Scan to download.
During CES we met up with the Slacker Radio guys and got an early look at the newest version of their Android app. I walked away impressed and made Slacker Radio my first choice for streaming music on my Nexus One. The application is free for anyone to download, but users can also sign up for a Radio Plus account with premium features.
The benefits of Radio Plus include:
- No ads: Upgrade and you’ll never have to hear an audio ad or see a banner ad again! You’ll enjoy unlimited and uninterrupted listening with Slacker Radio Plus.
- Unlimited skips: With Slacker Radio Plus you can skip as many songs as you want. Basic Radio listeners are limited to 6 song skips per hour, per station.
- Complete song lyrics: Want to sing along? Slacker Radio Plus subscribers get complete lyrics to all available songs. You can read the lyrics as you listen to your favorites.
- Unlimited song requests: Create perfect custom stations by requesting an unlimited number of your favorite songs. Simply search for any artist and pick the songs you like to add to your station.
Slacker Radio has generously offered us 10 Radio Plus subscriptions and we are giving them away to our readers who try out the app.
Contest Rules
- Download Slacker Radio from the Android Market (scan the QR code above).
- Listen for free to over 100 expert-programmed radio stations from every genre or create your own custom stations.
- Leave a comment to describe your favorite part of the app, your biggest gripe, or request a new feature.
Prizes
This could be yours.
We will select 10 random winners from the users who leave comments. When leaving a comment please leave the same email address you used to sign up with Slacker Radio. The winners will be announced this Friday, January 29, 2010.
- 7x 3-month Radio Plus subscriptions
- 3x 1-year Radio Plus subscriptions
Winners
Thank you everyone for your comments and feedback. We hope you enjoyed trying out Slacker Radio for Android. The ten winners selected randomly from the comments are listed below. Look for subscription codes to be sent via email this week.
- Toney
- necrozen
- Jase
- Scott Carrol
- MidMoMan
- ENkOde
- Alan Holzman
- Erik
- Miller
- BookCase
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Taylor Wimberly
Taylor is the founder of Android and Me. He loves playing with all kinds of gadgets, but most importantly cell phones. His other hobbies include cooking (BBQ hero!), politics, football, and watching every MMA event possible.
161 Comments
My favorite part of the app is being able to cache the stations, useful for when I am in a place with little or no signal.
Slacker is by far my favorite app on my Droid! It’s awesome!
My favorite part of the app is the variety of stations.
My favorite part of it is that it supports my Nexus One!! ^_^ I have a basket of apps that cannot run on my nexus. Now, here comes this little angel hat brings me the joy of superphone
My biggest gripe with Slacker Radio is the UI. It’s too clumsy for my liking. I mean, the application itself is great, but I wish the UI were customizeable.
Best streaming app for Android. Definitely prefer it to Pandora. My only gripe would be that the streaming bitrate quality could be better.
I use it on my g1 and its pretty cool.
I love slacker radio that would be such an awesome subscription to win
I like the simplicity of the app as well as the many options as far as genres. I also like how it has the number of stations in each genre, how u just slide your finger across the sceen to skip to next song. And the simplicity of adding your own stations. Although the pop-up ads are a bit annoying, overall, very nice app.
I love slacker radio use to listen on my computer all the time
I love the comedy sation can listen to that all day. Bottom line
Slacker is the best at streaming but ads can be a hassle sometimes.
Wow, nice! Love the variety.
Cache, cache, cache. I work in the lower level of a hospital so I get no signal. The ability to cache Slacker gives me the ability to listen to some tunes while at work.
Slacker is quickly becoming the Pandora and Last.fm killer. One thing, if this somehow integrated some features with tunewiki it would hands down rule android.
Love it, keep up the good work!
Works awesome on the Magic and love the fact that I can listen to it whenever I want. Even while driving, can plug in the headphones and listen away.
I love the music on slacker radio and the fact that you can add an actual song to your playlist. My gripe would be the limits on settings, I wish there was an option to adjust the bitrate according to your current bandwidth.
My biggest gripe is when the app wiped my SD card, causing me to lose untold photos, videos, and data. Thanks slacker radio!
