San Diego –
is turning smartphones into
cloud-based MP3 players, enabling users to select individual songs and albums
for cellular and WiFi streaming on demand by artist, album title, and genre.
Consumers will be able to select songs from
Slacker’s library of more than 2 million songs.
“There are a few players in the
on-demand space, but Slacker is the first to do both internet radio and
on-demand, offering their listeners the ultimate music choice,” a spokesperson
told TWICE. “Traditionally there are two kinds of services — internet radio
like Pandora and, up to this point, Slacker — or on-demand listening, like
Rhapsody and Rdio, but Slacker is the first to offer music lovers both.”
To do so, the company is launching Slacker
Premium Radio, a $9.99/month service with on-demand access to individual songs,
albums and user-made playlists. The service will be available in October on PCs
as well as on BlackBerry, Android and iPhone smartphones loaded with a Slacker
app. The service will also come to other devices and platforms at a later date,
potentially including TVs. Slacker already offers its current services through
Sony TVs and Blu-ray players, the spokesman noted.
Slacker’s current services consist
of free Slacker Basic Radio, which provides users with a select number of skips
per hour, and a $3.99/month Slacker Radio Plus service that allows for
unlimited song skipping with no ads but with ability to cache songs for offline
playback.
