James Delahunty
17 Mar 2007 17:43
A new start-up from San Diego is set to pit itself against giants in the music industry including Apple Computer Inc. and XM Satellite Radio. A beta version of Slacker was launched on Wednesday, and it aims to take digital radio beyond the web. It's founders include former CEOs in the business, including Dennis Mudd from MusicMatch and Jonathan Sasse from iRiver.
Its service is similar to those offered by Yahoo! Music and Pandora, allowing users to select radio stations based on their preferences or creating custom stations by selecting songs as their favorites. A user cannot play any track on-demand, instead the service will use a recommendation engine to play music the user will probably like, introducing them possibly to new artists.
Later this year, the company will release Slacker Jukebox, desktop software that will have an optional $7.50 per month Premium subscription service to remove advertisements and store all "favorited" songs on a computer. The company also plans to launch a portable player later on with a 4-inch color screen and WiFi connectivity.
Source:
Betanews