So far, My Vibe seems to have fewer playlist suggestions than Songza. For instance, as I write this, I'm listening to a playlist that was suggested for someone who is working in the office on a Friday afternoon. From there, it gives you a menu of options that may or may not match your activity or mood. Similar to Songza, My Vibe starts by offering you a few suggestions based on the current day and time.

New to Slacker's arsenal and available to all users is a nifty feature called My Vibe, which helps you find the perfect playlist to match your mood or activity. Both subscription packages also come with lyrics for most songs. With a Slacker Premium subscription ($9.99/month), you'll get on-demand music listening so you can search for and listen to the exact songs and albums you want (similar to Spotify).

With Slacker Radio Plus ($3.99 per month), you'll be able to save station caches for later listening even when offline.

If you want to take advantage of playlist caching or music-on-demand features without ads, you'll need to sign up for a subscription. The ads can be a little annoying, with full 30-second commercial spots at the beginning of listening to a station. Much like Pandora, the free version of Slacker Radio is ad-supported and lets you search for a song and then create a station of similar music based on that song. A skip button is available for moving on to the next song, but you get limited skips per session (only six at the time of this review). You'll be able to fine-tune your station requirements while it plays as well as create custom stations. The controls to pause, skip, save, and remove an artist from your playlist are located at the bottom of the interface. While playing a track, Slacker lets you look at both album art as well as artist bios and album reviews (for most songs and artists). Each selection on the first screen leads to another list where you can swipe to browse selections to find the stations, genres, and music you want to listen to. You can search for artists using a field at the top, check out the Music Guide curated by Slacker, or search by genres, stations you've previously listened to, specialty stations, or news, talk, and sports stations. To use Slacker you must sign up for an account or log in with your Facebook or Google+ credentials.Īfter logging in, Slacker's interface gives you several options for launching stations. Slacker Radio is a great option for listening to streaming radio with an intuitive interface that makes it easy to find what you want quickly.

But if you're willing to spend money on a subscription, the app is better than most in its genre. If you're looking for a streaming-music alternative, Slacker Radio is a good choice.

Slacker radio reviews