iPhone App Reviews: Pandora Radio vs. Slacker Radio

Personalized radio apps are all the rage these days, particularly in the smart phone arena. Ad-supported but otherwise free applications such as Pandora and Last.FM, alongside newcomers such as Slacker Radio, are likely to be the final nail in the coffin of the on-the-verge-of-death-even-without-competition monthly subscription services, and for good reason.

Pandora radio is undeniably the leader of the pack when it comes to popular usage and consumer mindshare, but the question remains: Is it the best, or is merely the most popular?

There's no doubt that an iPhone coupled with Pandora Radio and an auxiliary input on a lengthy road trip spells delight. An iPhone can only hold so many songs, and most of those are songs that have been played and overplayed, and CD players well, those are so 1990.

Both Pandora and Slacker Radio are in the category of ad-supported-but-otherwise-free applications, despite the fact that they handle the in-app ads differently. Pandora's are all visual advertisements, much like the pop-up ads that appear on YouTube videos. Depending on how often you check the screen while listening to music, a listener may never even see an ad, let alone hear one. Slacker actually inserts 10 to 15 second-long audio advertisements after every fifth or sixth song. (Or so.) It's bearable. (Most of the ads seem to be for slacker radio itself, which I found to be surprising.)

Slacker does offer the option of paying $3 per month to turn off ads completely, and I don't think Pandora offers a similar option. Given that the ads are only a minor nuisance, I don't find the option to be particularly compelling, but then, I never turn off the beeping noise in the elevator at work, either -- and that's free.

Both apps also require users to sign up for an account on their respective websites. This process was relatively painless with respect to Pandora, and borderline frustrating with Slacker. In many ways, trying to find the actually free sign-up information was uncomfortably similar to the process of signing up for and downloading the free RealPlayer media player. Shudder.

While this review is particularly aimed at the mobile apps available from each company, both Pandora and Slacker offer extended options on their respective websites that can compliment the mobile experience.

Pandora Radio: The Reigning Champion

Long considered to be the popular favorite in internet radio apps, Pandora's reputation would seem to be built on ease-of-use and a it-does-what-it-needs-and-not-much-more feature set.

Upon launching the app for the first time (not a particularly quick process, the first time or any other time) Pandora drops directly into the station list, empty but for a default station (John Mayer Radio) which most people will probably delete. From here, there are four options:

Stations:

Stations are, essentially, playlists. The home screen, then, is basically a list of all the stationsthat have been created. There is also, by default, a "QuickMix" option which plays a sampling of music culled from all of the stations that have been created. Once a station has been created, it is possible to edit the station in order to bring a bit more variation to a given playlist.

Well, a bit more varied, anyway. Pandora's weakest link is undeniably its somewhat limited catalogue of music. No matter how hard I tried to vary my list, I ended up hearing the same songs, by the same bands ... a lot. Apparently, I'm a huge fan of music that is awfully similar to Death Cab for Cutie or, failing that, The Postal Service.

Pandora is powered by the Music Genome Project "...an effort founded by Will Glaser, Jon Kraft, and Tim Westergren to 'capture the essence of music at the fundamental level' using over 400 attributes to describe songs and a complex mathematical algorithm to organize them." SOURCE

It's a really neat concept, in theory. In practice, though, it's an imperfect playlist building model, and highly predictable to boot. If you're listening to Pearl Jam, you can expect STP to show up next. Jeff Buckley consistently segues to Radiohead, and so on. Despite "400 attributes" to choose from, Pandora seems to latch onto one obvious attribute and queue up four or five songs based on that one attribute. So, a brooding female vocalist will lead into a string of brooding female vocalists, until you're bored to death of brooding female vocalists.

And therein lies the problem. Even an album full of songs by the same artists will dance back and forth between rockers and ballads, between screams and whispers. The best mix tapes (or whatever they're called, these days) involve thought and whimsy, surprise changes in mood to keep things interesting. Pandora's playlists change so subtly that it's easy to get somewhat bored with similar song "a" after similar song "b" after similar song "c" -- even if you like all of the songs.

New Station:

In order to make a new station, a user simply picks an artist, song or composer to use as a foundation for Pandora's MGP algorithm. The station is then named after that intitial choice. If you like Death Cab for Cutie, your station will be called Death Cab for Cutie Radio. If you don't, too bad, because as I've mentioned, Pandora will play Death Cab for Cutie. A lot.

Bookmarks:

Bookmarking a song puts it into a list. Beyond being somewhat helpful if you want to remember a song or an album you liked when you heard it, so that you can buy it later, I'm not sure that this feature has much of a purpose. You cannot choose a song from the bookmark list and play it.

Settings:

There's not much to see here, really. An option for higher quality music and the ability to keep the iPhone from going to sleep. Opting for higher quality doesn't seem to affect performance much.

