Internet Radio is big and Slacker has features that Trump Pandora

Slacker is a internet radio station similar to Pandora or Last.fm based out of Rancho Bernardo in north San Diego County. The difference? Slacker has about 3 million songs in their database vs. the mere 700,000 on Pandora. There is an article in today’s issue or USA Today about the growing site...

Pandora is a cool site and I know a lot of people love to turn it on at work or punch in an artist and let it ride during dinner parties, but I have been drawn to Last.fm for scrobbling and itunes library coordination. USA Today reported today about this smaller company from San Diego called Slacker, which has a lot in common with both Pandora and Last.fm, but boasts a huge library and is available for free on BlackBerry. I’m listening to Devendra Banhart radio on Slacker right now and they have Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon, which is very diverse and could stand on its own, but they also have Nino Rojo and probably more. The similar artists seem just as on point as Pandora’s, including Elliott Smith, Iron and Wine, Deer Tick, and Cat Power, yet Tim Westergen, founder of Pandora, claims the man hours involved in matching artists put a cap on his library at 700,000. Well Boo friggin’ hoo. Slacker seems worth checking out so I downloaded it for my BlackBerry... Other features include user suggestions of songs or artists for stations and the ability to save stations to your SD card for listening on airplanes or areas with no service in case you have T-Mobile. At this point I still sing praises for Last.fm and for switching it up on these services from time to time, but we will see if Slacker has take-over power. The USA Today article wont tell you that they have commercials every ten songs or so, but adverts make the money honey. If you want to pay a little they can make that go away. I’ll just wait my thirty seconds and enjoy my fee stream...