Slacker
Slacker is a startup company with big aspirations to take personal music players by storm. Today you can listen to the streaming music service over the internet via their website. I’m kind of partial to the 80’s hits, but I’m showing my age. For those of you who would like some great music when you’re not sitting in front of your computer, never fear. Soon we will have the Slacker Portable Player (pictured here).
The Slacker Portable Player will download songs over the wi-fi networks you have at home, at work, or at the local Seattle’s Best. In addition, it will have connectivity through a series of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites so you can get music literally anywhere via the car kit. The 2-Gig version will be about $149 and the 12-Gig version will cost about $349. The service will be free if you’re willing to put up with banner ads, or about $7.50 per month without the ads (according to internet reports).
There are some heavy hitters involved in this Austin Ventures funded company. Celite Milbrandt was the founder of AV-funded Celite Systems, and rumor has it he is involved with the company. Jonathan Sasse was the CEO at iRiver, and the product manager for Rio. Dennis Mudd, former Musicmatch CEO is also involved. You can read an interview with Dennis in Laptop magazine here.
There are still a few challenges. You can save songs you hear as favorites on the channels you listen to, but you can’t download 300 of your favorite songs and play them on demand like you can with either iTunes (for $0.99 per song) or unlimited monthly subscription services like Napster. It’s a different way of listening to music, and it’s just something people will either like or not.
Filed under: Trends
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