Friday, March 25, 2011

Pandora Vs. Slacker–Fight!

Streaming music is something that everyone with an EVO should be enjoying. If you aren’t, then you should probably give one of these amazing apps a shot. When you head in to the Market, you will see dozens of options for streaming Apps. While there is not a ‘clear-cut’ favorite, we are highlighting our favorite two.

Slacker Radio and Pandora Radio both offer free and paid options for their services. Pandora offers limited skipping and 40 hours of free listening per month. Slacker offers 6 skips per station per hour and has audio commercials between songs. It does offer unlimited listening even on the free service.

Pandora charges a flat $36 per year for unlocking the unlimited time and skipping. You can also custom craft stations using Pandora’s enormous library. Slacker has two payment options to access their unlimited service. This non-commercial, non-ad service includes unlimited music and skipping for $4.99 a month or $47.88 a year.

The interfaces are almost identical between the two programs. The basic layouts feature the album art, artist name, album name, song title and player controls – skipping, like/don’t like and a pause button. Slacker features the station name at the top of the player and their magical upgrade button. Pandora has the same information, sans the station name, but includes a great “info” button in the corner.

While both options are great for streaming quality and selection, Pandora’s software steps it up a few notches by including some amazing features. Lyric searches, album and artist notes and more are included with the ‘info’ button at the top of the album art in the main screen. A major added bonus like this more than makes up for the constant banner ads flashing across the bottom of the player.

Overall, if you are looking for a completely free option that can be used everyday, Slacker is the better choice of the two. If you want to go to the paid versions, Pandora’s software is light years ahead of the Slacker player and is about $12 a year cheaper. So, if you are stingy, get them both and enjoy the unlimited ad supported music on Slacker or the limited hours on Pandora with all the bonus features.

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