Launched six years ago, Slacker Radio is one of the older names in a now very crowded digital music service arena, which in recent years has seen upstarts like Spotify (review) and Rdio capture music fans’ attention and splashy new arrivals by big-time players like Apple (iTunes Radio) and Google (Play Music All Access). And don’t forget Pandora, which just happens to be the king of all music services with over 65 million users (2.5 million paid).

Many of these services have a lot in common (including content), and it ultimately comes down to personal taste and listening habits when deciding which one is right for you. All of the services have free ad-supported versions or free trials in addition to their paid subscriptions, so it’s easy to “taste test.” Besides user interface, much of what separates the services is the “predictive algorithm” they use—the technology that creates on-the-fly radio playlists based on an artist, song or album choice.

Sizing Up the Competition

Slacker’s free service offers unlimited streaming with ads on any device, which separates it from competitors like Spotify and Rdio whose free services are bound to the desktop. Beyond computers and smartphones, the list of supported devices for the free version is quite extensive: Sony Smart TVs and Blu-ray players, Xbox, Sonos, Roku and Kindle Fire, among others.

Slacker Radio Plus ($3.99 per month) gives you unlimited song skips, playlists, offline listening for mobile stations and ad-free listening while Slacker Premium ($9.99 per month), which I tested, gives you more offline choices like downloadable albums and playlists and highly desirable on-demand listening similar to Spotify Premium. Due to licensing issues, some songs (e.g. some Beatles or Radiohead) in Slacker’s 13-million-plus song library will not be available on-demand.

A brief look at the competitors: Rdio and Spotify have free and paid tiers similar in price points to Slacker but each boasts 20-million-plus song libraries. The new iTunes Radio is free with ads and has a staggering 27 million songs. (iTunes Match at $25 per year will give you access to your personal song library in the cloud.) With only around one million songs, Pandora is also free with (tons of) ads but offers an ad-free version for $3.99 per month.

The Browser Experience

In February of this year, Slacker gave itself a makeover on all platforms. When you first visit its web player, you are greeted with a help overlay that shows you how to use the different play options. In addition to the search field, you are presented with four main tabs under the music player: Slacker Stations, New & Trending (with features like Artist of the Week or Album of the Week such as the newly released Pearl Jam album), My Music (your music history) and My Vibe (picks based on activity).

Slacker is really aiming for a guided user experience with professional DJs—who are brief but informative (and can be switched off)—on featured stations and curated editor picks, as well as original capsule bios and lyrics. There’s a bevy of non-music content like ESPN Radio, ABC News and The Weather Channel under News/Talk/Sports stations. You can even insert hourly ABC News or ESPN updates to your music stations. This kind of content differentiates Slacker from its competitors, and paid subscribers can download these stations for offline listening, which is a cool feature.

There’s a downside to all of this content. Even though the redesigned look is much improved, the browser interface is crowded, and a browser-only experience may not be appealing to all users. One feature lost in the clutter is Fine Tune, a button on the web player that allows you to adjust types of songs on the fly.

Mobile Is Where It’s At

Unless you have unlimited data or or an oversized data plan, offline listening is the most attractive aspect of a paid subscription on Slacker Radio or any of the other competing services. So I tested how easy or difficult it was to listen to offline content on the Slacker mobile app (iPhone in this case). You can select stations (Plus subscriber) and specific albums or playlists (Premium subscriber) for download, but it’s not immediately clear which ones are acceptable to download and how many songs are actually downloaded. Notably, you can only download full albums and not individual songs like you can on Spotify.

The process is not simple. Once you’ve selected a station or album for download by tapping the download symbol, you have to go to My Music on the home page and “refresh” which content to download over Wi-Fi for mobile listening. Just navigating around the mobile app is a frustrating experience at times because it’s not clear which direction you need to swipe or what button to tap. There is no standard slide-out menu that you see on many mobile apps, like Facebook or Spotify, so you end up tapping a lot of back arrows.

In contrast, the iPad app is an easier and less frustrating experience, but it doesn’t feel as complete as the browser version. The iPad version also allows you to stream Slacker over AirPlay, while the iPhone/iPod touch version doesn’t. On Spotify, AirPlay is available on both the iPad and iPhone.

Final Words

Free Slacker Radio is very competitive with the other free digital music services because you can listen to it on any device and it offers additional non-music content for users with various interests. You also get the curated stations and DJs, which add value. On the other hand, Rdio and Spotify have stronger social media integration with more crowdsourced content. The new kid on the block, iTunes Radio, has double the number of songs and an easier-to-use UI (as per Apple) but a lot less features and non-music content.

