Pandora vs. Slacker

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Bandit 5160

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Oct 31, 2008
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Both are good and have there advantages. I love Slacker's large selection of pre-programmed channels in all music genres. Pandora's pre-programmed channels aren't as good. But I love the fact that everything is totally free on Pandora. You can create new stations, share stations all for free and on Slacker you have to pay to do those things. I use both, but I am a "free user" on Slacker and use that for their pre-programmed channels, and I use Pandora to listen to stations others created, like the Lucy channel on another thread about Pandora (thanks for that link, BTW!) But the best thing about both services is NO CENSORHIP AT ALL!
 
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D

Dragline

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Nov 12, 2008
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Are Slacker and Pandora related in any way? I thought Slacker was started via a collaboration with Pandora and some others. I've actually found some artists on Slacker that aren't on Pandora.
 
DAB

DAB

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Oct 9, 2008
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You do not have to pay for Slacker to create customized stations or to share them.

The premium Slacker service offers the following advantages:
No Ads on any station
Request Radio Feature that gives you influence over songs you want to hear on your station
Unlimited Skipping on all stations
Ability to control the DJ and Station ID On/Off
Save songs to your Library for playback later with the click of a button

I used Pandora for months before I jumped on Slacker. But the one thing I have often found with Pandora is that it sometimes repeats songs even though you have a big selection of artist setup as your seed for the station. I have never had this problem with Slacker. I do think Pandora at this time still has an edge in terms of customizing stations, but it is only slight. The more I have used Slacker I've learned the system and have been able to create to very good stations.

I will say that the Pandora music library appears to have a lot more new age music and various new age artist compared to Slacker.
 
hank-the-dwarf

hank-the-dwarf

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Oct 12, 2008
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I use pandora more than slacker as of right now.I guess because i found it first and have put alot of time into my stations.It does repeat,but when it does i just tell it to not play the song for a month and i add a different song to the station.
 
O

out of control

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Oct 29, 2008
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Dragline said:
Are Slacker and Pandora related in any way? I thought Slacker was started via a collaboration with Pandora and some others. I've actually found some artists on Slacker that aren't on Pandora.
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I seem to remember from a long time ago reading......Slacker is a group of folks from another music provider that sunk, but it was not any Pandora people. Some other group. :scratch:
 
KTMCDO

KTMCDO

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Oct 15, 2008
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Dragline said:
Are Slacker and Pandora related in any way? I thought Slacker was started via a collaboration with Pandora and some others. I've actually found some artists on Slacker that aren't on Pandora.
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Slacker was founded in 2004.[3]

March 15, 2007 - Slacker, Inc. is launched. [5] The company is headed by Dennis Mudd, CEO. [6] Mr. Mudd is the former CEO of MusicMatch, which was purchased by Yahoo Music and is now known as LAUNCHcast. Other notable executives include the president Jim Cady, former CEO of Rio, and vice president of marketing Jonathan Sasse, former president of iriver America.

September 20, 2007 - Slacker finalizes its deals with 4 Major labels; SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT, EMI, Universal, and Warner. Slacker also announced deals with thousands of Indie labels including Beggars Group, Matador Records, IRIS, Ubiquity and Sanctuary Group as well as indie aggregators IODA, IRIS, and The Orchard, which gives listeners access to millions of songs. [7]

November 15, 2007 - Slacker begins taking pre-orders for their portable music players, to be shipped January 31, 2008 [8]. The first generation players are available in 3 capacities: 15 stations (2GB), 25 stations (4GB), and 40 stations (8GB). The portable players can be updated from a computer via USB or WiFi. [9]

January 9, 2008 - Slacker receives Laptop Magazine's Best of CES Portable Audio/Video Player Award for the not yet released Slacker Portable Player. [10].

January 31, 2008 - The Slacker Portable Radio Player begins shipping. [11]

April 2, 2008 - Slacker announces its partnership with Devicescape, allowing Slacker to integrate Devicescape Connect into its Portable Players. [12]

April 8, 2008 - Slacker announces agreements with top music publishers, including EMI Music Publishing, Sony/ATV Music Publishing, Universal Music Publishing Group and Warner/Chappell Music. The agreements, signed before the Slacker Portable Player launched, allow Portable Player users to listen to cached Internet radio stations and allow premium radio users to save songs for later playback. [13]

September 16, 2008 - Slacker announces the availability of the Slacker G2 Personal Radio Player, the next generation of the world’s only completely portable Personal Radio player
SOURCE wikipedia
 
O

out of control

Member
Oct 29, 2008
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I'm sure folks remember the release of the first gen player was a bust. Seemed Slacker was a appropriate name at the time !
 