It works in Canada! That’s probably the best feature lol But it also has a nice interface, and a good selection to listen to.
My favorite thing is that it has comedy! The only reason I haven’t switched yet is that I already paid one year for pandora one.
I’ve been using slacker free since my blackberry storm, now with my DROID I love it even more. My favorite part has to be that unlike that “other” radio program I can select the preset stations and get a wider variety of music that I otherwise might not have known about. Slacker RULES!!!
I love the simplicity of Slacker combined with the huge variety of songs available.
My favorite part of the app is the variety of stations and the ability to cache.
I love Slacker, would love to win a Plus account!
I love that Slacker has most of the stations customized, so I don’t have to think about which artist I want to listen to.
Slacker Radio is incredible. My day starts with a 1 hour commute, listening to my custom stations, fed through the car stereo. My day ends dropping the Droid in its multimedia dock and with headphones, listen to some mellow tunes. Thanks Slacker, I was able to cancel my XM radio account!
Cant wait for Cache feature!
Station variety is what hooked me
My only gripe is that I can’t create a perfect station blasting Taylor Wimberely over my handset. Tragic, really.
Almost about to replace my Sat. Radio subscriptions with this. Not a single gripe, and saw that they are going to update with some news stations in the near future. Works fantastic with the Droid. Looking forward to seeing their improvements over time.
well i love the app
i dont think it can be any better
My favorite part of this app has to be adding a station because when I add a station on Slacker Radio, 98.99% of the time I get exactly what I was looking for. And I love that the stations are so updated. On other stations, when I’m looking for a new song, it finds songs in that genre, but never the exact song or anything dated, just irrelevant, outdated material. My only thing is that it can be sort of sluggish. And the the limit of 6 skips + commercials is annoying. Slacker Plus over here!!!
Love the simple things like seeing album art in the Notification Bar. Great interface, quality, and selection. I’d love for an upgrade to plus!
Oddly, the best feature on Slacker for me was the variety of pre-programmed stations available. They gave me a chance to dive into a “typically programmed” station immediately, and then settle in to programming my own stations. I also love the fact that the pre-programmed stations are extremely customizable on the Slacker web site, so I can go as “deep” or as “shallow” as I like for various music genres.
I love the layout and easy of use. The stations bring the msic I like with great ease.
I love Slacker Radio, I just wish it was integrated with Facebook like it is with Twitter.
Needed Feature:
Similar to Pandora, a “QuickMix” capability to create a new radio station that takes all of your current stations and combines them together into one “super-station”.
Thanks… /Al
I very much like the whole app, honestly. The look is a bit more streamlined than Pandora and has more offering that Pandora and you can do more than just listen to music. My favorite part about Slacker Radio would probably have to be the customizable playlists, just because it rocks to have my own “personal” radio.
My biggest gripe with Slacker is that it seems to lack an extensive library and an ability to construct custom stations that match what I’m looking for. How do you go from Uncle Earl to Ryan Adams? Nor do I wish to listen to bluegrass when I specify Uncle Earl, although at least that’s a relatively closer cousin to their style than Ryan Adams. Slacker wasn’t even in the ballpark in my attempt at a Crooked Jades station. It’s obviously geared toward more popular music, which is fine, but it clearly struggles to create a coherent custom station if your tastes are obscure enough (although none of the artists I tried are even that obscure). Most of the songs are massive jumps in style because they don’t have anything to play that’s sufficiently similar. Both Pandora and particularly Last.fm do a much better job of tailoring stations to my liking.
Slacker is awesome. Hands down my favorite app on Android. My favorite part of Slacker Radio is learning new music. I listen to some obscure stations that aren’t particularly my taste of music, but I always find something I like. I can’t think of any other feature I’d like to have. Maybe more comedy stations?
I like the fact that it doesn’t force close lol
I can’t wait for the cache to come to the android app, I’m a long time blackberry user and love using the cache on the subway.
My favorite part of the app is probably just the insane selection of different stations. No matter what mood I’m in, I can find something that will please me. The only real gripe I end up having is the limit on skips when I get the few songs that I’m not really feeling at the moment. Of course, getting the supscription would help eliminate that problem.
