artists missing on g2

[willie321]

I too am beginning to believe that there is something going on in the background with Slacker when it comes to music. Being unable to stream at work, I need my G2 to fill in the day. With Pink Floyd, The Beatles etc gone, my built up channels seem to be repeating more often, for instance Low Spark by Traffic yesterday repeated within 7 songs (counted from the playlist) while this channel I had hoped was built up over time. Needless to say I am a bit disappointed.

 

[sphere79]

I'm having the same problems, though it seems to depend on exactly what artists are on your stations. My wife's main station is custom and has alot of country artists and she says it's still playing plenty of tunes. My more rock / classic rock oriented stations seem to have been thinned out more than hers have.

She's the one who figured out Floyd was gone, as it would play a bunch of Floyd tunes and Roger Water's live versions too and she'd end up skipping here and there. At first she didn't realize it, but when I asked her if she noticed anything gone, she said it seemed to be playing more of certain artists all of the sudden. I knew it was covering for something missing (and it's probably more than just Floyd + the other known missing artists we just haven't figured them all out yet). Also, it will still play live Roger Waters but not his versions of Pink Floyd tunes, just the solo stuff.

I know Slacker said they have negotiated directly with the labels, bypassing groups such as SoundExchange - but the rates for "internet" radio are not only higher than the rest but on a set scale that raises with time. Now while I do not support the RIAA, Sound Exchange or the blatant discrepancy in rates - I do think it's possible that some license holders are looking for more money from Slacker to parallel the increasing SE rates. They could be using the "download" rights (affecting the caching devices) as a negotiating tool, but it's just speculation - no one really knows.

I honestly don't see Slacker pulling in a ton of revenue via ads, and I wonder if this isn't just a battle of sorts ala ESPN and the cable / sat tv companies. Though when they pull a station said cable / sat company usually runs a still placeholder asking viewers to angrily call the offending channel that wants more money. We're not getting that in this case, and I don't doubt that a handful of artists simply want off of Slacker - but I'd bet there's more going on here and it involves money. As much as I don't like the music cartels, I'm not necessarily just going to side with Slacker either without more transparency.

 

[sphere79]

Recently there was a court ruling that affected how the rights to "transfer" songs were handled. So, in response, some artists became available to us, and some went away. We had received some Take down notices as well due to these new changes. Now, not all of them were permanent take down notices, some of them were just blanket takedown notices until we could meet the new requirements. We have been working on getting the additional permissions/rights in order and hope to be able to add some of these additional artists back in the near future.

We still sell portable players. I wouldn't say that they are being phased out, but certainly a new market has opened up in the last two years. Two years ago, smartphones were not really a factor in the "consumer" market. Today they are, and so we are certainly experiencing great growth there, and we are focused on growing there even more. That being said, we have had great success with our Portable Players, and we are still doing well with our Slacker G2 players. The market will tell us how we go, as long as the portables continue to be successful like they have been, we will continue to sell them.

As far as memberships, the vast majority of memberships and users are still based around our Web Experience. You are free to contact customer support with your situation and we'll assist you the best we can. We do expect that a large number of the "missing" artists will be back on the Players, and that you will continue to get the great stations you are accustomed too. That being said, we don't have a time frame for this because these things can take time.

As we get more information we will post it. We do not normally post the specifics of individual artists/songs because... well, there are simply too many for us to be able to update on a regular basis. For some of the larger (and most complained about) artists we will give you updates.. So, if we hear that we are able to add "metallica" (or another band that we know you all are missing) we will give you all a heads up here.

More updates to come as we have them.

Best regards,
Rome E

In case you guys missed this in the "open letter to Slacker's CEO" thread on Slacker's forums, RomeE has finally addressed the missing artists / "moving towards smartphones" concerns brought up in this thread. He was listing specific concerns in the letter point by point, but the response stands on it's own.

Addressing the problem with some specifics is a good start, hopefully they'll follow through and in the coming weeks we'll start getting some stuff back. I noticed my refreshes on my G1 don't take nearly as long as they used to. It's still playing some great stuff but the hole is apparent. I have at least a little more hope now that they'll get this mess figured out.

I remember back when Slacker was launched reading that they had something like 40 employees - 25 of them must be lawyers........