Slacker Radio (Free, 4.5 stars), our Editors' Choice award-winning streaming music service makes the leap from the desktop to the iPad in the form of a tablet-friendly universal app that showcases not only a fresh design that's radically different from the previously released iPhone app, but also new features that give Slacker fans even more flexibility in how they listen to music. Slacker's premium services may have gone up in price, but the app is the best streaming music platform on the iOS market thanks to a deep music well, new on-demand streaming, playlists, and over 150 channels.
Fresh, New Look
The first thing you'll notice upon signing into the free app is the revamped design. If you're accustomed to the Web player's dark aesthetic, will come as a pleasant surprise. Instead of dark blacks and blues, I was met by a light-gray and white color scheme that I found far easier on the eyes.
The top of the screen features a station's name in the upper-left corner; the upper-right has sharing options (email, Twitter), general app options, and a drop-down box that let me jump to the Slacker YouTube channel, listen to instructional audio clips, or contact customer support. A column on the left side of the screen houses the various Slacker genres (ranging from Rock to Spiritual to Comedy), as well as custom stations I created. I tapped "My Stations", which housed my custom stations, and saw that all seven of my custom stations had made loaded without a hitch—even the custom station descriptions. Bringing a finger to the "Afropunk" play button launched the station, sending Lenny Kravitz' "Always on the Run" to my ears.
Song information (title, artist name, album, and running time), media controls, and album art appear in the section above the station listing. Here I could swipe from right to left to jump to the next song—very nice. New is a rewind button for those who want to listen to a song more than once. When a song plays, you can view the album review, artist bio, and lyrics (unfortunately, lyrics aren't available for every song and non-pay accounts display only partial lyrics). Overall, the new interface was easy to dive into and navigate.
Getting Started With Slacker Radio
You can also dive into Slacker's deep catalog by keying in an artist or song title into the app's search engine. Based on your selection, Slacker will cull a tightly weaved station. Typing in "Queen" caused Slacker to fire up "Flash's Theme," and afterward push through only Queen songs. Alternately, clicking the ban icon prevents an artist or song from appearing in that created station. Clicking on the heart-shaped "Favorite" icon gives a song or artist extra weight, causing Slacker to play it more frequently.
Slacker offers three listening plans for music fans. With Slacker's free, basic plan you can skip a maximum of six songs per hour and have to endure audio advertisements. Subscribing to the $3.99 per month Slacker Plus lets you remove advertising and skip an unlimited number of songs, while the $9.99 Slacker Premium (which we used for this review) lets you cache stations, create stations based on a specific artist, view artist pages, access "hearted" songs from a dedicated Favorite Songs area, and play songs and albums on demand. The on-demand playback is easily the coolest new feature, as you no longer have to wait for Slacker to serve up tracks; I simply keyed a song title into the search box and listened to my favorite tunes.
Slacker Plus and Premium are more expensive than Pandora's $36 annual subscription, but its free, basic service gives you unlimited free streaming (Pandora will charge 99-cents for the remainder of the month, once you pass 40 hours of listening). Slacker Radio saves each station automatically, so you can listen again the next time you log in.
Clicking the drop-down arrow next to a station name let me edit the station (name, banned artists, more) favorite the station, cache the station for offline playback, or visit the station page where I could edit the "seed" artists that are its foundation. In turn, I could also tap the play button next to those artists' names and play their particular stations. The music options run very, very deep.
A drop-down arrow appears when you're in the Artist Bio, Album Review, or Lyrics areas. This let me add a song to a playlist, heart it, ban it (or the artist entirely), purchase it from iTunes, and view the Artist Page (which list albums, songs, related artists, and the various stations in which they appear), and Album Page. The Album Page is one of the best new additions to the service as you can play an entire individual album—in sequence—from beginning to end. This is a service that I've longed for since Slacker's inception and I'm glad to finally see it implemented.
Music Selection and Sound Quality
Slacker features close to 20 top-level genre categories with most categories containing at least three to four sub-categories—there's a lot of music to consume here. I was surprised, however, to see Classic Soul and Funk placed under the Hip Hop/RnB umbrella—I expected it to have its own top-level category.
On the upside, Slacker streamed crisp, hiccup-free audio over my home and office network connections. The Web version streams at 128 Kbps, but Slacker wouldn't reveal the bitrate for the mobile versions. Unless you're an audiophile, Slacker's sound quality will satisfy even when the audio is pumped through iPad's speakers, a pair of Sony MDR headphones, or streamed to a pair of speakers using AirPlay . The bass lines were full and bouncy, and there was a good separation of high and low sounds.
Should You Listen To Slacker (for iPad)?
You know that an app is top notch when the biggest gripe that you can muster is that some songs lack lyrics pages. Slacker Radio for iPad has been a long time coming, but the wait has been more then worth it. The new, eye-catching, intuitive interface, deep customization options, caching, on-demand streaming, and the usual Slacker bells and whistles makes Slacker for iPad a must-have for music fans and an Editors' Choice award winner.
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