In case you haven’t heard, online music service Spotify has landed stateside. While there’s a lot to like, which we’ll get to, there does seem to be at least one notable shortcoming in regards to music discovery – and I’m not the only one to come to that conclusion based upon feedback found in my Twitter stream (above). Spotify offers social sharing elements, perhaps unlike and superior to all others, there’s nothing in the way of automatic “randomize & play cool stuff for me” functionality. Or, at least, it’s not something I’ve been able to turn up just yet. Other all-you-can eat music services, like Mog and Rhapsody do a better job of offering artist- or genre-based playback for those times when you want more of a “radio” experience.
XM and Slacker continue to be my sonic weapons of choice. Primarily because I’m lazy and just don’t keep up with music the way I once did back in the days when I hoarded hundreds of cassettes and crafted my own mix tapes. What I appreciate about both these services is that they’re professionally programmed. Further, Slacker let’s your skip tracks and enables station “fine tuning”. Yet most folks don’t seem to be aware this feature (and even I usually have problems tracking down these settings). I’m here to help. Currently, one way to get at these options is by clicking on the station name, within the web interface, clicking Edit Station, and then hitting the Fine Tune button towards the upper left. It’s also accessible from within Slacker’s iPhone app: From a playing station screen, click the Menu button in the upper right, select Edit Station, and tap Fine Tune.
