Note: While the BlackBerry version supports station caching, the iPhone app doesn't.

Slacker told the Wall Street Journal that the G2 will be phased out in the second half of next year, saying "it no longer fit with the company's long-term strategy."

The $4 bucks a month subscription based streaming service, and access from hardware like the Logitech Squeezebox and Bravia TVs isn't going anywhere, though. In fact, it looks like that's where Slacker will refocus its efforts. [Wall Street Journal via Electronista]

With it comes nice scrolling touch lists of album art, along with all the good Slacker goodness you've come to expect. It's available now by heading to slacker.com with your Storm.

Slacker Announces Availability of Mobile Radio Application for the BlackBerry Storm Smartphone

Free Slacker Personal Radio Mobile Application Features Touch Screen Navigation and Station Caching

SAN DIEGO, CA – February 4, 2009 – Slacker, Inc. today announced the availability of the free Slacker Mobile application for the BlackBerry® Storm smartphone from Research In Motion (RIM) (Nasdaq: RIMM; TSX: RIM). BlackBerry Storm users* can now listen to their favorite Slacker radio stations anywhere they go, whether they are connected to a wireless network or not – a Slacker Mobile feature exclusive to BlackBerry® smartphones. The application, which is optimized for the handset's unique touch screen, is available as a free download by visiting Slacker.com from your BlackBerry Storm.

The Slacker Mobile application provides BlackBerry Storm smartphone users in the U.S. with a personalized music discovery and listening experience, pulling from over 100 expert-programmed Slacker stations, over 10,000 artist stations or a nearly unlimited number of the listener’s own custom-created stations. Features include vertical as well as horizontal modes, an intuitive interface optimized for touch operation, as well as “peek ahead”, allowing the listener to see a preview of the next artist and album in their stations’ rotation.

Slacker station caching, an exclusive feature for BlackBerry smartphones, enables listeners to store favorite stations on a memory card, allowing the Slacker Mobile application to play without a network connection, reducing battery life consumption by up to 5 times that of a streaming playback, and enhancing application performance. In addition, BlackBerry smartphone enthusiasts can enjoy Slacker Personal Radio while doing other tasks such as emailing, instant messaging or web browsing.

The Slacker application for the BlackBerry Storm smartphone includes detailed artist bios and album reviews for each song, providing the ultimate resource for music discovery. The Slacker Mobile application works with the free Slacker Basic Radio service, along with Slacker Radio Plus and Slacker Premium Radio subscription offerings.

“The Slacker Mobile application for the BlackBerry Storm offers an engaging and intuitive mobile listening experience that takes full advantage of its unique features,” said Dennis Mudd, CEO of Slacker. “With an intuitive touch screen interface as well as station caching, BlackBerry Storm owners can now easily enjoy their favorite music wherever they go.”

Slacker Personal Radio, available online at www.Slacker.com, enables listeners to personalize over 100 professionally programmed stations or create, edit and share their own Personal Radio stations. Slacker listeners also have easy access to artist profiles, album reviews and cover art on the web, with the Slacker G2 portable and now on the BlackBerry Storm smartphone.

Slacker Mobile for the BlackBerry Storm offers:
• Free music library featuring millions of songs
• Optimized for Storm Touch Screen operation
• Vertical and Horizontal modes
• High-quality stereo playback from cached stations and all streaming wireless connections
• Over 100 professionally programmed genre stations
• Create custom artist stations
• Station caching for music playback anywhere, greatly improved battery life and accelerated application performance
• Multi-tasking – listen to music while doing email
• View artist biographies and photos
• View album art and reviews
• “Peek Ahead” artist and album preview
• Pause and skip songs
• Rate songs as favorites
• Ban songs and artists you don’t like

Pricing and Availability
The Slacker Personal Radio Mobile application for the BlackBerry Storm smartphone is available immediately as a free download by visiting Slacker.com from your BlackBerry web browser or visit www.slacker.com/blackberry for more details.

