Tripodder.com

Become A Slacker

As you adjust the volume while you’re listening to your favorite song, a magic genie appears and grants you a specific wish: “I will create a radio station just for you that you can take wherever you go. You are completely in control the content. Your wish is my command, what would you like?”

            The hours and cost of downloading music from iTunes (or Limewire) are now over and you may only want to use your iPod on rare occasion. The genie has made this fantasy into reality with Slacker.com.

            With our focus on innovation, technology and music, Tripodder.com interviews Slacker Vice President of Marketing Jonathan Sasse to bring you a more detailed understanding of why Slacker is being called, “the iPod killer.”

            “We got a chance to do all the things we’ve wanted to do over the past decade and we’re having a lot of fun doing it,” Sasse.  Sasse joined the Slacker Team of seasoned digital music space executives with resumes spanning from the release the first portable mp3 players in the ‘90s to creating the MusicMatch which became Yahoo! Music.

Compare the following process to your current routine of gathering and listening to music and see which you’d prefer.

            Visit Slacker.com and type in your favorite artist. An intuitive system gives birth to your personalized station putting songs into spin that you should like from your selected artist and similar artists. If you land on an artist or song that you love, you can “heart” it and hear it more often. Find an artist or song you hate, you can ban it forever.

            To further the experience, you can select several artists to create a comprehensive playlist of your favorites within one station. Tweak your station with varying levels of “artist discovery” to hear new artists with similar styles that you’ve likely never heard of.  Bios of each artist and the song the album comes from pop up on your screen and with one click you become an instant expert.

If you don’t want to fool with creating a station, opt to select one of the 100 professionally programmed stations like “’90s Alternative,” “Today’s Hits,” even “Comedy.” Ok, you’re getting the picture.  

            Slacker.com has agreements with all four major publishing houses (EMI, Sony/ATV, Universal and Warner/Chappell) and experiencing the music online in the above described process is a free service. This last step will cost you, but is worth the investment.  Plug in your Slacker Portable Radio and up to 4000 songs will be sent directly to the personalized stations on the Portable for your take with you on the go. Later in the day when you are in WI-FI range, you can instruct your Slacker Portable to connect to your account and keep your station fresh.

            Imagine hundreds of new songs flying across the office automatically storing them on your Portable for you to listen to on you way back home that evening. You’re receiving new music you’ll love and you’re not even working to make it happen. In fact, Slacker’s slogan is, “Your Music Without the Work.”  The cost for a Slacker Portable ranges between $199 and $299 depending on the number of stations and memory you want.

            If you have 4,000 songs in your mp3 player, it took time to download them, right? The name “Slacker” truly represents the convenience of having a service do the work and research for you.

            “We appeal to an interesting group of people who like a radio experience, but they are frustrated with traditional FM radio, satellite radio and how stale their music gets on mp3 players,” explains Sasse.  For music lovers who want to keep their favorites to hear wherever they go, the Slacker portable allows users to upload their own mp3s too.

            While Slacker.com is free service, it will soon have a minimal number of advertisements on both the online player and the Slacker Portable.  For only $7.50 a month, users can purchase Slacker Premium Radio. Premium makes the online player and the Portable commercial-free, provides unlimited skipping and gives listeners the chance the save any song from the radio onto a personal library for “on-demand listening.” Having Slacker without the Premium option still gives users the ability to skip six songs an hour, pause, and create an unlimited number of personalized stations. The only catch with either service is you can’t rewind, you can only pause and skip to the next song.  

            Slacker DJs across the country are constantly programming and hand-selecting the channels to keep the experience fresh. “You might even get songs that were released on an album that hit the streets that day and you didn’t have to go research or download them,” says Sasse.

            For Myspace.com users, Slacker has a publishing widget that lets you add your personalized radio station to your Myspace profile. Or surprise your friends and send them a station with their favorite artists they can enjoy. It’s the “mix tape” of the future.

            Listen to our Slacker.com podcast interview with Jonathan Sasse on Tripodder.com’s podcast channel and add us on Myspace.com/Tripodder.