Slacker Radio for iPhone Video

Slacker Radio for iPhone Video Transcript

[ Music ] ^M00:00:03

>> With all the streaming Internet radio apps on the iPhone, who needs another? Well, believe it or not, Slacker Radio's new iPhone app makes a compelling case. I'm Jessica Dolcourt from CNET Download.com, with your First Look. The first thing I'll say is that Slacker Radio for iPhone 1.0 looks a lot slicker on the iPhone and iPod Touch than it does online. It really takes advantage of the iPhone's big screen to create a finger-friendly display that makes navigation and album art the big stars. For example, the station view is pretty visual. You'll see icons of your favorite stations and custom stations that you've built online, followed by search, featured stations, and a list of genres. When a station is playing, you get a good look at the album art, and a glimpse of the cover art for the following song. You can also move to a new song by flicking, but that count against you as a skip, and you can't go back, so be careful. The controls to pause, skip a song, mark a favorite, and ban an artist are large enough to comfortably tap. There's a volume slider for easy control, and you can also pause by double tapping the screen. There's more you can do, too, like view or change stations from the now playing screen, and fine-tune your preferences to accept more songs by artists you don't know. If you love the song and can't live without it, Slacker Radio for iPhone 1.0 can also link you to the iTunes Store. And now for the list of nos, Slacker Radio for iPhone has no support for landscape view, no way to create a new station from an iPhone, and no ability to play in the background while you do other things. Darn you Apple. The one thing it will do is resume playing the last active station when you start it up again. I'd say the biggest difference between Slacker Radio for iPhone and the rest to the streaming apps comes down to the service offerings themselves. Slacker Radio's advantage, in my opinion, is that when building stations on Slacker.com, you can specify artists you want in your list. With the rest, you pretty much need to trust their algorithms. I don't know about you, but I never end up liking as many of those songs as I feel I should. If that's you, too, I suggest you give Slacker Radio for iPhone a try. I'm Jessica Dolcourt, signing out. ^M00:02:03 [ Music ]