Headline Feeds
Slacker Radio, a music application by Slacker, is available for free at the App Store.
Just because there's no FM tuner on the iPhone doesn't mean it's locked out from radio. Ever since Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) opened its App Store last summer, third-party applications like Pandora have allowed users to stream Internet radio music over the device's data connection. Wherever you go, as long as you've got a clean data signal, you can get unlimited new music for free.
The latest Web radio tuner to pop into the App Store is Slacker Radio. Slacker isn't just a Web radio service provider; it also sells devices that compete in a way with Apple's iPods. But I suppose Slacker figures the hardware is just a means to get people to use the service, so it's branched out to put its service on Apple's devices.
Channels and Choices
Signing up for a Slacker account is a breeze. You input an e-mail address, a password, a ZIP code and a date of birth -- and opt out of the newsletter if you prefer -- and you're in, no ducking into Safari necessary.
Once there, you can search for a specific song or artist, look at the service's top stations, pick one of your favorite stations, choose from an array of preset genres (ranging from "Youth" to "Country" to "Alternative"), or take a look at something called "Slacker Spotlight."
Spotlight appears to feature whatever topic is in the public spotlight at the moment. I looked at the Jack Bauer (of "24" fame) channel and got the following songs: Led Zeppelin's "Dazed and Confused," "Under the Willow Tree" by Honeyhoney and Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody." What these tunes have in common with each other or with "24" is a mystery to me, but at least the Clash's version of "I Fought the Law" makes some sense.
The "Find Music" feature is fun if you want to discover something new and frustrating if you already know exactly what you want to listen to. Searching for an artist will start you off with a song -- any song -- by that group. It creates a new "station" named after your search. Skipping to the next song on that station -- which can be done with a swipe a la coverflow -- will take you to an "if you like that, you'll also like this" selection by another artist. If you try to search for a specific song, Slacker might give you that song, or it might just give something else that might also appeal to you. Recent searches are saved as "Custom Stations."
If you'd rather browse by station, pick a genre, then a station within that genre. For example, the "Alternative" genre features 13 stations, from "'80s alternative" to "Singer-Songwriter." The "Electronic/Dance" differentiates between "Chill," "Chill [Non-Vocal]" and six other stations. You can set any of these to your favorites list for fast access.
No Multitasking
Touching an arrow next to the song's title will give you some background on the album and the artist, and a button on the bottom with set you up to buy the song on iTunes. There's a pause/play button and a skip-ahead control, but no skip-back icon. Also, you only get six skips per station per hour, which Slacker says is due to its licensing agreements.
Unlike the iPhone's dedicated music player, you can't close out of Slacker and keep the music playing in the background
Here Come the Ads
Every five or six songs, you'll hit a 30-second commercial which you cannot skip out of. At first I found this very jarring. I'm a DVR user, and the only ads I brake for are movie trailers. I've begun to react to TV and radio commercials the same way I'd react to some guy on the street butting into a private conversation to try and sell me on a bottle of aspirin or a GM truck -- rude, uncalled for, and what makes you think I want that? But intellectually, I realize we've all got to pay the bills, a half-minute of advertising isn't that bad, and I can't reasonably rip on Slacker for doing what it has to do to make the music free.
In a place with a five-bar 3G signal, the music's buffer time was just a second or two. Going to Edge, things got a lot slower, and hiccups were common.
One feature I thought was a really nice touch was the option to fine tune any station in the lineup. As you're listening to any station, tap the arrow near the top, next to the station name, and you can tell Slacker a little more about how you'd like it to select future songs: Favorites (tell it to play songs you've marked as something you like more often or less often), Song Popularity (anywhere from "fringe" to "hits," or just set it on auto), and Year (you want classics, oldies, relatively recent tracks or brand-new stuff?).
Bottom Line
Slacker is not a database of music that will give you free license to listen to whatever you want whenever you want. If you know exactly what you want to listen to, buy it on iTunes, Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN), Emusic, CD or whatever you're used to using.
However, if you want to expand your musical vocabulary and find good music you've never heard before, Slacker is a great place to start -- provided you have a good 3G signal.
Talkback: 