I like the bio’s on the artists. It’s a feature that isn’t as used as most, but it’s nice knowing a bit about that new band I just fell in love with.
Wow, never thought to get this app. It is beautiful and the widget is VERY sexy. Looks to be better than Grooveshark, and Last.FM. Needs a little work to compete with Pandora, but its damn close!!
I use Slacker on my iPhone and it is by far the most customizable (music that is), and best streaming audio quality. I love how it pre-buffers the next song so you don’t have much blank space between songs.
Slacker is the reason I canceled my XM subscription two years ago!
Looks great. One thing that the Pandora app has over this app is that in the music player you can long click the song and send it to pandora to automatically create a station.
Very nice app. Gets me through work everyday. Allows me to not have to take up sd space with mp3’s.
Great UI. Amazing stations. Can listen anywhere. Can listen anytime.
Any questions why it is the best??
Very thoughtfully designed, user friendly, huge selection of stations, by far the best radio on Android!!
I usually use Pandora, but after trying it I prefer Slacker’s interface better. Very nice!
For the most part I have no problem with the app. I do wish that you could combine stations into one.
I think Slacker does a better job of mixing stations than Pandora.
Comedy channel..On long drives its good to laugh to pass the time
Widget mode is the best, iPhone users hate to see that.
I like the UI. It’s clean, simple, and easy to use.
The best thing about Slacker on Android is the wide selection of music available for listening to in high quality. For me, quality is everything, and Slacker seems to think so as well.
Hey, it’s a giveaway – I’m in
Nice app, probably the best out there since imeem died… And unlimited skips is perfect
I listen to Slacker every day at work – which is about 10 hours of listening time. I have to say that my favorite part of Slacker is the ability to listen to some of the more obscure artists, or ones that do not receive a whole lot of radio play.
Since I do not have a subscription, the part that I dislike the most is the fact that I do wind up hearing the same songs more than once in a day – which is somewhat frustrating. To get around this, I have 4 custom stations that I rotate between. I have grunge, industrial, mainstream, and underground rock stations – and I have to say that I get a nice variety of music across those stations.
I like the ability to set up custom stations. I love Slacker, the ability to ‘fire’ anykind of music anytime is great!
PICK ME! PICK ME!
My favorite part of Slacker is being able to cache the stations so you can listen to them later even if you don’t have a signal (which I actually don’t really have to worry about too much because I have verizon).
I love the variety and the simple interface. Biggest gripe would be that it makes my headphones sound like they are blown. A new feature would be to see the controls on my lockscreen, but that might be only an HTC thing.
Wow, looks pretty promising!! I’d sure like to give it a try
!
I have been using Pandora for so long that it is hard for me to switch completely. But I have to say that this app is very polished and I love the Radio Stations. Great App!… Now please give me the free subscription…
My favorite feature about slacker radio is the ability to ban either a song or an artist from your custom stations. I would love to see the option to ban by album as well. Cause some of the Bands i like have some albums i do not wish to listen too.
What up!
I love slacker, I was on the Beta for the website and use it regularly it’s great at creating stations around what I like. It helps make long drives seem shorter. My one request is that slacker allows caching on android. Oh and pick me pick me!
Love slacker for when you’re driving or taking a trip, when you just can’f find a station you like to listen to and have grown tired of the same 2 CDs you keep in the car. I fire up Slacker and pipe it through the car stereo……now if only CDMA allowed simultaneous voice and data!
I like using it to discover new alternative artists.
Wow! Pandora was my favorite until I used Slacker. I loved the caching options in this app!
I have enjoyed the preset stations on slacker so far, but I’m not a big fan of the UI. I’m guessing that over time this will become a little more well rounded, but for now it is not my favorite. Still enjoy it nonetheless.
I’ve converted so many of my friends from Pandora to Slacker! I love that Slacker not only has preset stations but such a wide variety…including talk radio and comedy and kids channels. I don’t always know what I’m in the mood to listen to so I just let Slacker pick for me instead of trying to come up with an artist or band just so I can get started.
