Floppyhead – Digital Media and Streaming

The upcoming Slacker Portable Player is a marriage between an iPod device and a music service like Pandora. I was at the beach this past week and came across an article in Business 2.0 about Slacker. It is definitely an interesting idea and an innovative way to compete against the iPod/iTunes juggernaut.

Basically Slacker works similar to Pandora, leveraging internet radio to deliver you new music. The Slacker Portable Player will eventually integrate with your online “radio” and download songs automatically. Your custom stations are updated on the Slacker player, ensuring that your favorite music always plays when you want it to.

The Portable player may cost as much as $400 dollar while the radio service is ad-supported. A premium version of the service will surface later this year that will charge subscribers $7.50/month to get rid of banner ads, eliminate the “six song skips per hour per channel” limit, and allow users to designate any currently-playing track as a favorite to have it added to their online music library.

As always content will be king. Slacker appears to be doing a good job on that end, having already made deals withUniversal, Sony/BMG, Warner Music Group, and hundreds of indie labels.

I have mixed feelings about Slacker. I think Pandora is really cool, especially when it is integrated into a system like Sonos, so I have somewhat high expectations for Slacker. I am not quite sure how Slacker’s service will perform and am curious to see it in action.