Slacker tells Tripodder.com they have launched a new Slacker Premium Radio, bringing a buffet of 8 millions on-demand songs its users in a brilliant new format. Slacker Premium Radio merges the ease and unpredictability of programmed radio stations with the power of an on-demand music service. They are about to give their biggest competitor Pandora a run for their money.
And YOU can discover Slacker’s new service for a FREE one-month subscriptions by visiting Slacker’s Facebook page – http://facebook.com/SlackerRadio now through August 17, 2011. Along with the launch of this new subscription service, Slacker is also releasing updated iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry and Android apps today.
Tripodder.com has been following Slacker since their early days, check out our 2008 interview with Jonathan Sasse, senior vice president of marketing at Slacker at the bottom of this story. Additionally, our partner website BourbonBlog.com has a BourbonRadio.com station powered by Slacker as the first online radio station dedicated to songs about whiskey and drinking that we invite you to check out.
This new Slacker Premium Radio costs $9.99 per month and includes the ability to search for and play specific songs or albums on demand. However, Slacker hasn’t shifted from their core offerings of building your own stations based upon artists of your choice. Now, you can toggle between the stations and album view, play albums, songs, and playlists as you wish by either streaming them or caching them to your device for offline listening.
This brings some competition to similar offerings from Rhapsody, Rdio, and MOG. Slacker is already available on most iPhones, iPads, BlackBerries and smart phones that use the Android operating system.
Approximately half of Slacker’s audience is reported as coming from mobile devices. This is because Slacker has deals with the four major wireless carriers in the United States, with many of devices which come pre-loaded with the service. BlackBerry is Slacker’s number one wireless platform.
Slacker is said to have about 25 million registered users. While behind Pandora Media with a reported 82 million, with personalized radio stations from a catalog of about 800,000 songs and no offering of specific songs on-demand.
Slacker added about 200,000 subscribers last year to ad-free service at $3.99, which includes personalized news reports from ABC News. The company plans to add sports news from ESPN Radio later this year.
For those who don’t want any subscription service, Slacker still offers a free version if all you want to do is listen to radio-style music, including custom stations, this does include some ads; and Slacker Radio Plus, a $3.99/month choice which removes ads, includes song lyrics, and lets you cache music and skip past songs an unlimited number of times. Premium Radio has all of Plus’s features and much more.
Here is Tripodder.com‘s 2008 podcast interview with with Jonathan Sasse, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Slacker. While things have changed a lot, the story have how Slacker began remains the same. Click PLAY below..
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