Digital Media: Austin

There are a few fairly new music centered sites out there that have roots or connections in Austin. Some have gotten more publicity than the others but they are all based on cool ideas. The first one that has already garnered some attention is Slacker. This company made a splash at SXSW earlier this March. In fact, the company’s site boasts of some of the commendations from PC World and Wired.

The service is similar to Last.fm and Pandora in that it is an internet radio service. However, unlike Last.fm there is not a heavy handed social networking aspect, and unlike Pandora, the service is much more user friendly. A couple of months ago I visited Last.fm and never really “got into” what was going on there. It seemed awfully difficult to get some music going and once I did it didn’t seem like there was very much control on what I got to listen to. I also don’t really care to learn what other random people like or dislike in music. I may be way off on the social network aspect though. Personally I’ve got enough friends and don’t find any need to learn about music from internet “joe blows”.

Pandora does provide an easier transition to listening to music on their site once its page loads, however it doesn’t seem as easy to actually create your station as it is on Slacker. With Slacker the player is all out there for you to see. There is a create your station button in a very visible spot as well as pre-built stations ready to click on and be heard. When you do type in an artist to create a station, a list of multiple artists in similar genres appears and you can add those artists to your station.

There is also a station settings function that allows you to “Fine Tune” your listening preferences with options related to artist discovery, song popularity, and age. Once a station is created you can share it with friends via email and or publish it for others on Slacker to hear. All these functions can be performed via the site’s Web Player. However, you can also download the client to your desktop and it will organize your music and somewhat work like iTunes.

On top of that, the company has plans for an actual physical player with Wi-Fi access. At this point the device hasn’t been released but the whole concept looks promising. In fact I listen to it all day at work now.