My favorite part of the app is being able to ban entire bands (I’m looking at you, Nickleback) from my favorite stations.
I love customizing my radio stations and sharing my favorite songs or artist and stations via Twitter
I dumped Pandora after figuring out that Slacker was superior~
Great Variety!
I downloaded slacker when it was released and found it quite similar to Pandora. But, once I started listening it gave me much better results. I am a jamband fan, I like The Grateful Dead and Phish, but I really don’t like Widespread panic and every streaming app associates the two. Other programs I would waste my skips on them, but slacker gives me the option to delete a band from my station.
I also found that it does not buffer as much as other streaming apps(pandora ,last.fm, imeem when it existed) which is awesome.
Being able to share my favorites on twitter is nice.
I would love to see other users playlists that are similar to mine.
Slacker is great. The depth and breadth of music is utterly incomparable.
Love the ability to tweet my song – but didn’t realize that I had to go to ‘mail’ in order to get to ‘Facebook’. Could you put a FB icon on the pop-up menu and save me a step?
Left Pandora One – Love Slacker.
Thanks.
I LOVE how great the audio quality is!
i love the iphone cover flow design and to ban artist or song
I would love to have during down time. Between classes. It would b sweet.
I have the 40 station Slacker Portable. But I just put the app on my Droid Eris, so now I only have to carry one device!!! I love the customized stations!
Maybe the streaming quality could be improved if you have a hot connection. Other than that, great app!
I enjoy were you can cache the songs that you want to hear at another time. I work on a drydock where the signal cuts out. So it is great for me. And my gripe, I would like to see a screwed and chopped station.
My favorite part of Slacker Radio is the ability to skip songs and how I always stay connected! My least favorite part is that I wish there were a few more types of stations included…just a few…but that doesn’t stop me from listening.
Before I came over to Android, I had Slacker on my BlackBerry and LOVED it. When I discovered Slacker in the Android market, I was too excited! I love the customized stations, and how random the songs are — love it when I can hear a song from the 90s that I haven’t heard in years!
I really need to update to the full version… hopefully Android and Me can help!
Slacker Radio is well designed and nicely done however there’s a couple of improvements I would make.
1) Keep Slacker Radio playing after a call comes in automatically, it seems it stops playing music when a call comes in.
2) I have search for a couple of Cuban artists like Los Van Van, Charanga Habanera and I’m not getting not even a song from them but from unrelated artists like Tito Puente and others. However with Pandora these artists would come up, so if they catch up then Slacker radio will take over.
3) Would be nice If you boomark a song it gets saved in your profile so even if you loose the app because you have to restart your phone when you re-install you can retreave all your favorite songs bookmarked.
Very clean interface. Easy to navigate.
My favorite part of the app is the fact that it works so well. The variety is nice too.
Slacker Radio on my Droid is seriously the best app I have. It’s way better than the Slacker G2 b/c you don’t have old music.
I use it everyday!
Slacker is much better than the other streaming music apps because of caching, next song preview, and comedy. Other apps just cannot compare.
Being able to share or browse other people’s playlists would be a fantastic addition
My biggest gripe is the UI … it needs some work. Love the service though.
Love Slacker on the Android. I would say my biggest gripe is the “fuzziness” or static that I get on any heavy bass notes. From what I understand, Slacker knows about this, hopefully they fix it in the new version…can’t wait!
I found the “play” arrow easy to confuse with the “skip” arrow.
My favorite part is being able to listen to the type of music that I want to hear, not what a radio station chooses for me. Also, I don’t have to listen to endless, unimportant DJ chitchat, especially in the morning. Other than that, my biggest gripe would be the occasional buffering that interrupts a song.
The only gripe I have about Slacker Radio is that if you favorite too many songs then the variety of songs nearly non-existent and a single favorite could get played immediately before and after another song.
The rest of it is amazing and it’s my favorite internet radio.
I heard about Slacker after getting my Sprint Hero and have quit using Pandora on my PC and iPod altogether because of it.
My gripe would be stuttering during playback. IDK if this is a problem with buffer length or if it is a limitation of the Hero processor but it’s pretty annoying when receiving a SMS (interrupts data connection) Slacker skips before and after SMS notification for a few seconds.
