Newest version of Slacker (finally) brings cached music to the iPhone

by Scott Carmichael on

This afternoon, Apple gave approval to the newest version of the Slacker personal radio app for the iPhone. We’ve been following Slacker for some time now, and (personally) I find them to offer one of the best streaming music services on the market. Their stations offer a fantastic lineup of tunes, and their mobile applications are available for most platforms.

As an Android user, I’ve had the luxury of cached stations for some time now, but iPhone users can finally join the fun, and download cached stations to their device. With this new feature, the app can store a decent amount of music directly to your phone, without the need for connectivity.

This is of course perfect if you are traveling, and don’t want to pay through the nose for international data. The new version is also perfectly timed for the upcoming changes to AT&T data plans.

You’ll find the newest version of Slacker in the App Store. To enjoy the cached stations feature, you’ll need to upgrade to Slacker Plus, which starts at just $3.99/month.

Get yourself in the holiday spirit with Slacker iPhone Holiday Radio

by Scott Carmichael on

In need of some cheering up this holiday season? Slacker just released a free Christmas version of their popular iPhone/iPod Touch streaming music app.

The Holiday version includes 11 festive channels, including “Dysfunctional Holiday” and several channels to cater for your personal taste in music.

As with the regular Slacker player, this one is free of charge. When you upgrade to Slacker Plus, you remove the ads from inside the app, and add the ability to skip more than 6 times per hour.

Still, even without the plus upgrade, this app is a fun and free way to get your daily fix of Christmas music. Thankfully the app also allows you to “ban” certain songs, which is exactly what I’ll do when “Last Christmas” pops up in my playlist.

You’ll find Slacker iPhone Holiday Radio in the App Store under “Slacker Holiday”, or by clicking this link (iTunes URL)

Tweet your Slacker music discovery experiences

by Scott Carmichael on

Regular readers will no doubt know that Slacker is one of my personal favorites in the busy world of online music services.

Since I first wrote about Slacker, they have added an iPhone and Blackberry player to their lineup.

Starting tonight, Slacker users will be able to share their music experience by sending a variety of stuff to Twitter. The list of Tweetable (is that even a word?) options is:

  • Station changes/plays
  • Favorite Song
  • Banned Song
  • Banned Artist

So, next time you come across a song you really love (or hate), Slacker will share it with all your devoted Twitter followers. There are some other Twitter-sharing music services out there, but the Slacker integration sounds really easy to use.

If you’d like to set up your Slacker/Twitter integration, head on over to the Slacker Community page (live tonight at 9pm EST). In the meantime, why not head on over to Twitter and follow us!

Slacker personal radio service comes to the Blackberry

by Scott Carmichael on

Remember Slacker? Their personal radio service was one of the winners in the Gadling “best of 2008” lineup of travel technology products.

Until now, the only way to take Slacker with you on the road, was through one of their portable radio players. That just changed with the release of Slacker for the Blackberry.

Users of a fairly recent Blackberry device can download the free Slacker application directly to their device by pointing their mobile browser to Slacker.com.

The application offers all the same features you’ll find on the other Slacker players, plus you’ll be able to store several hours of tunes on a memory card (when installed).

With music cached on your memory card, you’ll be able to keep listening to music even when you are outside your network coverage area, or away from your WiFi network.

Slacker also announced that they’ll have an iPhone version of their player ready soon!

Daily deal – 8GB Slacker Wi-Fi Internet radio player for $70

by Scott Carmichael on

My daily deal for today is for the 8GB Slacker G1 Wi-Fi Internet Radio Player (isn’t that a mouthful!). This Wi-Fi enabled MP3/Internet Radio player connects to the Slacker music service, and refreshes your player with a new batch of music any time you want. We’ve taken a closer look at the newest generation Slacker player, and were so impressed that it became one of our top 25 travel products of the year.

This first generation player has all the same features of the Slacker G2 we reviewed, but comes in a slightly larger unit. You’ll still get access to Slacker.com, and you can still load your own music on the device.

The player is on sale at Woot.com, which means it could be out of stock at any moment, so if you are interested in a Wi-Fi enabled 8GB music player, don’t wait too long! Shipping is just $5.