So I bought this Slacker G1 Radio Player for $50 on an impulse during the last Woot off. I've always loved Pandora, but it does get really repetitive with the songs...kinda sucks to hear the same 15-20 songs over and over again on each station. But mainly I was just interested in the player since it looked cooler than my Pandora iPhone app.

So this Slacker service is supposed to be similar to Pandora (with thumbs up/down for each song etc), and I was thinking with this player that I'd have to be Wi-Fi connected to listen to my stations. I found out that the player actually caches songs for its stations in it's measly 2GB of memory (this is the old version), and saves all your recommendations so when you hit a Wi-Fi or plug in the USB it automatically updates your stations with new music based on your recommendations. Of course you can use their web player to build your stations or you can download their application too. You can also transfer mp3s etc to it...on this model I think they give you 500MB for that purpose, though you get up to 3G on the newer models. If you subscribe to their premium service you get unlimited skips, you can save your favorite songs to your library (I assume your Slacker library, not your real MP3 library), and it sounds like you can do requests that play right away. I think premium currently costs $4/month.

When you're listening you can scroll through different views showing album art, artist history and album reviews for whatever is playing, and best of all it actually plays *good* music, with a pretty good amount of variety so far. I actually haven't even made any of my own stations yet because a bunch of theirs are pretty good.

Only issue I've hit so far is an IE script error with their Windows player but I'm sure that's due to our draconian security policy and not the application.

Anyone else tried this out yet?

G1


G2


http://www.slacker.com/
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/02/exclusive-revie.html
http://reviews.cnet.com/mp3-players/slacker-portable-player-8gb/4505-6490_7-32745548.html


This sounds badass:

Quote :

"Car adapter will eventually refresh channels via Ku-band satellite"

12/19/2008 3:05:44 PM

never heard of it, haven't really paid attention to the paid radio market. despite the repetitiveness, pandora is still good enough for me

12/19/2008 3:13:36 PM

meh....pandora is free

12/19/2008 3:27:59 PM

I bought an iPhone so I can carry around less devices, not more.

But I'm glad you like it. I thought about getting one, but decided it would probably not be worth it for me.

And I think that the G1s look way better than the G2s. but I'm not a fan of anything with large buttons on the face.

12/19/2008 5:16:36 PM

I was worried this thread was gonna have something to do with Pandora being shut down.

12/19/2008 5:26:11 PM

slacker's service is free also, they have their own website like pandora

the slacker handheld is what makes it different from pandora

12/19/2008 5:29:36 PM

Hey, there's a Pandora handheld too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora_(console)

12/19/2008 5:44:37 PM

Quote :

"I bought an iPhone so I can carry around less devices, not more. "

12/19/2008 6:36:21 PM

yeah having another device to carry around is annoying...but i'll be using mine mainly at work at this point, so it's no biggie. but if i wanna use it in the car i'll need a mini-usb charger in there

12/20/2008 1:20:51 PM

Yeah I got the G1 from Woot a couple weeks ago.

I like it, I had a lot of trouble getting it to refresh at first, and the battery life isn't much, but it's pretty nice otherwise.

12/21/2008 2:08:33 PM

battery life is nearing painful, but the music is oh so nice so i can deal with it.

and yeah the refresh sucked at first, but it's working well now on wi-fi...though it does take a while.

i need some way to charge this thing in the car

12/27/2008 6:24:40 PM

You said it took mini usb, right? Something like this should work out alright, no?

12/27/2008 8:51:24 PM

yeah that'll work, it's just gonna be annoying running two different wires for the G1. I'm so used to having my ipod in the glovebox and controlling it from head unit. was thinking of taking apart the usb connector so i only have to run it from the G1, but I gotta buy one first.

12/28/2008 8:06:34 PM

I <3 my iPhone + pandora still... I have yet to use the ipod feature of my iphone because of this...

but I know what you mean by it playing the same songs over and over again... that and I get nervous when I blend new music into a station b/c it will often take the station down a path I'm not looking for.

12/28/2008 9:04:34 PM

8GB version's up on woot today.

12/29/2008 1:23:41 AM

Quote :

"I bought an phone so I can carry around less devices, not more. "

true.

12/29/2008 9:19:40 AM

well they already have a blackberry app, hopefully theyre working on an iphone app

12/30/2008 3:58:14 PM

this is pretty tight.

but i do agree. i have had my ipod shuffle for awhile, i have XM in my truck, I have my computer.....its just not rational to have one of these.

i do wish that this program was built into some of my other devices though, so based off of my listening habits, favorites and taste of music that my ipod or computer (and if you have iphones and whatnot) would beable to link up to see what new songs or bands or albums are out and which ones it recommends i look up.

that way, i wouldnt have to hope to just randomly hear a good song.

