Radio-Style Streaming Music Services

Slacker Radio mixes the best of both worlds for an excellent all-around service

On demand-style streaming music services may receive the bulk of critical attention, but long before there was Spotify, Rdio or MOG, there were services like Pandora and Slacker that offer radio-style listening. Radio-style services are known for their "set it and forget it" interface -- in which you select a music style, artist or song, and the service plays a constant stream of similar tunes - but there are some key differences between Slacker and Pandora.

Slacker Radio (*Est. $4 and up; free version available) receives several accolades and is named the best streaming music service by both About.com and PCMag.com. (Note: ConsumerSearch is owned by About.com, but the two don't share an editorial affiliation.) However, its social sharing options are virtually nonexistent compared to MOG or Rdio. And while Slacker's 10 million-plus songs are nothing to sneeze at, it doesn't quite match Spotify's 15 million-strong catalog. So what makes Slacker Radio so memorable?

It's simple: Experts say that Slacker is the only service to mix the radio-style format with an on-demand option with any large degree of success. Most services that offer both formats started out on-demand, and then added a radio option for more casual listeners. Slacker took the opposite route, building itself from the ground up as a radio-style streaming music service, then adding on-demand listening at a later date.

Experts love Slacker Radio's radio options. More than 150 "stations" run the gamut of virtually all genres and sub-genres; each is curated by a DJ for relevance and flow, and reviewers say the human touch really shines through in the song selection. A handful of the stations don't play music at all, as Slacker also runs ABC News, ESPN Radio stations, a Weather Channel station and comedy selections (though you have to be a paid subscriber to access some of the specialty stations). If none of that strikes your fancy, you can also create your own music stations on the fly based around particular songs or artists. Just select a song and Slacker will serve up similar music. As you're listening, you can customize your station by highlighting songs you'd like to hear more often and banning songs and artists you never want to hear again.

While most services require users to subscribe to premium plans to unlock device support, Slacker lets free-version listeners stream music through mobile apps or home electronic devices like the Logitech Squeezebox or Sonos audio systems. Slacker supports more mobile platforms -- including Palm and Windows Phone 7 -- than its competitors, as well.

Reviewers report that the ads in Slacker's free version aren't nearly as frequent as Pandora's, though free-version listeners can't rewind tunes and can only skip six songs per station per hour. On the plus side, there is no limit to how much free music you can listen to. Upping to Slacker Radio Plus for $4 ditches the advertisements and the skip limits, and adds lyric displays and the ability to cache songs on your smartphone for offline use. A $10 Slacker Radio Premium subscription keeps all that and tosses in on-demand listening and the ability to create custom playlists from over 10 million available songs.

Aside from the negatives mentioned in the opening paragraph, Slacker Radio has one other Achilles heel: ho-hum streaming music quality. The service's 128 kbps streaming bitrate is similar to Pandora's or Spotify's free option, but lacking compared to Rdio or MOG's higher audio quality. Still, PCMag.com's Jeffrey Wilson says you shouldn't let that discourage you. "Unless you're an audiophile, Slacker's sound quality will satisfy even when the audio is pumped through computer speakers," he writes. Laptop Magazine also found the sound quality to be both "very good" and "reliable."

Experts say Pandora is an oldie, but still a goodie

Before Slacker, there was Pandora ($36 per year; free version available) -- and it's still around and impressing critics, mainly because of its sophisticated customization techniques.

If you really like or really dislike a particular song, Pandora requests that you either thumbs-up or thumbs-down it, respectively. The service then uses your accumulated song preferences to decide which new songs to add to your music stream. Pandora analyzes songs using a complex algorithm known as the Music Genome Project, which breaks songs down into dozens of different elements -- such as riff-heavy guitars, vocal syncopation, classically based structure, etc. So rather than just eliminating particular music genres from your stations, Pandora will also notice if you hate songs with synthesizers and banish those appropriately, as well. The inverse is also true; if you thumbs-up crooners, expect to hear a lot of Frank Sinatra and the rest of the Rat Pack.

Critics and users alike say the Music Genome Project works incredibly well, for the most part. Obviously, it requires a more hands-on approach in the beginning in order to get a firm grasp of your musical tastes. In fact, it works so well that most reviewers call it the best streaming music service for discovering new music, even though MOG and Rdio deliver much better social sharing options.

Pandora also earns accolades for a few other aspects of its service. Pandora's device support far outshines the standards for the genre, and the service is available on several phones, home electronics, and even in new car models from most of the major automotive manufacturers. The service's slick HTML 5-based web interface draws praise. Reviewers also say Pandora's price is right: the majority of users listen to the free, unlimited ad-supported version, and the premium Pandora One version costs only $36 for a yearly subscription -- much less than the monthly $5 to $10 most premium streaming music services charge.

Pandora suffers from some limitations that annoy listeners, however. The ad-supported version plays many more ads than competing services -- "Pandora serves you an obnoxious ad every 3 songs," Courtney Boyd Myers writes at TheNextWeb.com -- and free-version listeners can only skip 12 tracks a day or six an hour. Subscribing to Pandora One ditches the ads and lifts the daily skip limit, but the hourly skip limit remains. There are no rewinding or on-demand listening options, either.

Pandora also carries far less music than other services, with fewer than 1 million available tracks. Pandora's sound quality isn't quite up to par with the major on-demand services; Premium subscribers only receive 192 kbps-quality tracks, a far cry from the 320 kbps offered to MOG or Spotify Premium subscribers. The quality is even lower for free-version listeners. "Sound quality is unobjectionable -- it won't blow you away but it isn't offensive either," John Grandberg writes at InnerFidelity.com. "Come to think of it, that description summarizes my entire experience with Pandora."

All in all, most reviewers say MOG is the best option overall, but if you're looking for a streaming music service with a strong radio offering combined with on-demand listening and widespread -- and free -- device support, Slacker Radio is the way to go.