Internet radio service Slacker has made good on their promise to deliver a Blackberry client. Unlike Pandora on the iPhone, which only streams music, Slacker has the ability to both stream or download tracks. Meaning, it’s possible to load up the Blackberry microSD card with your favorite “stations” before commuting via plane or subway. I did take a very brief look at a beta build prior to CES (pics of Melissa’s Curve below), and quite like the look and feel. Audio playback exhibited some stuttering, but I’ve been told this particular handset’s performance has been greatly improved with the latest build.
What I didn’t know, prior to the show, is that a free iPhone client was also in the works. And, apparently, development has progressed quite nicely because we may see it available on the iTunes App store as early as today. While the Slacker G2 and new Blackberry client both cache content, Slacker’s iPhone software purely streams… providing new competition for Pandora. Although, folks may prefer the less intrusive graphical Pandora advertising over Slacker’s audio commercials. (Slacker Radio Plus, at $3.99/mo, does away with all advertising. Plus, it enabled unlimited song skips and requests.)
Doesn’t Slacker have a dedicated piece of hardware to listen to music on? Are they switching to become a cloud service only ( like everyone *should* be doing IMHO )?
Yah, they also have dedicated hardware. But I’m sure they now realize that it’s much more cost effective for them to develop software clients for iPhone, Blackberry, etc. People want fewer devices, not more.
Little bummed that Iphone will only be streaming. That blackberry dload option is great for plane rides, etc.
With Sling and Slacker and hopefully a Sirius app coming, it’s going to be a great year to have an Iphone or Blackberry!
I figure there’s two reasons why the iPhone won’t support downloads… limited, fixed storage capacity and Apple’s tight control. If you’re offering song downloads, you’re competing with them. I’m not sure if the SDK permits persistent storage of any significant capacity.
Downloaded the app for my 8330 and the first few songs were fine but after I skipped 2 songs it sat in buffering for over 10 minutes. When I went to close the app it sat in the ‘upgrade with a free trial!” screen for about 2 minutes before I could access anything else on my bb.
It’s neat but this short initial experience is one of those immediately delete from my bb.
I wish M$ would get their “sideshow” working.
If they have 500 Million, we know where Howard Stern will go when his contact is up on satellite :-)