12/31/2008 2:26:41 AM

Quote :

"but i do agree. i have had my ipod shuffle for awhile, i have XM in my truck, I have my computer.....its just not rational to have one of these."

you can listen to their/your custom stations on their web player at http://www.slacker.com. The player is only so you can take your stations with you

12/31/2008 9:03:14 AM

getting my g2 today, will sit this permanently in my car as an xm/sirius alternative. i'll post a personal review later.

1/12/2009 2:34:17 PM

^ charge via USB?

I've been listening using their web player lately and i love it. once i get my car set up for usb charging i'll start listening to my G1 more

1/12/2009 11:10:49 PM

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=298307011&mt=8

1/13/2009 11:08:04 PM

check this adapter out for your car, on sale for cheap at amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Twin-Socket-USB-Charger-CC02/dp/B000JLPMJY/ref=pd_ys_iyr1

i have my g2 mounted in my car now, sitting in its cradle and used this adhesive which works perfectly:http://www.amazon.com/Henkel-HU-5-Double-Mounting-60-Count/dp/B000BQL2HS/ref=pd_ys_iyr4

then used this monster cable, which sounds a lot better than the radioshack cable i initially used:http://www.amazon.com/Monster-MusicConnect-MPC-MCON-MINI-2M/dp/B000A6V7MY/ref=pd_ys_iyr6

i have my gps plugged into the adapter as well. in my car, the cig lighter doesn't turn off when the car turns off, so it's great that right on the plug on the adapter there is an on/off button. the whole setup is very clean, and works perfectly. i'm glad i went this route, kicks the shit out of any other option i could have went with. if i want to refresh the stations, i can just bring the fully-charged player into work and let it refresh stations wirelessly while i'm working or "working" i have 40 stations set and each has ~100 songs AFAIK, so i'm in music heaven right now.

1/14/2009 10:29:29 AM

WOO HOO!!! Slacker on my iPhone. Thx evan

I think I like Slacker more than Pandora cause they actually hired DJs to create their playlists for them, which results in better music being played. I'm a fan of programming, and I can appreciate what Pandora has done with their ratings system, but Slacker is superior in my book. Plus they have the portable players to cache your stations on, and you can get premium memberships if you want more options.

^ thx for the info!

1/14/2009 11:36:15 AM

Does the iphone app work for you guys? It doesn't let me search and doesn't show the stations I've created on the website. Just says I don't have any stations - even though i do

1/14/2009 3:56:15 PM

for the love of god and all that is holy, please don't pay $20 for a 3.5mm audio cable... don't you people know yet that monster cable is a complete ripoff?

http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=102&cp_id=10218&cs_id=1021802&p_id=644&seq=1&format=2

1/14/2009 4:44:51 PM

^^search works fine for me

cant see my custom stations but i dont care that much (since i only have one at this point)

1/14/2009 4:52:44 PM

i know monster is a ripoff but i can live with $20. works great.

1/14/2009 5:19:56 PM

I just bought a G1 and I'm going to get a sub to the Premium service. But can I put two portables on the same account?

1/28/2009 1:46:49 PM

So far really enjoying my G1. Just got it today.

2/2/2009 2:18:28 PM

Also FYI if anybody has the G1, they released a newer firmware that really makes syncing and other issues go away. I had problems getting everything synced when I started, but most all of that cleared up now that I have the newer firmware. I'm really thinking that XM is about to go bye-bye for me.

2/3/2009 12:15:50 PM

I've been listening to pandora for a while and I only get a repeat song like once a week or more. Maybe you have very dissimilar music tastes or something. But I believe you can set it up so that pandora won't replay a song for a month.

2/3/2009 12:26:18 PM

Quote :

"pandora is free"

meh

2/3/2009 2:03:34 PM

Quote :

"Also FYI if anybody has the G1, they released a newer firmware that really makes syncing and other issues go away. I had problems getting everything synced when I started, but most all of that cleared up now that I have the newer firmware."

How do you gety the firmware update though? From what I remember it only updates after it's done snycing...which has been taking forever lately for me.

I think I'm going to sell my G1 soon, since they have the iPhone app now. If anyone wants it just me know.

2/13/2009 9:41:21 AM

having premium sub on a G2 is still as awesome as the day i got it. really does beat the crap out of XM (for music, not talk radio).

2/18/2009 12:59:31 PM

^^You can do it one of multiple ways. The easiest way I found was to download the USB Sync Adapter program so you can plug it into your computer without having to use the legacy Player that was originally being used when the G1 came out.

2/18/2009 1:18:47 PM