I just read that Spotify is coming to the U.S! Oh, wait. That was an article from 2009. I hope they really mean it this time. I love the product. To grease the skids for them a bit, I’ve put together a little travel guide for what they can expect in advertising and media circles when they do arrive.
Being Swedish I’m guessing they’re fantastic dressers and that their accents will make even the Brits envious. American agencies all have European envy, and Spotify is certifiably a big deal abroad. Agency status meetings will be preceded by Absolut and herring in honor of Spotify’s arrival. → Read More
Slacker, the ‘personal radio’ company, has raised $3 million in debt funding, an SEC filing reveals. The company confirmed that it has secured extra capital, from all of its existing investors, but wouldn’t say much else.
Asked what the financing round would be used for, the answer I got was: “for scaling the business”. → Read More
While I don’t want to suggest that you people are lazy (you are), I do want to offer you slackers two one year subscriptions to Slacker Radio Plus and three three-month subscriptions. With these subscriptions you get: Slacker Radio Plus: *Unlimited Skips *Unlimited Song Requests *No Audio or Banner Ads *Complete Lyrics *Station caching on BlackBerry, Android and coming soon to iPhone *Over 2 Million Songs *A Pony (Prize is not available) Sounds great, right? (Note the fine print about the pony. You don’t really get a pony.) → Read More
An enraged reader, Josh Vickers, writes in today to complain about Slacker’s premium online radio service. Like Pandora, Slacker streams music to users for free. And like Pandora, Slacker limits the number of times you can skip songs each hour, and has advertising.
Both services allow users to remove those limitations if they pay a yearly fee. Slacker charges $48/year. Pandora charges $36/year for their Pandora One service.
The frustration from users isn’t that Slacker charges more. It’s how they market the premium product. Pandora straight up says they’ll charge you $36 to upgrade. No misleading marketing statements. You pay $36 and you get Pandora One for a year.
But Slacker tricks you. They give you a seven day free trial and say it’s $3.99 a month after that. But you get billed for the whole year – $48 – after that seven day period is over. And if you don’t want want to pay for that year, you have to cancel during the seven day period. → Read More
Last week Verzion pushed Slacker Radio onto the BlackBerry Storm. This time around, the BlackBerry Tour is getting the same treatment. Why you ask? Well, Slacker Radio has put a little icon within the app that links available songs to the VZW V-Cast music store. So when a tune plays through Slacker Radio, customers will be able to purchase the song right there. → Read More
Surprise! It looks like Sony’s soon-to-be-released X-series Walkmans feature a built-in Slacker Radio application that allows users to fill the device up with music from the streaming radio service when it’s within range of a Wi-Fi connection. → Read More
In order to make way for the new Slacker portable players, it looks as though the first-generation units will continue to be priced to move. You can grab an 8GB Slacker WiFi Internet Radio Player for $69.99 plus $5 shipping over on sellout.woot.com, today only. → Read More
Here’s a pretty great deal on a 2GB Slacker Portable player. It generally costs about $75 to $100 elsewhere but you can pick one up for just $54.99 at Geeks.com. → Read More
Sony’s $300 Internet Video Link add-on box for BRAVIA-series TVs has recently added the Slacker streaming music service to the list of available channels. Also added was content from Howcast.com, a site that contains a series of user-generated how-to videos. Slacker ought to lend some good music features to Sony’s service and Howcast has won some awards from TIME and PC Magazine, so both seem like good additions. Full release after the jump… → Read More
When you’ve seen one unboxing, you’ve pretty much seen them all. Laptop points out that the player is big and bulky, but it does have a 4-inch screen. Umm. Why do you need such a large screen for a device that doesn’t play video? The UI is very similar to the Web site so you won’t get discombobulated when using it. It has a touch strip for the sake of having some touch controls. Refreshing content wirelessly seems to be a breeze and is quite fast. It doesn’t sound all that impressive, but we’ll soon find out when we get our paws on one. → Read More
Was anyone really surprised that Slacker delayed shipment of their player multiple times? Come on! With a name like Slacker it was inevitable. Anyway, pre-orders began shipping today. In case you wanted to know. → Read More
Lovers of Slacker Radio, prepare to shower me with petals of rare flowers, delicious food, and promises of sexual favors, for I bring news that the Slacker Portable, which has been delayed more times than Winehouse’s rehab visits, is finally set to ship tomorrow. For those not in the know, the Slacker Portable is a device not unlike an iPod or Zune, but it uses local Wi-Fi to load songs into the device which are played for your, and you rate them, as you do on the Slacker website. For those who like social networking mixed in with their music, this is the player for you, and you can thank me for the news later. Slacker Portable Ships Tomorrow. What’s Next? [Laptop, whom we bested in Beer Pong at CES, just so's ya know] → Read More
http://progressive.playstream.com/playstream/progressive/flashplayers/FLVPlayer.swf So I groped the Slacker Portable last night. I’ve been hard on Slacker about how delayed its portable player has been. First it was supposed to be here by the end of the summer, then it was supposed to be here in December, then it got delayed again until the end of January. I hope it launches in the end of January like it’s supposed to because I don’t think it’ll be able to survive another delay. → Read More