I love slacker radio! Just got my Moment and I’m seriously considering dumping my satrad for Slacker!
I’ve been using slacker on my ipod touch and home computer for a while and i love it. I like the fact not only can i make my own stations but i can tweak my favorite songs on the net. Plus there are so many stations to choose from, you always have something to listen to.
Simply awesome! Been loving Slacker for a while, but it is even better on the Droid!
I absolutely love the station variety especially Indie Alternative… I use it through my Blu-Ray & TV or my computer!! It’s Great!
I have been an avid user of Slacker radio for a few years now, and I was so excited to find an app for my new Moto Droid I just got. All my favorite jams are one click away on my phone and I will never have to listen to the radio commercials again!
My favorite feature is how easy it is to use. It’s seamless. Of course, the sound quality is excellent, so that’s nice too.
The selection is great, nice free app!
I really like whatever algorithm they use to make the stations… I pretty much always like the songs they set me up with.
I’ve been enjoying Slacker for a while now — their Indie Electronic station is all I’ve listened to.
My gripe is that listening to this station for a day or two means you hear reruns quite often. More songs in this category, please!
I like being able to ban all the songs I hate.
Loved slacker since the BB app! Would love even more if it allowed station caching.
Love it, I def like the ease of use. Cool styling, an the ability to ban those annoying songs that sometimes pop up!
Really enjoy slacker. Listen to it all day at work, and can play in the car via bluetooth.
I like the service as much as Pandora, nice music selection. I like the interface of the app a lot better than Pandora’s… seems like such a simple thing, but my favorite is the fact that it shows who’s up next… score yourselves another listener…
Dont want to sound like a broken record but I love the variety. This is one of my fave apps. Id love to try the premium.
The UI could use improvement, otherwise I really like it!
This app is the best, i listen to this app every day!!
I enjoy using Slacker but i wish i had a Slacker plus account , anyways its still a great app
Love the cache feature!
Love the ability to stay on when connected to power. Wish the buttons were a bit bigger in landscape for easier access while in the car.
I love being able to work on custom stations all day at work on my desktop, and then listen to them on the ride home as well on my HTC Hero!
Love Slacker. Always plays what im looking for. Wish the android version had cache feauture like on BB
I like the selection. I can enjoy a nice mix of music without having to always have my ipod.
The selection is great
I have had slacker since my first storm days. it kills any of the other music apps out there. I was so happy to see it for Android when I dropped Blackberry like a hot blackberry, I mean potato.
Thanks Slacker.
It’s nice to have genre-based stations rather than just artist-based. Limiting the number of song skips is annoying, though — Pandora doesn’t have such a restriction in their free version.
i like the cache feature and it doesnt eat my battery like pandora does.
I LOVE the HUGE variety of music I can choose from. Slacker Rocks!!!!
It’s a complete app–album art, notifications, etc–and I love that it doesn’t timeout, crash, or buffer as much as Pandora.
I like being able to see what song is next. I paid for Pandora, but now I wish I had paid for slacker!
I have always used Pandora, but it has been giving me issues lately. So I glad to have discovered Slacker. By what I have used it is so much better.
On-device editing of custom stations, please please sweet mother of god!
The best part of Slacker is that it doesn’t consume my battery as much as Pandora! I listen to Slacker at work and have left it going for like an hour and I still had PLENTY of juice left to roam the internet, make a couple phone calls and play some Sudoku for awhile…LOL.
It’s honestly the best music app I’ve used!
Just recently downloaded the app on my Droid and so far I love it. Used to use another radio app but Slacker is wayyy better. lol
Great Music App. Not ready to get rid of Pandora just yet but might happen.
I must say that the rotation has to be improved. How do you guys at Slacker determine how songs are rotated. I listen to Slacker in my car everyday. For get XM Im a Slacker!
The interface is FANTASTIC. The stream rarely ever skips, even inside the metal bunker of a building I work in. Also, the “80s Alternative” station is like a window into my soul.