I've played with it briefly, and the experience has been fantastic so far. Because Apple does not allow caching like RIM does with the BlackBerry, the content is streaming—but the music plays back well even when you are on EDGE (and the coverflow-style switching was smooth). The app is free, but if you don't have a Plus subscription you will have to deal with the occasional advertisement and a skipping/request limit.

Features:

Slacker Mobile for iPhone:
• Free music library featuring millions of songs
• High-quality stereo playback from any wireless connection
• Over 100 professionally programmed genre stations
• Create custom artist stations
• Fine tune stations to play more of the music you like
• View artist biographies and photos
• View album art and reviews
• "Peek Ahead" artist and album preview
• Pause and skip songs
• Rate songs as favorites
• Ban the songs and artists you don't like

[Slacker on iTunes]

Not at all far, as it turns out. MobileCrunch reports that the release could come as soon as tomorrow, which is fantastic news. If you're not familiar with Slacker, it's an almost too-good-to-be-true online radio site that enables Last.fm and Pandora-like streaming, in conjunction with more tradition radio-style stations and easily controllable user-made stations.

As with the Slacker standalone player, the station content will be stored locally on the BlackBerry or iPhone, meaning that you don't need a solid 3G or Wi-Fi connection to play back your music. It's safe to say that the iPhone version, like the Blackberry app, will be free, but some features will be disabled unless you have a full Slacker subscription, a fact that holds true across the Slacker range of products. [MobileCrunch—Thanks, Daren!]

The Price: $200 for 25-station 4GB, and $250 for the 40-station 8GB unit. The free service is ad-supported and allows six skips per hour, while the premium service costs about $10/month and is ad-free, offers unlimited skips and the ability to save songs to the device.

The Verdict: The Slacker G2 looks a million times better than its first-gen sibling. The older player was bigger and thicker than a deck of cards, with poorly placed buttons and a capacitive touch strip that felt somewhat cheap. The G2 trims the fat from the device, leaving a screen just big enough to show album art, and controls that are far more intuitive than its predecessor. The 2.4" display is clear, text is very readable, menus are simple and it's about as tall and thick as an iPod dock (but much lighter), a good size for the hand.

For this portable Pandora-style player to succeed, it needs two things. The first thing is, it needs a great selection of songs, tailored to the user's tastes. In this respect, it's awesome—even pre-programmed stations (think satellite radio rather than Pandora) have a wide ranging and thoughtful collection of artists, and stick mostly to singles or fan favorites so you don't get many strange deep cuts. Custom built stations (which you have to create in the web player) are even better. In both cases, you can favorite or ban song suggestions that you don't like, but if you design a station with more than 200 songs, you won't get any outside suggestions (though you probably no longer count as a true "slacker").

The other thing the G2 absolutely needs is a solid connection for refreshing stations. Sadly, this is where it falls short. A full refresh took almost two hours; stations took at least 10 or 15 minutes apiece to download. Adding a custom station for the first time took forever, and so did refreshing stations that I listened to often, favoriting and banning many songs. You can't refresh one station at a time—only all stations at once—and you can't create stations directly on the device either. I'd love to see these two things in a firmware update. Slacker may have shown us its more viable future in smartphone software with its recent BlackBerry announcement. Still, with some software tweaks and better networking, the company could make the G2 a decent alternative for those who fear convergence. [Slacker]

[FCC]

Falcone was particularly excited about the Squeeze network, which lets you manage all your music online, and says that because of the open-source and Linux-friendly nature of Squeeze, the "tweaker or hacker type" will have lots of fun.

In the written portion of the review, Falcone mentioned that "it lacks the iPod's speed-sensitive ability to quickly jump up and down through long lists," something that scares me a bit because I have lots of music and very little patience. Also in the prose, Sonos is mentioned as an expensive rival good for people who want to fill five or more rooms with sound, or people who already own Sonos.

In the end, Falcone says he "couldn't be more pleased with it," which is good news for those of us unwilling to start at $1,000 for a wireless audio system, and bad news for the good people over at Sonos. Sorry dudes! [CNet]

Among the things they liked about the player included the supported artworks, band biographies, ability to store Wi-Fi keys and the option to have access to a free, or paid, enhanced music services. The Slacker Portable also auto refreshed channels when it detected a trusted network, as well as automatically refreshing whilst recharging.

