Slacker Radio on the iPhone: A Review

I had heard of Slacker Radio, but always thought it had a physical device that you needed to purchase in order to listen to the music. It turns out that’s not entirely true. You can actually listen online in your web browser (similiar to Pandora) for free all you want. They also have an excellent iPhone app that gives you a lot of the same functionality as their hardware device, but for free. I’ve been using the iPhone app on and off the past month, so I’m going to be basing my review on that.

First off, I have a regular iPhone. It doesn’t do the faster 3G data transfers (just EDGE.) I have tried other radio applications on my iPhone and found that they either sounded terrible, or skipped/stuttered all of the time (due to the aforementioned EDGE vs. 3G speeds.) Slacker works differently than other streaming radios in that it actually sends you the entire song as fast as it can. This means the odds of it stuttering are pretty slim to none, even on the slower EDGE network. Once a week I drive to Riverside (easily 2 hours each way) and I have only experienced a few “drop outs” of service in that time.

Slacker is different from Pandora in that it has pre-programmed “Stations” of music, similiar to picking a genre on your iPod or type of radio station in your car. The selection is pretty good, too. I sometimes listen to “Electronic Hits” and am surprised at some of the old/rare gems that it chooses to play.

Slacker is also different in that it allows you to skip songs and also ban songs/artists that you no longer want to hear on that channel. If you don’t pay for the service, you are allowed 6 song skips each channel each hour. If you pay their modest subscription fee, you’re free to skip as many songs as you want. No limits. And you can request to hear any artist or song instantly as much as you want.

I recently cancelled my XM radio subscription, so Slacker has basically replaced it. I really think this is the future of in-car/portable radio, due to more and more cell phones being internet-capable. I was even able to use it in the “middle of nowhere” during a vacation getaway up in Julian a few weeks back. I hooked my iPhone up to a set of speakers and put on the Slacker “80s, 90s, & Todays Hits” station as background music to just hanging out with friends. Worked great.

I really recommend this application, especially if you’ve got an iPhone and are tired of hearing the same ol’ stuff in your car. Check it out and let me know what you thought in the comments below.