At $3.99 per month, Slacker Radio Plus is a good deal, competitive with the paid Pandora service at $3.99 (which has far less songs and curated content) and cheaper than the mid-tier Spotify subscription at $4.99. However, Slacker Premium at $9.99 per month offers less value than Spotify Premium (also $9.99), which gives the user a lot more flexibility with on-demand, offline content and a better mobile experience.

Slacker is definitely worth a spin for Pandora users, but if you’re already paying for another music service, Slacker may not have enough to draw you away.

Slacker Radio Review

I never thought I would use a subscription music service in a million years. I was used to downloading music from iTunes or Amazon. Well, either a million years have passed, or I gave in to the tantalizing wiles of Spotify. I started with a 60-day free trial of the Premium service and have stuck around for four months since, paying $10 a month.

I’m not alone. Spotify now boasts over 6 million paying subscribers out of a total of 24 million users. That’s not bad considering you can listen to all 17+ million of their songs for free. (For comparison, iTunes has upwards of 28 million songs). There are also no time limits, at least in the U.S. The catch is, you have to deal with ads and you can only stream to your desktop or laptop computer.

On-demand music is great, but let’s face it, it’s easy to run out of music ideas and searching for artists and songs can be time-consuming and boring. Spotify allows you to customize radio stations based on music you listen to, check out popular playlists and use social features to see what other users are listening to.

The next step up is the Unlimited subscription plan which is $5 a month (no commitments). It’s basically the same thing as the free service but with no ads. You can only stream to your computer. And it’s still called Unlimited, even though time limits were removed from free plans last year.

You May Like Spotify Premium If…

So why go whole hog and pay 10 bucks a month for Premium? If you’re simply going to listen to music on your computer, then it’s not worth it. If you only only listen to a few specific artists or albums, it’s probably not for you. However, if you have a wide listening palette and intend for Spotify to be your primary source of music listening, then there are lot of good reasons to jump onboard.

Offline Listening with Premium

Number one, you can use Spotify on your smartphone, tablet, or other mobile device. Android, iOS, Windows Phone and Symbian users are supported. Number two, you can listen to Spotify offline on those mobile devices. No Wi-Fi necessary, no concerns about data plan limits.

3,333. That’s the number of offline tracks you can have synced on up to 3 devices each. I don’t know about you, but that’s enough offline music for me to have at my fingertips at any given time. It’s suitable for daily commutes or long road trips. And if you get sick of those offline songs, you can always just swap in new ones when you’re online.

Let’s say you actually had over 3,000 offline tracks. (I have under 100.) That’s a pretty sizable music library which would cost you hundreds or thousands of dollars if you bought the music online or offline (new or used). You’d have to subscribe to Spotify Premium for 8 years to spend a grand, and by that time, you’d have probably shuffled your thousands of offline tracks dozens of times.

AirPlay, Sonos, Squeezebox, Hurray!

If you’ve got Premium, you can listen to music around the house without your computer. AirPlay is available for the iPhone and iPad, and you can wirelessly stream your music to AirPlay-enabled devices. I use it to stream to a Philips AirPlay Speaker and an AppleTV with no problems at all and the sound quality is excellent. Unfortunately, Airplay is not currently available for the desktop program, even with the Premium service.

Additionally, premium subscribers can listen to Spotify on a Sonos music player, Logitech Squeezebox, WD TV Live and Boxee Box by logging in with their username.

I use the high bitrate setting (320 kbps) which is only available with Premium. 160 kbps is the standard bitrate on Spotify and not bad, but I can tell the difference on the Philips speaker. Plus, you can sync up your offline tracks on mobile devices at the 320 kbps setting (iOS and Android only).

Okay, It’s Not Perfect

Spotify still has some glaring gaps in their music catalog. As you may know, Beatles fans are out of luck. Pink Floyd Led Zeppelin are missing. Random things like Radiohead’s excellent 2007 album In Rainbows are not available, but their most recent, The King of Limbs, is. So iTunes and Amazon win there.

Despite this, I still find myself using Spotify almost exclusively, and these days I rarely venture back to purchase a song or album or even to listen to my music on iTunes. Why should I? Not only are all my iTunes music tracks available via the Spotify desktop program, but when I open Spotify, I get a lot of great listening suggestions that I can sample instantly and in their entirety.

With the success of Spotify, it’s no wonder that Apple and Google are planning to join the crowded music subscription arena. They will need to have a compelling service like Spotify, but Spotify already gets it (mostly) right.

Spotify Review