This works so much better than Pandora for me. I like the ease of chosing stations and it’s much more cost-efficent (obviously) than Sirius.
It works great while running. I wish my BT headphone controls worked with Slacker.
I’ve been using Slacker Radio since my Blackberry Curve. I’ve got my MT3G about 6 months now and I finally waited all this time for the Slacker Radio to come out for the MT3G. As soon as I saw it, I’ve downloaded right away and log in with my old account and it still work!! The best part about Slacker is I love the Trace Music and Slacker have many variety of it. The interface is good but the Speed can be better since I get hiccups sometimes streaming the music. I love everything about the Slacker and Keep up the good work!
Sorry guys, I forgot to enter my email address associate with the Slacker account.
I’ve been using Slacker Radio since my Blackberry Curve. I’ve got my MT3G about 6 months now and I finally waited all this time for the Slacker Radio to come out for the MT3G. As soon as I saw it, I’ve downloaded right away and log in with my old account and it still work!! The best part about Slacker is I love the Trace Music and Slacker have many variety of it. The interface is good but the Speed can be better since I get hiccups sometimes streaming the music. I love everything about the Slacker and Keep up the good work!
I like how Slacker gives my wife something to do while I’m watching 24.
My only gripe is….. 24 is only an hour long.
Always loved the service since I played with the hardware they released a while back. Always been my favorite music streaming service.
There nothing I can say bad about the app I love it, only this is on the free version is you only get a limited skips and i olny do that when i need to find a good work out songs would like to have a create playlist but thats is wishful thinking
Love the variety on slacker. Like being able to create favorites and easily find genres.
Love the display on setting! Perfect for playin tunes in the car.
My biggest gripes? I play it while driving mostly. The main screen is too busy to be able to find something quick. I’d like a setting that opens up the app to the my favorites every time.
Also would like to see bigger buttons to navigate to next song…hard to do while driving.
I love the quality of music on slacker and its seamless on my nexus
I like how it lets you know the next artist coming up.
I found the app 2 days after getting my HTC Hero.
My fav part
I like the return to previous channel when launched.
grip
icons are too small. Give an option to make them bigger for us fat finger guys.
Improvement
allow mashing two stations to make one. For instance. I like the Justin Timberlake channel as well as the Disturbed. Very diff obviously. How cool would it be fore me to be able to mix the two for my own personal liking.
It’s a toss up for me which is better about this app – the huge selection of stations, or the cache-ing, but both make this a must have app on my Nexus One.
Awesome App! I’ve had a few FC, but it works great otherwise. Best part is I can run it seamlessly in the background so I can use other apps (Navigation) while it blasts out my stereo!
I wish there would be an integrated way to buy the curent music being listened to with the Amazon MP3 store.
Favorite part would be caching the stations. I do a ton of motorcycle travel and would love to ditch my XM subscription…
Well I may have just found a great replacement for Pandora! Very nice program.
It is nice not having to hear DJs spend minutes droning on.
The premade station list is great and I can’t wait to be able to cache stations.
The problem I have is that after one song it won’t play anymore! I have to back out of it and completely restart it. It just doesn’t do well in 1x coverage.
Pandora seems to do better under the same conditions, although still not great.
It is also a little memory intensive.
I think they would do great if they would get a deal with a good morning show, I know some talk radio would get me to subscribe to Slacker Plus, like bob and tom.
I dig the ability to block artist or album. Nag ads get old fast, but the interface is real slick.
My favorite part of Slacker is its usability! So much better than Pandora! Less annoying commercials and ads, more incredible music and quality! Thank you Slacker for rocking my phone!
I love that slacker radio actually works on my Nexus one, unlock other internet radio apps (ahem, iheartradio)
Sooooo easy to customize stations! I love how I can add any artist I want to a station.
slacker radio is my favorite app better sound quality than pandora radio
It just seems to work, and well, at that!
I have two reasons to love Slacker… Personalized stations that actually do what I want and the caching. Sometimes you are just not in a service area (not very often with VZW) and you still want to listen to some great radio. I love the uncut comedy channel
Congratulations to the winners!
Has a list of the winners been posted anywhere?
Sweet! I can’t wait!