices from Slacker might be improved, as they often are with electronics. Listening to music at your computer from Slacker.com works well, and it’s free.
I don’t have a Slacker device and I’m probably not qualified to review one, which is why I defer to others for that.
I should mention that with the new ability of iPhones and Ipod Touches to download programs, Pandora.com is among the applications. You can listen to your customized radio stations when you’re within range of wireless Internet services (wi-fi), or in the case of the iPhone, a wireless data connection. That still gives Slacker the advantage of not needing a wireless connection at all to play songs.
Anyway, the point is, if you can’t stand broadcast radio, there are many options today for music in the car and at home. Satellite radio is just one of them.
