I have personally been waiting for the new Slacker On Demand service for months, and seeing Jonathan Sasse at Digital Experience tonight did nothing but whet my appetite further. Looking at a preview of the new service, there is all kinds of functionality not currently available on the Slacker phone apps. You can browse through everything – look at specific artists, songs, recommendations, anything you want. There’s always an option to continue exploring new information, or just hitting play for a song you really want. You can also create new stations and playlists on your phone, cache playlists, albums, songs, and stations for offline playing, and access your Slacker Premium account across multiple devices. The service will launch for Android, Blackberry, iPhone, and iPad (a native app), and a premium account is only $9.99 per month. When will it launch? The official word is “very very soon.”
On another note, Slacker is also testing on Verizon’s LTE network to ramp up the service when a 4G connection is available. I’m feeling a phone upgrade coming on.
One plea to Slacker: Please launch this thing, okay? Love ya. Thanks.
Can’t wait for this either. I already have a Slacker Premium account. Will we get this thrown in under our existing plan or will this be an upgrade?
I think we get grandfathered in for the remainder of the 1-year contract period (if you pay annually), but I wouldn’t swear to it.
No grandfathering involved. There will be three tiers of service; there’s the free version, then Slacker Radio Plus ($4.99 per month) that removes advertising and gives users a little more control, and Slacker Premium ($9.99 per month.) Your Plus account will just continue to the middle tier.
Shawn indicated that he had a Slacker Premium Account (not plus), so I’m pretty sure he would get grandfather’ed in like Mari suggested.