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The free beta of the Web-based Slacker service--which comes from a startup founded by veterans of MusicMatch, Rio, and iRiver--is more traditional than Last.fm and Pandora, which focus on attempting to find new music you'll like based on your favorite artists. Slacker has lots of genre-based stations, from Today's Hits to R&B to Chill to Traditional Mexican. You can skip past songs you don't like (up to six times per hour for any station), mark songs as favorites (so you hear them more often), ban them (so you don't here them), or add artists to stations you wouldn't otherwise hear them on.
You can also create artist stations, which, like all such stations on the Net, play music by the performer in question as well as ones who Slacker deems to be related in style. It seemed to do a pretty good job in my experiments, and as with genre stations, you can tweak artist ones to emphasize the stuff you like. Everything's based on 2,000,000 tracks licensed by the Slacker folks, so there should be plenty of variety. And by searching for your faves and adding them to custom stations, you can mix artists and genres with eclectic abandon and fine-tune aspects like whether you hear mostly hits or more obscure stuff.
The Slacker interface is both straightforward and fun, with easy controls for tasks like setting presets. Here it is:
The beta does have one quirk, and I'm not sure if it's a bug or a feature: When I listen to to a station (in Firefox 2.0 on a Mac) and click off to another browser tab, another song doesn't start when the current one ends until I click back to the Slacker tab...which makes it harder to use Slacker for background music while I'm up to something else on my machine. I don't have that issue with Last.fm or Pandora.
Slacker's worth checking out just as it is, but most of the things that make it interesting aren't ready yet. On the drawing boards are a fee-based version ($7.50 a month) that won't have ads and which will let you skip ahead as often as you like, and a downloadable client that'll let you both listen to Slacker stations and manage your own music library.
And around June or July, the company plans to release flash-based handheld players, starting at $150, that let you take Slacker stations (and your own music) with you. They'll use Wi-Fi to trickle new music onto the device so you don't run out of tunes. And with a $150 car kit, they'll even be able use a satellite connection to grab music. (It's not live satellite radio a la XM or Sirius--and Slacker is just renting bandwidth rather than launching its own pricey satellites into orbit--but it's a neat idea, and the basic version of the service, with ads, will remain free.)
Why the name Slacker? The company says its mission is to get you music you'll enjoy, with as little work on your part as possible. I like what I've seen (and heard!) so far--would I sound like a total spoilsport if I said I wished I could listen to it on my iPod?
I tried to register for Slacker (using Firefox) but Firefox kept closing unexpectedly. After 4 tries, I said the heck with it. I use Live 365 and Pandora with no problems.
All this discussion about moving forward to Vista has motivated me to jump into the fray.
About a month ago, my XP desktop failed in a cloud of blue choking smoke. I built that desktop in 2001, from scratch, by myself, with components which I had researched. I used the latest motherboard and best processor I could find, plus I had the top of the line sound card, video card, network card, power supply, disk drives, all the best, and price was not a factor. It was a robust little machine, and it served me well. I think the ultimate failure was due to a series of power outages from bad storms. I lost my USB hub around that time, also.
I was never that thrilled with XP, but it grew on me, and although most users say it is stable, the way I hammer on my system, I never thought XP was synonymous with stability. I was also a little peeved at Microsoft for releasing XP and letting the user community debug it.
XP was notably better with SP-2, but I lived the nightmare of driver upgrades. Let's face it, Micorsoft is no cake walk.
Since I am a techie, I cannot be without a usable system. I fired up a dusty little Toshiba laptop, running Windows 2000, and only 1/2 gig of memory (my desktop had 3 gigs.)
After fine-tuning the laptop to improve the boot time and performance, and upgrading all the firewalls and virus protectors, etc., I am amazed by its performance. The only time I've had to restart the system is for upgrades. The only time it's crashed on me in the past month, is when I got up to feed my cats, and I threw the headset on the table. The headset tapped the reset button on the side of the laptop causing a reboot. I now keep the sliding door to the reset button closed.
I went backwards and I am loving it. The sound card on the laptop isn't as robust, but overall, even with a lot of apps opened, I am amazed at its performance.
Plus it's so quiet (without the roar of the desktop's 5 fans.)
I was actually going to build another desktop with the latest and greatest and install Vista. But the salesmen at the electronics store told me to wait ... they are having a lot of problems with Vista.
After reading the user comments here, that cemented my conviction to sit and wait. But for how long? And how long will it be before Microsoft phases out XP and crams Vista down our throats? If I spent the money now on building a brand new system, how long do I have before yet another revamping?
I think I am done with PCs. The Windows 2000 laptop can serve all my current Microsoft needs. The uncertainty of what is going to happen with the XP/Vista debate puts me in a quandary. I do need to do upgrade now, but I'm on the fence. Under the given circumstances, I am seriously considering a nice Apple notebook as a viable alternative.
All my PC-to-Apple converted friends talk about the Apple experience with the glassy-eyed reverence of a religious rebirth. After being to hell and back with Microsoft, it just might be the right time the time to join them.
Sorry I posted such a long series of posts - but I wanted to convey my MS experiences.
Valerie
Oh no! I had a blonde moment - I posted to the WRONG forum!
So sorry
kaykatz: Install User agent switcher for firefox and switch to the IE6 agent ID; and then you shall receive.
I loved it upon hitting the web page and going into the music genre I like. It just started playing music without me having to do anything else. That is saying a lot when you're on a Linux box.
Now, yes, this is the definition of slacker. Just get to the page and JAM.
Thanks for the low-down!!!