Slacker Radio planning major overhaul

IdRatherBeSkiing

IdRatherBeSkiing

Sherbet is NOT and NEVER WILL BE ice cream.
Oct 11, 2008
27,350
13,906
168
Toronto, ON
DAB said:
Wow seriously? Favorites are now called Bookmarked, you have stations and playlist depending on if you have plus or premium plan. You do have one section called favorite songs.

Favorite songs are they blue or yellow? What the heck are you talking about?

I personally think this design is a huge improvement. Folks hate change and I get that. But the old interface was butt ugly and had really terrible interface. This is more in line with most other music services. You don't have to keep the big icons if you don't want them, just switch your list to text mode.

My suggestion is play with it for awhile before you start complaining.

Old Slacker is still available, but it won't be for long. Good Riddance! The most horrible music web site in the industry. Now they got a web interface that makes them look like the are actually playing in this decade.
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I think this one is completly god-awful. I hate it with every fibre of my being.

And are my favourite songs in blue or yellow? I have no friking idea. I wanted to mark one but I can't tell whether I made it a favourite or removed it. The old one was bland and boring. This one is bright, busy and awful.
 
DAB

DAB

Mod Emeritus
Oct 9, 2008
9,434
149
63
Louisiana
IdRatherBeSkiing said:
I think this one is completly god-awful. I hate it with every fibre of my being.

And are my favourite songs in blue or yellow? I have no friking idea. I wanted to mark one but I can't tell whether I made it a favourite or removed it. The old one was bland and boring. This one is bright, busy and awful.
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Well you know what they say... "Different Strokes" I don't see anything awful about it myself. The reviews in most places are very positive. I think it is a turn in the right direction. Bright, cheerful with cool interface, versus, black and boring. The old interface was killing Slacker and they are never going to be able to move ahead if they don't go in this direction. Most other apps are pretty bright, colorful and polished. I think they are going to have to do a bit of tweaking, but overall I think its going to find a high acceptability rate. For most it will just be getting over the initial learning curve. Just like with Windows 8.
 
IdRatherBeSkiing

IdRatherBeSkiing

Sherbet is NOT and NEVER WILL BE ice cream.
Oct 11, 2008
27,350
13,906
168
Toronto, ON
DAB said:
Well you know what they say... "Different Strokes" I don't see anything awful about it myself. The reviews in most places are very positive. I think it is a turn in the right direction. Bright, cheerful with cool interface, versus, black and boring. The old interface was killing Slacker and they are never going to be able to move ahead if they don't go in this direction. Most other apps are pretty bright, colorful and polished. I think they are going to have to do a bit of tweaking, but overall I think its going to find a high acceptability rate. For most it will just be getting over the initial learning curve. Just like with Windows 8.
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So can which colour is a favourite blue or yellow.
 
Satradiodude

Satradiodude

Active Member
Aug 7, 2011
215
113
43
DAB said:
Yellow is when you heart of favor a song! I've not seen the blue?
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I notice it's blue when you are on a song that has not been labled a favorite.

I subscribed to the plus service for a year and let it run out when I was on the fence about the premium version, so I contacted on line support to ask some questions and the response I received was abrupt and rude, so I decided I would not renew at all.

If it was not for this forum I would not even know they were offering a free preview for the full service today, I got no email or any communication at all- so how do they expect to get or renew existing subscribers when they don't inform about the free preview on the launch of there redesigned website?

Also why did they kill the yearly plan?- they could offer a break and get revenue faster.

I personally prefer SiriusXM - (I do have lifetime, but I also get the internet subscription as well and really like the On demand and the my control feature.
 
DAB

DAB

Mod Emeritus
Oct 9, 2008
9,434
149
63
Louisiana
Slacker for a long time has been horrible at customer retention and keeping their subscribers informed. All the other music services put out a weekly newsletter letting you as a subscriber know what is new and whats going on with the service. I've never gotten anything from Slacker. Like you said you want folks to come back, but you don't maintain a database of forum subscribers that you can send an email to inviting them back for the free preview? It just bogles the mind how inept they are at this stuff.

