We wrote about this morning, and so did , but I'm going to take an alternative interpretation of the service that is less glowing...
here's what I see besides the undeniably sexy piece of hardware above. I bet Jason would want to stick that in his pants. Anyhow:
a) There's net radio.
Quality is good, according to our ears, and the song lists are setup by professional DJs. XM and other do this. Somehow, because of technical/legal jibberish, the service circumvents paying royalties.
Nice, if they pass those saved bucks along.
b) You can download this stuff, and your MP3s and Windows Media music/vids by WiFi to your Slacker device, a piece of hardware with a 4-inch screen that will be available for what I am assuming is $300. (With lower priced $150 sub-models available.
)
c) You can Download this content to the player for free...
but there are ads. Hmm. I don't necessarily hate DRM so much, personally, if it is done fairly.
But I hate ads.
You can remove them for a nominal fee..
.this is where the money comes in. Thankfully, the $7.
50 a month won't sting too much.
d) For $7.50 a month, you can get premium access, which allows you to skip more than 6 songs an hour, and drops the ads.
Wait. You can't skip more than 6 streamed songs an hour unless you pay? Stream what?
Oh, satellite!
e) Soon, satellite radio service, with car and home docks. Interestingly, it uses Ku-band satellites that are generally used for GPS, not dedicated ones like Sirius and Xm have to launch.
This is because they have a super-sensitive antenna that makes use of these weaker satellites possible. They're leasing their sat bandwidth. (Pass on those bucks you're saving!
)
f) So you can load new content onto it via Sat, and play it back later, or now. And you can skip songs, thanks to a long stream buffer. OK, technical differences aside, the recent generation satellite portables can timeshift, too.
Without the restriction on 6 song skips.
So, I don't get how this is revolutionary, except for the use of non-specialized satellites..
.and ads. I'm glad its cheaper.
And, by the way, I welcome alternative business models and sexy hardware. But this is maybe a bit overhyped right now. What am I missing?
When I use it, will I care? Will it be better than Sirius? No joke, I one time went 6 hours in a car, scanning Sirius and found nothing worth listening to.
Maybe, it won't matter. In the end, it might just be worth it to hold that skinny, black, beautiful hardware. More to come.
The way that I understand it is that I will load all of my MP3's onto the protable player or into the PC jukebox so they will always be there for me to listen to. Then when I am in a Wi-Fi or satellite area or on my PC using the jukebox, it will supplement the MP3 music I already have with other stuff that isn't in my current library and stream a radio station using my music and the stuff coming in via the stream. If I like that stuff, it will be noted and if I dont like it, I wont ever hear it again.
If I am not 'online', it will play my MP3's in a similar manner if I so please.
And just from playing with the online streaming aspect, if I want to listen to music that is like a certain band, I can dial into a station that will feature a lot of music by that band, but also feature music by similar artists. You can also do this by genre or era as far as I can see.
For instance, I like the White Stripes...
I put on the White Stripes channel and they are every 4th or 5th song...
but in between I will hear the Strokes, the Soledad Brothers, Jon Spenser, Deadboy and Elephantman, and Wolfmother and even some Hendrix...
while I dont like all of those bands as much as the White Stripes, they 'make sense'.
My tastes arent as eclectic ALL the time as some people's..
.I hate stations that go from Jay Z to Motown to AC/DC to Sufjan Stevens..
.when I want to work out, I want to rock..
.when I want to chill and listen to indie music, I want to listen to indie music, when I am drinking and want to hear old time honky tonk and western swing, I want to listen to that. And when I want to listen to Uncle Tupelo, I wouldnt mind that stream supplimented with Wilco and Son Volt there.
..and if slacker throws in a Pat Green song, I can banish it forever.
The fact that Slacker can present a viable way to take what I like and throw in other stuff that I may or may not know about...
or even just mix it in a manner where I dont need to put in effort creating playlists...
that's the value right there. The suprise factor of possibly hearing something new and cool is what made radio great and what makes the ipod seem kind of ridiculous to me. The fact that the streams can be fine-tuned or "narrowcasted" with Slacker makes it even more exciting.
I's exactly what I am looking for in media delivery and it's really much more simple than it looks. Like a lot of people, I am sick of the 80GB of music on my Ipod..
.and I am also sick of trolling through music blogs like Pitchfork, etc to find the 'hot new bands' especially when 98% of the stuff sucks ass..
.I want someone else to filter for me..
.then I want access to new stuff and I want it to be done in a way I can control..
.if the DJ is off on my tastes, that get fixed..
.the feedback is there.
I hate regular radio.
..I cant listen to it even for 3 minutes.
And Sirius, while ok, doesnt really suit my needs for new music delivery (it caters way to much to classic rock, hat-act country, rap and 'alternative'...
the only place to hear new indie music is Left of Center and CBC3...
Left of center is way too twee, and CBC3 is a bit canada-centric...
and the Underground Garage channel is great but 25% of that stuff isnt garage at all, only 2% of it is 'new' and the rest of the music played there has much more breadth than depth...
you hear a wide variety of artists, but its the same 3-4 songs).
I dont see what people don't 'get'. It seems pretty straight forward.
..it's personalized radio coupled with the convenience of an ipod.
..it will do whatever you want it to do.
I think it's going to change everything if they can pull it off.
1. Most of us tech folk are rock/alt rock/punk/hip hop listeners right?
Well Sirius and XM want to make everyone happy and have about 10 total rock/alt rock stations and abotu as many christian and soul. So far this has 12 alt rock stations alone, 13 rock, 2 UK rock! and 7 hip hop.
2. You can customize everything unlike XM/Sirius. When you get a song by a band you like some of them have their own "channel" so I selected a Kyuss channel in hard rock and it played me QOTSA, early soundgarden etc.
A David Cross comedy channel was cool too.
3. You can also tag artists and songs with hearts or ban songs to never hear them again.
Try that with 30 Seconds to Mars on Sirius!
4. Since its based on internet radio you get the start!
of every song.
5. That big screen display will be great for the car when you don't want to squint to find out which song just came on.
6. it will play and store mp3 and WMA. nice.
There should be more hype not less.
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