Once a station is set up, and the music is playing, it's possible to plug your iPhone into a set of speakers, headphones, or an auxiliary input and let Pandora and the MGP do its thing. Given that you're probably going to be annoyed when Pandora decides you need to hear "The Wind Cries Mary" a third time (but this time it's live!) or when a song that just plain don't like is queued up.

Thankfully, Pandora offers a "thumbs up" (and down) option, as well as a skip option. I believe the thumbs are supposed to affect whether or not you hear those songs again, or how often you hear them, but doing so never seemed to affect the queue. As for thumbing songs up, chances are, if you've heard it once, you'll almost certainly hear it again sooner than you want to, even if you don't tell Pandora that you really like it.

It's only possible to skip a song so many times per hour, per station. The standard in apps like this is 5 or 6 skips, but Pandora doesn't indicate how many you have left until you try and skip a really awful song and find out you can't. These restrictions are mandated by the industry and are part of the licensing agreement that all of the Internet Radio apps are subject to. Those same agreements explain why there's a skip forward (six or so times) but no "skip back" option. Once you've heard a song, you have to wait to hear it again. Fortunately ... cough ... Pandora won't make you wait long.

Slacker Radio: The Up-and-Coming Challenger

Slacker Radio -- an unfortunately dumb name, for what it's worth -- is, for all intents and purposes, the same basic application as Pandora. It does pretty much the same thing, and with a similar feature set. Even so, some differences become apparent, right from the start. (Other than the painfully slow loading time. That's the same.)

Slacker's main screen is far busier than Pandora's, and is comprised of a rather lengthy list of pre-existing genre stations such as Rock, Country, Alternative, Rap, and so on. Inside each genre is a subgrouping for that specific style of music: Alternative > 90's Alternative, Indie Alternative, Indie Alternative Hits, etc.

Unlike Pandora, Slacker doesn't rely on an algorithm. Stations are programmed by people, and songs are chosen based on how they fit these genres and sub-genres. On the one hand, this is an improvement: There's a more spontaneous feel to songs selection, because the system doesn't rely on a computer or attributes. On the other hand, Slacker doesn't allow for quite the level of station customization that Pandora offers.

For example, I can create a custom station, just like in Pandora, I lay a foundation based on a band I happen to like. Once I've made the station, I cannot tell Slacker to also mix it up with songs from this other band that I also like, from a slightly different sub-genre. I hear the bands that they feel are most appropriately played alongside my foundation band, and if I don't like it, I switch to another station. Unlike Pandora, Slacker doesn't seem to offer a QuickMix option.

All of that would be a deal-breaker if not for the fact that Slacker seems to have more varied catalogue of music than Pandora.

There's a bit of feature-candy in the ability to "favorite" a station. Doing so primarily saves clicks and is more functional than necessary. Most of the home screen options are variations on the way stations are categorized, whether it be favorites, recently played, etc.

Slacker actually offers a bit more when it comes to the "now playing" screen. Double tapping an album cover shrinks it down to reveal a sliver of the next song in the queue. (Both Pandora and Slacker pre-load the next song in the queue, to cut down on buffering time. This is especially helpful when the iPhone drops back down to the Edge network. So long as you never skip a song and force an unexpected buffer, the playback remains fairly smooth.)

Much like Pandora's thumb's up feature, Slacker offers a heart icon for well-liked songs. Favoriting songs in this fashion is actually useful when fine-tuning stations. (More on that later.) Unlike Pandora, Slacker offers the ability to completely ban a song (or even an entire artist) from playing on a given station. Take that, Death Cab for Cutie! Also unlike Pandora, the skip button in Slacker actually shows the number of remaining skips left. (6 total per station per hour.)

Settings are once again limited: Sleep prevention and the option to continue playing upon relaunch vs. going straight to the station list. Heavy stuff, that.

Both Pandora and Slacker offer a basic overview of the band/album that is currently playing via existing "allmusicguide" reviews.

Slacker's biggest advantage over Pandora may be the option to "fine tune" stations. If a song has been added as a favorite, stations can be told to play that song more or even less. Stations can be set to play deep cuts from artists, or popular cuts, or songs from the fringe. (Whatever that means.) It's also possible to dictate whether older or more recent songs are chosen.

And the winner is...

Well, it depends, really. Personally, I find the better (more varied) selection within the Slacker Radio app to be the straw that breaks Pandora's back. (Or the TKO that knocks Pandora flat on its ass?) Pandora will almost certainly continue to be a more popular option, for a variety of reasons, not least of all it's undeniably simpler interface, and I certainly don't plan to uninstall it. Slacker seems to offer more features, more options, and for some people, that's simply (and literally) a turn off. There's just more to do, and for some, more to do is too much to do.

For me, it's just right.

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