These poor support guys try to put a pretty face on it, but you can run, but cannot hide from the facts.
 
J

Jon

Well-Known Member
Dec 16, 2008
15,259
5,279
168
I toyed with the mobile app a little, and like it a lot better than I do the old version. The color scheme works on a mobile screen, which helps see what you're doing when you're driving, or doing some other activity and can't look at the screen for too long. The brighter screen makes a significant difference.

I also like that when you go to your cached stations, it gives you the option of playing the streaming version, or the cached version. And the cached version comes right up, where there was some lag before. In that regard it's a dramatic improvement.
 
IdRatherBeSkiing

IdRatherBeSkiing

Sherbet is NOT and NEVER WILL BE ice cream.
Oct 11, 2008
27,350
13,906
168
Toronto, ON
Have they always had a 'favourite song channel'? If not, this is a nice addition.

Still think the GUI looks god awful but in the end, I think I can still do anything I did before so it doesn't really matter. 99% of the time it remains minimized.
 
M

mmp1964

New Member
Feb 21, 2013
2
0
1
More than just look and feel

DAB said:
Well you know what they say... "Different Strokes" I don't see anything awful about it myself. The reviews in most places are very positive. I think it is a turn in the right direction. Bright, cheerful with cool interface, versus, black and boring. The old interface was killing Slacker and they are never going to be able to move ahead if they don't go in this direction. Most other apps are pretty bright, colorful and polished. I think they are going to have to do a bit of tweaking, but overall I think its going to find a high acceptability rate. For most it will just be getting over the initial learning curve. Just like with Windows 8.
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The problem for me is not the look. It is the functionality. They have completely up-ended how you manage custom stations. I know they dumbed it down to make it easier to use for more casual listeners, but they could have done that without alienating power users. I used to be able to view all of the artists associated with my custom stations in a list, and followed a guided path of related artists that I could than add simply by checking a box. It was an awesome feature. Now - that is all gone. There is no way to see the artists associated with a station, other than a stupid graphical representation that shows maybe 10 artists. To add an artist, I have to search for that artists outside of the context of the station, and then add the artist to that or any other station.

Slacker is still superior to Pandora - still has a bigger library, offline content (for $4/month), unlimited skips ($4/month) and on-demand/playlist functionality for supported artists ($9.99/month). But not sure how they line up vs. Rdio, Spotify, etc. after this release. Not happy right now w/ Slacker.
 
roscoryan

roscoryan

DRC Graphics Guru
Oct 13, 2008
435
18
18
Burnsville, MN
I do like the new interface and look. It was a much needed upgrade in my book.

A couple of the advanced features will be missed, but I think Slacker has realized they needed to have a cleaner, simpler format to compete with Pandora for the mainstream listener.

One other factor I'm really crossing my fingers on is the new marketing effort. I'm very happy to FINALLY see them getting aggressive on going after Pandora. It's a much better service IMHO:

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9FBj1r1k-A]Slacker. The most complete music service on Earth. - YouTube[/ame]
 
roscoryan

roscoryan

DRC Graphics Guru
Oct 13, 2008
435
18
18
Burnsville, MN
mmp1964 said:
The problem for me is not the look. It is the functionality. They have completely up-ended how you manage custom stations. I know they dumbed it down to make it easier to use for more casual listeners, but they could have done that without alienating power users. I used to be able to view all of the artists associated with my custom stations in a list, and followed a guided path of related artists that I could than add simply by checking a box. It was an awesome feature. Now - that is all gone. There is no way to see the artists associated with a station, other than a stupid graphical representation that shows maybe 10 artists. To add an artist, I have to search for that artists outside of the context of the station, and then add the artist to that or any other station.
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Did you try clicking on the "Looking for the old site? Click here" link on the bottom of the new page?
 
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