Musicologist

Musicologist

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Nov 22, 2008
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I use Pandora. Not because I think it's "better", but because I have the option of streaming Pandora to my Samsung Instinct cellphone, unlimited for $2.99 per month.

I'm not currently doing so, because I need to create more genre channels, and then get them all fine-tuned. Once I do that, 2.99 per month for that much personally selected music "on the go", will be well worth it.


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DAB

DAB

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Oct 9, 2008
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Pandora is not a bad service by any means. I used it for months prior to eventually getting onboard with Slacker. I have some great stations I've created in Pandora, even some really cool holiday ones. But for the life of me, I can't seem to tweak these darn things enough to resolve the repetition issue. It is way worse than Sat Radio even. I've had tons of artist and done everything and they still occur. Someone suggested hitting it so that song doesn't play for a month, well that is just not a very good solution in my book. I just don't want to hear it over 5 times in 3 hours. But I wouldn't mind hearing it once a day on some channels or every couple of days. This is where Slacker is superior in terms of customization.

Anyway, it sound like you've got a good setup and I do enjoy using Pandora on my iPod Touch so I understand how the streaming works.
 
Musicologist

Musicologist

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Nov 22, 2008
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DAB said:
Pandora is not a bad service by any means. I used it for months prior to eventually getting onboard with Slacker. I have some great stations I've created in Pandora, even some really cool holiday ones. But for the life of me, I can't seem to tweak these darn things enough to resolve the repetition issue. It is way worse than Sat Radio even. I've had tons of artist and done everything and they still occur. Someone suggested hitting it so that song doesn't play for a month, well that is just not a very good solution in my book. I just don't want to hear it over 5 times in 3 hours. But I wouldn't mind hearing it once a day on some channels or every couple of days. This is where Slacker is superior in terms of customization.

Anyway, it sound like you've got a good setup and I do enjoy using Pandora on my iPod Touch so I understand how the streaming works.
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I've run into some repetition on Pandora, but luckily it hasn't been as bad as you're experiencing.

Is it worse in some genres, more so than others? My guess is they may have a limited song inventory in some genres, thus the repeats.
 
DAB

DAB

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Oct 9, 2008
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I have several stations with 150 artist and probably 50 or more songs and have used the thumbs down and thumbs up, but I do indeed get repeats.

I also find repeats are even more worse on their own created stations. I just recently listened to one of hte country stations and I kid you not in a 3 hour period I heard one particular song 5 times. That would be the extreme case, I find a lot less of a problem with self created stations, but have experienced the issue there too.

Maybe it is something I am doing, I don't know, but I don't think so as I've read many discuss this issue even on other forums.
 
Musicologist

Musicologist

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Nov 22, 2008
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DAB said:
I have several stations with 150 artist and probably 50 or more songs and have used the thumbs down and thumbs up, but I do indeed get repeats.

I also find repeats are even more worse on their own created stations. I just recently listened to one of hte country stations and I kid you not in a 3 hour period I heard one particular song 5 times. That would be the extreme case, I find a lot less of a problem with self created stations, but have experienced the issue there too.

Maybe it is something I am doing, I don't know, but I don't think so as I've read many discuss this issue even on other forums.
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Do you think it might be because Pandora has a limited song inventory in some genres?
 
S

snakester

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Oct 29, 2008
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I'll take slacker over pandora. The UI is more polished, and making your own station is a hell of a lot easier. I STILL haven't figured out how to do anything in Pandora except enter an artists name and get music like them... but I might just be retarded.
 
Musicologist

Musicologist

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Nov 22, 2008
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DAB said:
Anyway, it sound like you've got a good setup and I do enjoy using Pandora on my iPod Touch so I understand how the streaming works.
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1. Is the sound quality pretty good?
2. Is the interface "user friendly"?


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DAB

DAB

Mod Emeritus
Oct 9, 2008
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Musicologist said:
1. Is the sound quality pretty good?
2. Is the interface "user friendly"?


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Click to expand...


The Pandora App is a pleasure to use. Navigation is effortless, and feels nearly exactly like using the iPhone's native iPod application, with album covers that slide from left to right as one song switches to the next and the same stations and song catalog available on Pandora via the web. Songs stream in stereo 128 Kbps MP3 via wifi and if you use it on the iPhone then you can select between mono 64Kbps and stereo 128Kbps to be used between Edge or G3.

In my opinion the SQ is very good, but I have to be honest, I think Slacker's AAC+ sounds a lot better even though it is only 40Kbps via the Slacker G2 and of course 128Kbps via their web interface.

AAC+ rocks compared to MP3 even at lower bitrates.
 
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