What didn't go down so well was the buggy touch sensitive strip; the jog dial was far better, and was used instead. The free mode meant only 6 songs could be skipped per hour. as well as the terrible obligation to listen to adverts during your music time. As the stations are cached for the times you are out of range of a wireless network, there is little room left on the player for your own tunes. (Either 500MB, 1.5GB or 4GB, depending on the capacity of the player chosen.) Content cannot be downloaded from a Mac, and the 10-hour battery life was not great.

The folks at Wired easily looked past the Slacker Portable's shortcomings, and we think we might follow suit. Now, why is our review unit taking so long to get here? Damn slacking postal service. (Sorry.) Check out the full review, as well as some unboxing pics by hitting the link. [Wired]

It's not as small as a nano or flash Zune, but its got a beautiful 4" screen and a offbeat capacitive touch strip for quick scrolling. The interface still confuses us a little: we know this is one of those products that will make more sense as you use it, because it's trying to do something different than everything that's happened up until now. You carry around a player that is essentially building its own vast virtual music collection of songs it thinks you might like. (That's why there are easy-access "heart" and "ban" buttons.)

But what about sound quality? How easy is it to refresh when you're not near your computer? Will there be enough fresh music for long trips away from a net connection? Do I really need more than 15 virtual personalized radio stations? I find it hard to imagine 40. These are all questions we'll have to answer in a full-blown review.

Press release:

Slacker Announces Availability of Portable Personal Radio Players

Slacker Portable Players Give Music Lovers Freedom to Enjoy Personal Radio Anytime, Anywhere

SAN DIEGO, Calif. - November 15, 2007 - Slacker, Inc., today announced the availability of the world's first truly portable personalized radio players. Slacker Portable Players in 15, 25 and 40 station capacities extend the personal radio experience of the free Slacker Basic Radio and recently announced Slacker Premium Radio services.

Whether choosing the free or premium radio services, the players provide customers access to the extensive Slacker music library and associated artist profiles, album reviews and large cover art on the 4" vivid color display. Simply refresh your personalized Slacker stations via Wi-Fi or USB to ensure you always have the newest hits and classic favorites at your fingertips.

"With the Slacker Portable Radio Player, for the first time, people can play their personalized radio stations wherever they go, " said Dennis Mudd, CEO of Slacker. "We've created a groundbreaking portable music device that lets people play their favorite music without working at it, whenever they want to listen."

Revolutionary DJ technology built into the device, and a new class of radio licenses, allow the Slacker Portable to play highly personalized radio stations even when not connected to Wi-Fi or any network.

Slacker has previously announced new licensing deals with all of the major record labels and thousands of independent record labels, which provide the Slacker Portable direct access to an extensive music catalog. The portable players can automatically create perfect radio stations without the requirement of having to manage content or even a direct connection to a Mac or PC.

About Slacker Portable
Designed to work with Slacker Basic Radio and Premium Radio services
Personal radio stations play anytime: online or offline
Automatically refreshes personalized stations via Wi-Fi or USB
Heart and Ban buttons enable personalization on the go
4" color screen displays artist profiles, album reviews and large cover art
Available in 15, 20 and 40 station capacities
Plays your existing music collection (MP3, WMA & AAC)
Up to 10 hours of battery life
Removable, rechargeable battery

The Slacker Portable comes with earphones, USB 2.0 cable and carrying case.

Slacker listeners that order the Slacker Portable will have the free option to have the player pre-loaded with their favorite stations and linked with their Slacker account (Basic or Premium) so it is ready to play right out of the box with personalized radio content.

Slacker Portable Availability
The Slacker Portable Player is available for pre-order in the U.S. now at www.slacker.com at a MSRP of $199.99 (15 stations, 2GB), $249.99 (25 stations, 4GB) and $299.99 (40 stations, 8GB) and is scheduled to ship on (or before) December 13th, 2007. Pre-loading of personalized stations is available on all purchases from www.slacker.com.

