The founding team of new music service Slacker, which launched this morning, includes three former music startup CEOs (Dennis Mudd, Musicmatch, acquired by Yahoo), Jim Cady (Rio) and Jonathan Sasse (iRiver). And they’re going to need these guys and their connections, because Slacker isn’t just some new music service. They have broad reaching goals that bring them face to face with iTunes/iPod and Sirius/XM, as well as startups like Last.fm, Pandora, and every one of these services.
The basic music service is very similar to Pandora (see screen shot at bottom of post). It’s a web based music player that customizes stations based on whether you like or dislike specific tracks. Like Pandora, you can’t play specific tracks on request, but you can certainly listen to a certain genre of music. Slacker is also trying to connect related songs, and in my limited testing it does a good job, although not as well as Pandora. This basic service is free and ad-supported (visual ads on screen only).
Here’s where things get interesting. Although Slacker is only launching its web based music player today, they have PC based, iTunes-like software coming that will organize the music on your computer as well as play the same radio stations as the web based version. If you pay a $7.50/month fee, all “favorited” songs that you hear on the radio stations will be saved to your computer, and the ads will be removed from the service.
And that’s not all, folks. Slacker also has hardware ambitions. They have a portable, iPod-like wifi enabled device coming, with a very large 4 inch color screen. The device will automatically sync with the Slacker PC software via wifi and will also cache songs to be played on saved radio stations. The device will range from $150 to $300 based on storage capacity.
Finally, they also have a satellite car kit in the works that will ensure that wherever you are, Slacker is with you.
Since the only service available now is the web player, there isn’t a whole lot to review. But Slacker just picked a fight with just about every major online music company I can think of. Like the Zune and (I assume) future versions of the iPod (and don’t forget Music Gremlin), the portable device is wifi enabled. Their PC based software is a direct competitor to iTunes, and the service as a whole also competes with the plethora of subscription music services available. The satellite product may also lure customers away from Sirius and XM.
So there are lots and lots of established players with loyal customers who are going to fight this thing tooth and nail. Slacker has raised $13.5 million in funding from Sevin Rosen, Austin Ventures and Mission Ventures - they will probably need a whole lot more to pull this off.
Slacker is based in San Diego.
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I don’t know about the service, but that device is gorgeous. Apple should have created it.
Wow! Holy Shit! OMG! …………..
Beat Itunes ? HA
Cant play music I want to Play ? WTF?
I have to “wait for music” to be played before I can listen to it again ? Why the F$#K would I want to do that?
Touch Screen ? NO (at least I assume no otherwise they would advertise it)
Satellite Car Kit? Yeah great add that to my Car Phone, DVD unit and Seat Warmers and I maise as well connect my car to my house and start generating nuclear power. Any idea of price? Privacy - they arent tracking my car are they?
Sounds good - but I aint changing from my 5th Gen ipod for something like this. If it works - Apple will clone it anyway.
Good luck though!
Is it just me, or is this crap totally firefox un-friendly?
worked fine for me, firefox on Mac.
I am using Firefox, no problem.
Cool I will be visiting the site promptly.
http://www.tekno-world.blogspot.com
A wide broad ranging product; company.
- I thought to be successful, you have to be narrow be targeted and fix a problem.
- Um to broad, Targeted at over targeted audience, and their is no problem.
Surprised at this - it’s going to be hard enough for these guys to go head to head with Pandora and Last.fm yet alone take on Apple/MS in the hardware market. Very brave and surprising business choice!
A lot’s happening in the music recommendation space at the moment I’ve been most impressed by MyStrands and The Filter’s choice to release mobile versions of thier recommendation software. If anything is going to beat the iPod, if anything is going to beat last.fm and pandora - it is going to be the mobile phone.
Michael - VentureBeat was reporting the hardware device has built in satellite technology, so you can listen to the radio service anywhere the satellite reaches. They mentioned they use a commercial satellite.
Couldn’t see this mentioned here, sorry if I missed it.
The player looks really nice, but I can’t help wondering why you would want to buy a separate device in order to do this. In Europe there is a very similar service that I work on from Vodafone & Sony NetServices. It streams personalised radio channels to your 3G handset - hey presto - you only need to carry one device instead of a Slacker/iPod *and* your telephone.
The site did not work for me in Firefox on XP either - crashed it 3 times before I finally gave up.
The only complete music package that I have seen other than the iTunes-iPod one. As of now I really cant get it to work on my firefox and mac. The device sure looks gorgeous but I don’t know whether this would be successful or not. One thing is for sure, Slacker aint going down without a fight. Having already announced hardware products is a pretty bold thing for a startup to do.
How long before they have a problem with the recording labels because the $7.50 will not give them adequate royalties. Especially for the songs that are downloaded onto your PC.
I know more financing will come, but for what they have already developed they should have spent their $13 million. Why isn’t Zune considered a competitor?
Let me get this straight: for $7.50/month, I can’t pick the songs I want to play? For only $2 more/month, I can…on every other subscription service in existence.
