Slacker.com Review

I listen to music all day long at work. Although I have my old standbys, I most often listen to new music that is currently popular. I admit it, as far as music goes, I totally follow the crowd. I tend to trust other people to pick out good music for me.

As such, I have always used the two big personalized streaming music stations, Last.fm and Pandora. Both have their pros and cons. Last.fm has always seemed to buffer and delay more than my liking. Pandora has performed great, but the interface is just a little bit clunky. When Slacker was introduced, it immediately filled the gap. Not only is the sound quality the absolute best of any streaming service out there, but it has virtually no buffering issues. And the very trendy, shiny black interface makes everything just look professional.

While Last.fm and Pandora find new songs using a scientific process, Slacker is a little old school. It simply has preset stations (everything from Today's Hits to Classic Rock, from Country to Jazz, from Spiritual to Hip Hop) with four main buttons: "Pause", "Next Track", "Ban Track", and "Favorite Track". "Pause" is self-explanatory. "Next Track" can be clicked up to six times per hour per station. "Ban Track" will never play the current song in that station again. "Favorite Track" will play the current song more often on future visits. I find that even with its simplicity, I constantly find new and interesting music.

There are several views including "Large Album Art" (my favorite), "Album and Artist Info", and "Album Review". A list of "Related Artists" is also usually available. All in all, this little web interface as so many different views, it feels like a real desktop application.

Given all the options with the sound quality of the music, I exclusively listen to Slacker when doing the whole online streaming music thing.