Music fans may soon look back on these times as the "glory days" for Internet radio.
The Washington Post recently picked up the latest strand of the ongoing battle between a legion of copyright holders with very expensive lawyers and the conglomerate of big companies, tiny start-ups, and passionate hobbyists who make up the net radio contingent.
It would be nice to believe that since this battle has tangled up portions of Congress for a few years now, there may be years yet to come where the outcome remains undecided, during which us little folk who just want to stick in some earbuds and hear a song on the damned web can enjoy good music to our heart's content.
Instead, let's all make hay while the sun still shines, and give our favorite Internet radio sites the time and affection they deserve. Like Pandora, Last.fm, or Slacker Personal Radio.
Based on my time spent with the site, Slacker Radio seems to be aiming for a monetizing model driven by subscriptions to their Premium Radio service, available for as little as $7.50 per month (paid in one installment of $89.99 annually). A free account offers access to the site's existing stations and the power to create your own stations, but is missing several powerful features exclusive to the Premium version. They've also got a portable player they're selling which allows you to load up the device with tunes randomly chosen from Slacker's formidable library of tunes, along with whatever songs you've slotted into your personal library, to replicate the Slacker experience on the road.
Like Last.fm, Slacker Premium Radio enables listeners to save tracks they enjoy to a personalized area where they can shuffle their favorite tracks into a unique radio station full of only songs they like. Premium users can also skip unlimited songs on each station (regular accounts can only skip six songs per station), avoid hearing any ads, and request songs to be added to their stations.
.jpg?t=20120527181101)
Article comments