About Slacker, Inc.
Slacker is the world's first Personal Radio company, providing a new kind of radio that enables consumers to play highly personalized music everywhere. Visit www.slacker.com for more information.

One of the beta's biggest features is the ability to run Slacker in "mini" mode (as opposed to running it from your browser). You also get higher resolution album artwork, the ability to create playlists from your music, and when Slacker starts offering their premium version, the app will let you listen to your favorite songs on-demand. (The app will also play a big role once the hardware comes out). It's worth checking out if you're a Slacker fan like myself, though my one nitpick is that there's no Mac love. – Louis Ramirez

Product Page

Exclusive: Slacker Portable Player Slide Show [Crave]

a) There's net radio. Quality is good, according to our ears, and the song lists are setup by professional DJs. XM and other do this. Somehow, because of technical/legal jibberish, the service circumvents paying royalties. Nice, if they pass those saved bucks along.
b) You can download this stuff, and your MP3s and Windows Media music/vids by WiFi to your Slacker device, a piece of hardware with a 4-inch screen that will be available for what I am assuming is $300. (With lower priced $150 sub-models available.)
c) You can Download this content to the player for free...but there are ads. Hmm. I don't necessarily hate DRM so much, personally, if it is done fairly. But I hate ads.

You can remove them for a nominal fee...this is where the money comes in. Thankfully, the $7.50 a month won't sting too much.

d) For $7.50 a month, you can get premium access, which allows you to skip more than 6 songs an hour, and drops the ads. Wait. You can't skip more than 6 streamed songs an hour unless you pay? Stream what? Oh, satellite!
e) Soon, satellite radio service, with car and home docks. Interestingly, it uses Ku-band satellites that are generally used for GPS, not dedicated ones like Sirius and Xm have to launch. This is because they have a super-sensitive antenna that makes use of these weaker satellites possible. They're leasing their sat bandwidth. (Pass on those bucks you're saving!)
f) So you can load new content onto it via Sat, and play it back later, or now. And you can skip songs, thanks to a long stream buffer. OK, technical differences aside, the recent generation satellite portables can timeshift, too. Without the restriction on 6 song skips.

So, I don't get how this is revolutionary, except for the use of non-specialized satellites...and ads. I'm glad its cheaper. And, by the way, I welcome alternative business models and sexy hardware. But this is maybe a bit overhyped right now. What am I missing? When I use it, will I care? Will it be better than Sirius? No joke, I one time went 6 hours in a car, scanning Sirius and found nothing worth listening to. Maybe, it won't matter. In the end, it might just be worth it to hold that skinny, black, beautiful hardware. More to come.–Brian Lam

Slacker [Slacker]

It'll debut this summer in sizes ranging from 2GB to 120GB (prices will range from $150 to $350). It'll have a 4-inch screen with a touch-sensitive side strip for scrolling through your music. Like any other DAP, It'll play WMAs, WMVs, MP3s, etc, all of which you can load onto the player via USB. Here's where things get interesting. The device will also have built-in Wi-Fi so it'll sync up with your personalized Slacker stations wirelessy. You'll then be able to listen to them from any hotspot. Alternatively, you can listen to Slacker via a satellite broadcast system (you'll need the optional Slacker "car kit" for this) that'll beam the music to your player from unused commercial satellites. This is Slacker's own proprietary technology here at work, so you're not relying on Slacker's own satellites here.

So after spending the morning personalizing a few Slacker stations, I got a decent feel for the service. Quality-wise, music plays hiccup free with no lags or delays (and very little video ads, at least for now). More importantly, music sounds awesome for an online station. I'm not talking audiophile quality, but still pretty damn good. I found banning songs from stations to be pretty addictive/fun (free members can only ban 6 songs/hour) and I'm guessing this is how Slacker will rope people into paying for the premium service. Slacker's real test will come with the debut of their player. Is there a market for another DAP and will the Wi-Fi feature work as promised? If they deliver on the hardware front, they can consider me a full member. This is one space you'll definitely want to stay in tune with. – Louis Ramirez

Product Page [via Orbitcast]