Em busca da rádio pessoal

«Web sites like Pandora.com personalize the music you stream to your desk, while satellite radio offers portable listening but little personalized track choice. Slacker, a music service unveiled this week, hopes to merge the two concepts into something new: personal portable radio for the computer, car and coat pocket. Aimed in name and concept at the music lover who does not want to fritter away hours creating playlists, Slacker offers millions of songs grouped into radio stations by genre or artist. Music can be streamed on the Web using the company’s music player at www.slacker.com. To indicate their preferred types of music and bands, listeners can flag tracks they like and dislike. Slacker has a free version of the service with advertising, as well as an ad-free edition with enhanced personalization for $7.50 a month. It plans to release hardware offerings later this year. Portable devices will download songs over a Wi-Fi connection and store them for later playback, while car stereo units will receive music over a satellite link. The standard buck-a-song downloads are on the way as well.»

fonte: New York Times, «Now, a Radio Station for (Your Name Here)»,  J. D. BIERSDORFER, 15/07/07

«Slacker will release an iPod-like device this summer that will let you take your favorites with you — it stores a certain number of songs on the player. In the second half of the year, a car dock will go on sale that will receive updated radio information for the player via satellite signals. Because the online service is free, there are commercials and you can’t skip more than six songs. If you want total control and no ads, that’ll cost $7.50 a month, well below the $12.95 Sirius and XM charge. The company says it can afford the price because it isn’t paying for a dedicated satellite, like the other two. We’ve been listening to Slacker pretty much non-stop for the past day and love the song selection, channel choices and customization. The quality is about MP3 level, but much better than FM, and we didn’t experience any skipping or technical snags.