Slacker Launches Slacker Premium Radio with On-Demand Access to Music Library

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Ipad home emimim

I’m a huge fan of Slacker Radio but I have to admit, it has been a little long in the tooth lately. I mean, they still haven’t got an iPad app which means you need to use the Slacker iPhone app at 2X resolution on your iPad. Ugly!! Moreover, services like RDIO have made selective music streaming seamlessly ease while Slacker has kept to their same old model.

Well, Slacker is hitting a milestone today with the release of a new iPad app AND Slacker Premium, a service for selectively streaming the music you want when you want it!

Ipad home swanlights

So here is the scoop. This morning Slacker is finally launching an iPad-specific app. It looks great and will make using the service on the iPad more enjoyable than ever.

Slacker now has over 25 million listeners and hundreds of thousands of active subscribers to Slacker Radio Plus. The addition of the new Slacker Premium Radio makes Slacker the only music service to offer a full range of free and subscription personal music offerings.

As the company explains,

Slacker Premium Radio is the first on-demand music service built behind a world class, curated personal radio service, taking lean-back music discovery and combining it with access to a library of over 8 million songs

By leading with a curated and personalized radio experience, discovering music is better than ever and by matching it to an on-demand experience, playing those new artists, albums and songs is now easier than ever as well.

I’ve had the Slacker Premium app for a few weeks now and I can honestly tell you that it is great. I will be signing up as a premium subscriber and will likely let my RDIO subscription laps.

But there is more. Not only is Slacker announcing Premium Radio but they are releasing new applications that provide in-depth artist and station pages and “top 50” charts for all Slacker Radio stations. The new applications feature powerful and easy to use station creators and Slacker Premium subscribers have access to a companion feature for creating song-specific playlists as well.

In short, Slacker WAS lagging behind but this morning is changing all that. New apps and a Premium Service put Slacker Radio back on top. Here are some links so you can see the new apps in action.

Android

iPad

iPhone

BlackBerry

And there’s more: starting tomorrow 5/17 – for a limited time – a free subscription to Slacker Premium Radio is available by visiting www.facebook.com/SlackerRadio

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Slacker Launches Slacker Premium Radio with On-Demand Access to Music Library

Slacker First to Provide Complete Range of Services for Listeners from Free Personal Radio to On-Demand Music

SAN DIEGO – May, 17 2011 – Slacker, Inc. today launched Slacker Premium Radio, a new tier of service that provides music lovers with on-demand access to the Slacker music library including individual songs, albums, top charts, station playlists, single-artist radio stations and more. Slacker Premium takes the power, functionality and music discovery that Slacker Radio provides and combines it with the flexibility of integrated on-demand access for a new tier of service that provides the best of all worlds. Slacker Premium is available today on the web, and on new applications for iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, Android and BlackBerry smartphones. These applications deliver new features for all listeners, including free listeners, subscribers to Slacker Radio Plus and now subscribers to Slacker Premium Radio.

With the launch of Slacker Premium Radio, Slacker becomes the first music service to deliver three complementary tiers. From the entirely free Slacker Basic Radio service, to the ad-free and feature-rich Slacker Radio Plus and now on-demand access with Slacker Premium Radio, Slacker meets the needs of all music fans. Whether listeners prefer a superior free personal radio experience or the power of a fully-loaded music subscription service, Slacker is the only offering to provide the full suite of options.

Slacker Premium Radio enables listeners to search, play and replay specific songs and entire albums from the Slacker library, which features over 8 million songs, as well as provides easy access to top songs and artists from each of the 150+ expert-programmed Slacker genre stations**. Listeners also have the ability to create specific playlists both on mobile and on the web, and even experience off-line playback through the ability to cache stations, playlists and entire albums.

A new Slacker station creator provides all listeners the ability to quickly and easily create multi-artist stations, with custom fine-tuning features for the perfect radio experience. All Slacker listeners also have the ability to create a radio experience ranging from stations based on a single artist to stations created by entering hundreds of hand-picked artists. In addition, Slacker Premium listeners can create and enjoy stations that will only play songs from a single chosen artist or band.

In addition to the ability to search the entire Slacker catalog, the new Slacker Premium Radio service gives listeners more ways to browse stations than ever before, allowing an even deeper music discovery experience. Listeners can now browse expert hand-programmed genre stations to search and play top artists, view and play top songs and albums, allowing behind the scenes access to the “Top 50” charts for every station. The Slacker Premium Radio interface also includes all-new artist pages, featuring the artist biography, all songs by the artist, discography and related artists in addition to displaying on which Slacker stations each artist is programmed, for the ultimate artist access.

“Up until this point there has been an array of ‘Internet radio’ and ‘on-demand’ services with much debate about which is better from a content, experience and technology perspective,” said Jonathan Sasse, senior vice president of marketing at Slacker. “Slacker Premium Radio provides music lovers with the best of both. We believe the combination of a world class radio service providing music discovery up front with on-demand access to any song and entire albums is the winning combo.”

Slacker Radio offers a fully customizable and personal online radio experience that includes the most varied and compelling range of content offered by any Internet radio service. The Slacker Radio experience includes over 150 expert-programmed music stations, ABC news, comedy, custom artist-hosted showcase stations and leading music festival stations along with personalized ESPN Sports content integration coming soon. With a music catalog that is over ten times larger than the leading radio competitor, Slacker Radio gives listeners the ultimate music discovery resource.

Slacker Premium Radio:

• Search, play and replay specific songs or entire albums

• Create specific playlists on mobile and on the web

• Off-line playback of stations, playlists and albums on the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch, Android and BlackBerry smartphones

• Replay specific songs on programmed and custom stations

• Browse and play “Favorite” songs, now collected in one location

• Unlimited song skipping

• Ad-free listening

• Complete song lyrics†

• Browse Top Charts on all Slacker genre stations

• “Peek Ahead” artist, album and song preview

• Ability to skip forward and backward

Pricing and Availability
The new Slacker Premium Radio tier is available now on the web and on new applications for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch and supported Android and Blackberry smartphones. Slacker Premium Radio is available starting today for $9.99 per month at Slacker.com or billed directly to your Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile USA or AT&T account from within the Slacker application on Android and BlackBerry smartphones. Slacker Premium Radio includes all new features, as well as all of the features available to Slacker Basic and Slacker Radio Plus listeners.

For a limited time, a free subscription to Slacker Premium Radio is available by visiting www.Facebook.com/SlackerRadio.

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About the Author

Dan Cohen
Having a father who was heavily involved in early laser and fiber-optical research, Dan grew up surrounded by technology and gadgets. Dan’s father brought home one of the very first video games when he was young and Dan remembers seeing a “pre-release” touchtone phone. (When he asked his father what the “#” and “*” buttons were his dad said, “Some day, far in the future, we’ll have some use for them.”) Technology seemed to be in Dan’s blood but at some point he took a different path and ended up in the clergy. His passion for technology and gadgets never left him. Dan is married to Raina Goldberg who is also an avid user of Apple products. They live in New Jersey with their golden doodle Nava.