It’s no secret that Mari and I are both huge Slacker fans. In fact, we’ll go ahead and proclaim Slacker as the official music service of Zatz Not Funny. I subscribe to their Internet Radio Plus service ($48/yr), which enables unlimited skips and kills all advertising. AND caching of stations for offline iPhone playback… to arrive sometime in the near future. Mari subscribes to a higher tier of Premium service, which Slacker no longer advertises. Given their upcoming On-Demand offering, being demo-ed at CTIA, I think we now know why.
Slacker’s Premium tier allowed you to save/bookmark songs for playback on-demand. But it looks like Slacker will be taking this to a Rhapsody-eque level, with content searching, playlist creation, and on-demand playback. Pricing and timing haven’t been revealed, but they’ll have to come in lower than the competition… who’s yet to prove there’s a large (enough) market for this type of offering. Fortunately, Slacker On-Demand will be built on top of the existing Slacker service and application. Allowing folks to opt in or out at any time.
