What’s great about the version of Slacker that comes equipped with the car is that it’s commercial-free. Slacker Radio is music delivered over the internet via the 3G connection within every Model S. I’ll cover the other one, TuneIn, at some other time. Slacker is one of two internet radio options included on every Tesla Model S. At the time I sort of thought it was going to be a bit like Pandora which I had used on and off in the past.ĪLSO SEE: Playing Music from a USB Drive in the Tesla Model S I just figured it would either be useful or not, no big deal. Slacker Internet Radioīefore taking delivery of my Model S I had only heard about Slacker radio as a feature included with the Model S and even then I didn’t do any reading or research on it. Tesla got Slacker Internet Radio right in the Model S. If its subscribers mostly continue using the interactive radio features rather than playing on-demand music all day, Slacker might be able to offer them a lower-priced or more sustainable service than services that rely almost exclusively on expensive-to-license on-demand playback.In a previous post I slammed Tesla on the almost-there functionality of their USB music player so you might be expecting me to go off on a rant on their implementation of Slacker Internet Radio in the Model S, but you’d be wrong. However, the company's user base, which is comfortable with interactive radio, gives it a potential advantage over the competition in the suddenly hot race to offer on-demand music playback to computers, phones and televisions: Even after they subscribe, users might still spend a majority of their time streaming custom Slacker stations, which can cost about a tenth less per song than on-demand plays. Neither party we spoke with for this story would reveal a launch date or price for Slacker's on-demand music service. Napster, Rhapsody, MOG and Spotify are all trying to close the loop between music discovery and music purchase by adding "lean-back" radio services to complement their "lean-forward" on-demand music services, according to Slacker, but consumers continue to see those primarily as music subscriptions and are not embracing the radio features the way they do with Slacker and Pandora. One problem with subscription services such as Napster and Rhapsody, in Slacker's view, is that their free versions are insufficient to snag new customers due to the high cost of licensing on-demand music, which is due to the fact that unlimited on-demand music replace sales. In addition to designating a currently playing song as a favorite to make it play more frequently, listeners will be able to subscribe to hear the track whenever they want, our source said, and Slacker spokesman Anders Steele confirmed. Slacker's on-demand music subscription service will include deep ties to its free interactive radio offerings, giving the company a chance to upsell monthly music subscriptions from its popular free and paid radio apps. Slacker, the critically praised interactive radio service our readers helped us discover in '07, plans to launch an on-demand subscription service combining elements of Pandora, Rhapsody and Spotify in the next few months, has learned from a well-placed source whose statements were confirmed by a Slacker spokesman.
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