Being the huge music fan that I am I jumped on the new Slacker Music Service the very minute that they released their online music player. It's free (and ad free until the paid service is ready) and I like bright, shinny new objects. I am a heavy user of both Sirius and XM Satellite Radio and listen all day every day while at work and this seemed like a great fit for my rotation.
I didn't love their online music player. It really shot the browsers RAM usage through the roof and I was more frustrated with it than I thought I would be. Then a few days ago Slacker released their desktop radio player. This thing is cool.
It's been very light on RAM at about 10 MB when playing music but has a high virtual memory tag at about 100 MB. This doesn't slow down my system at all, but your mileage may vary. It has also been rock solid for a beta application. No hangs, crashes or other nasty happenings.
The thing about this service is the vast selection of music. My daughter says that my iPod is owned by a schizophrenic, but regardless of what I am in the mood for they have it. The service allows you to tag favorites which will increase the number of times you will hear tracks from that band as well as add in more music from similar artists. You can also mark a song as a "hate" and not have to hear it again.
I am a heavy user of satellite radio being a subscriber of both Sirius and XM so I don't know that I am willing to pay for their premium service for an as yet unannounced price. I do really like that I can tell the software what I like and what I don't like and it adjusts for my interests. I will certainly hang with the free service if the ads are reasonable in frequency and I may just go for the subscription if it isn't a killer.
You can download the Slacker Desktop Radio Player here.
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