They’ll have to seriously rethink their business model if they hope to survive. A pretty, expensive gadget is meaningless if the corresponding service is unusable.
might be biting off more than they can chew, especially with so little funding currently…
It’s crap for IE7 too. I can’t even sign up for is that not even implemented just yet?
It has the same major flaw I find in Pandora. I want to pick the songs to listen to, and I must go in their pre-defined order. Very annoying. Musicmatch is still best for discovering new music based on my current choice(s).
Hmmm I have to agree with most people on here. There are a slew of similar services available and it seems weird not to have the full service up and running right now. Telling me something fabulous is coming is all very well but as we all know if we aint impressed in the first 5 seconds we’re not ever coming back. Attention spans are just too short!
To compete with iTunes and the rest its not good saying we’ll have some cool stuff later . . . “bear with us”.
Looks interesting, but having huge problems this morning with stream delivery.
I’ve gone back to Pandora, though maybe once they’re up running and stable and have these mythical hardware devices in the wild I might look again.
Meantime Pandora works just great with Slimdevices hardware already for wired listening
How are Slacker (and their business model) going to stack up against the RIAA royalty increases? If Pandora (http://blog.pandora.com/pandora/archives/2007/03/riaas_new_royal.html) and Live365 (http://www.live365.com/info/royalties.html) are threatened by this how will it impact these guys
ummm…
nice to be able to find/listen to internet radio/music that’s being streamed. but how many of these guys will really be around when/if the newly discussed per stream fees are enforced?
this has a pretty slick radio. i really dislike the design though. it’s pretty hard on the eyes if you ask me.
the problem with this thing and pandora, they just don’t pick up less popular artists. whereas last.fm does a wonderful job at this by leveraging the community. search for “Kim Jung Mi” on all services and see what happens. with 2K+ people listening on last.fm, i’m surprised pandora or slacker doesn’t pick this up. 2K+ listeners is not even close to obscure for last.fm
last.fm service is higher quality and more broad than anything i’ve seen come from pandora or slacker. seriously, why does anyone mention pandora anymore?
I’ve always thought MusicMatch had the best music recommendation features. I looked for those to be born again in Yahoo Music Engine (still waiting). Looks like the core behind MM decided to get back in the game, and what they delivered so far is exceptional to me. I’m really enjoying it, and that’s the real test. Sound quality is noticeably better than other streamers. More control than I have at Pandora. Pre-programmed content if I’m extra lazy–but you can modify that via ratings, popularity, familiarity if you want. Hopefully the full-client and premium service offer more direct access to songs and artists and some other standard features. Impressed so far. Obviously a solid portable seals the deal, but I’m already sounding like a fanboy so I’ll stop.
@buster, agreed on last.fm but you can’t access it without a pc. not to mention the streaming quality sucks for me even though I’m on broadband and I subscribe.
Crashes my browser. Firefox 2 in Linux.
Also crashes my Firefox 2.0 in Linux.
Given that others have had similar problems with Firefox on Windows XP - not a good sign for pre-release testing.
works fine w. firefox 2.0.0.2 in winxp, no waiting.
but… why bother. Slacker has to be different,
very different and have an angle that no other service has.
Imho, better than Pandora at picking songs.
I like their domain name. Great domain. The domain was first registered in ‘95; wonder if they are the original owner of the domain or did they purchase it on the domain aftermarket.
the problem i see here is not being able to select music you want to play. what’s the point in having a personal player when you have to hear what the player wants you to hear? this is just like the radio in my car, and exactly why i don’t listen to the radio! i would love to see a another player in the market with apple/ms, but it will be difficult i think. i just have not seen a better player than iTunes. i’ve tried them all. i mean ALL, and iTunes has everything i need and want, and it keeps getting better. good luck guys, you’re going to need it.
@brad
are you referring to the mobile device slacker has planned when you say last.fm can only be accessed on a pc?
good point. i am however weary of these frankendevices though. its a great idea, merge your personal music player with a connected music recommendation service, but right now the infrastructure is just not mature enough to support it i think (iphone isn’t even going to support direct downloads, right?, it seems like even apple’s connectivity goals for the iphone aren’t this lofty). who knows, i hope slacker can prove me wrong with an intelligent device.
i’m happy now to have last.fm sync with whatever i played on my ipod throughout the day and then from my pc grab recs to download.
great point buster. sounds great, but what will be delivered and will it be seamless. sounds like slacker also plans to license so that mobile phones can access the streams (in addition to their own player). mystrands just launched something along those lines.
Irk, I suspect the forth-coming client and premium service will give you more control over things. and this isn’t like radio or even satellite radio, because you vote on songs and that feedback directs the station (a la pandora or launchcast).
i thought is was very interesting to hear that
Ihave a portable and just added 13 stations which have all been rereshed, but i can not get any to play after fiddling with the right side two buttons for an hour! What I am doing wrong if anything?
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