My new favorite thing is my BlackBerry Curve. I use that fucker for almost everything now. I do my internets (even posting here from it), get my news, make notes, text my friends and family and even, on occasion, make a phone call on it.
The one thing I don’t do much, is listen to music on it. Before I discovered Blip.fm, I was strictly a last.fm and Pandora user. And there are no apps yet that will allow me to use any of those services on my BlackBerry.
Being a devoted addict of my BlackBerry, I cruise BlackBerry sites looking for cool tips, apps and other random shit, and was immediately aroused by the mention on CrackBerry that a Slacker app was available for my gadget.
I mean almost literally aroused. Like, “schwing”! (How bad did I date myself just now?).
I had heard of Slacker, but hadn’t used it. I knew it was an internets streaming radio stations thing. Most of what I heard about it revolved around their gadget, which is a fancified mp3 player with wi-fi and a nice screen so that you can listen to your streaming radio around the house or on the go (if you’re in a wi-fi hot spot). Non-satellite satellite radio. Let’s now call it satel-light radio.
Anyway, I didn’t bother, because I generally can’t afford gadgets, and usually listen to CD’s or NPR in the car (I know, I’m living in some kind of cave with some of this shit), and last.fm, Pandora and blip.fm are perfect and enough for me at home. My phones are equipped to play ‘Sprint Radio‘, but it’s not quite as customizable and you’re stuck in fairly narrow (though good) genre radio. I like the ability to ‘love’ or ‘ban’ a track, which Sprint Radio does not do.
So, I immediately downloaded the Slacker app for the BlackBerry, logged in and immediately knew that I had done the right thing.
Once you’re logged in, you can choose from a good number of pre-existing genre stations, or go for customizable like they do in last.fm. To start things off, I entered my current favorite band, “Mission of Burma“, which is a mildly obscure band. Almost instantly, it started to play This Is Not A Photograph by Mission of Burma. It followed that up with some other post-punk sorts of things that I seriously enjoyed. The GUI is nice and easy and looks good. They have an album cover view for the artist you’re listening too, with what played before and coming after, visible to the sides in a carousel-like fashion.
I did hear adverts (about three so far in about three hours of off and on listening), which is I guess to be expected using the free basic service. You’re also allowed 6 song skips in each hour, which ain’t bad. And you can cache your station so that you can continue to listen to your music even when you got no bars. And when I hooked my BlackBerry up to the WIndows machine I use for maintenence, it loaded the Slacker app to the PC so that I could enjoy my music there too. That’s just awesomesauce.
For $3.99 a month you can sign up for their Premium service, which gives you unlimited skips, no adverts and a custom station that allows you to choose an unlimited number of songs. At the moment, I need to spend another four bucks a month like I need a kick in the colon, so I’m sticking with the basic service, which is better than good enough for me.
Eventually, I’ll get myself some bluetooth headphones, car kit and home dock (like I said, caveman) and practically live on the Slacker when I’m on the go.
If you have a BlackBerry and dig the music thing, then the Slacker app is an absolute fucking must. It looks good, it sounds good and works great.
AngryBob
Link: http://www.slacker.com/mobile/blackberry
from the basement computer, not the BlackBerry.
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I use my Blackberry so much that I don’t think it would have enough juice for me to use it as well to listen to music.
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