The Download Blog

In mid-July, Verizon began automatically pushing Slacker Radio to BlackBerry Storm phones. Starting Tuesday, Verizon's partnership with Slacker Radio begins extending to BlackBerry Tour devices in its U.S. network as well.

As part of the agreement, Slacker Radio will hook into Verizon's V Cast store (which itself taps the Rhapsody catalog), giving BlackBerry Storm and Tour users the capability to purchase one of 4.5 million songs.

Slacker Radio's streaming music player competes heavily with similar Internet radio services, particularly Pandora.

(Credit: Weather Underground)

There's no shortage of streaming radio apps for mobile phones, but lately it seems that far more have been readied for the iPhone than for Windows Mobile. On Thursday, Wunder Radio (download), already a popular iPhone radio app, also became available for Windows Mobile phones.

It may not be the prettiest radio app out there, but Wunder Radio packs in a ton of stations provided by Radio Time, around 36,000. The stations span everything from talk radio and Weather Underground's local weather reports to the browsing, searching, and genre-scouring you'd expect from a streaming radio application. The search engine, we might add, is sensitive to radio show and show host names in addition to station names and call letters. If your smartphone or Pocket PC is GPS-enabled, Wunder Radio can fetch some of your local stations.

Wunder Radio's extras are also serviceable--you'll be able to save and view favorites, stream stations in the background, and open a URL from the application. In addition to the standalone application, Wunder Radio installs a home screen plug-in onto most phones (our Samsung Omnia's default theme blocked this) that streams program and song information and offers a shortcut to favorite stations.

Price may be the only major sticking point with Wunder Radio. The Windows Mobile version costs just shy of $10 as part of a 30-day promotion, after which the app's price shoots up to $14.99. While competing radio applications like Pandora for Windows Mobile don't have the breadth of Wunder Radio's stations, or even its goal (Pandora Radio is concerned with music discovery, not with talk radio and finding particular stations), Pandora's free application may satisfy many music-seekers. For those with more specific tastes, Wunder Radio's broad tuner gives you a good chance of finding what you seek. A free, 15-day trial period gives you time to bond with the app, after which you'll decide if you're ready to buy.

Note: As it goes with streaming radio apps, faster data connection speeds through 3G and Wi-Fi produce the best sound, with fewer interruptions and skips.

Update 2/19/09 at 5:00 PM PT: Wunder Radio does not fully support phones with a WQVGA resolution. These phones should still receive audio, but may not display images. Jeyo, the company that developed Wunder Radio for Weather Underground, told us that support for these phones will be added next.

Updated 2/11/09 at 6:50 P.M. PT to add more context to the licensing debate and to correct Amnon Sarig's title.

(Credit: TuneWiki)

Back in October, we took a look at close look at TuneWiki, a media enhancement application for Google Android that scrolls through a song's lyrics as you play a song or YouTube music video. The company announced this week an update to its free Android application that will let you also stream Internet radio on your phone. The update, which will be submitted to the Android Market this Saturday, will give streaming songs TuneWiki's lyrical capabilities, as well as its social networking enhancements. As a moral perk, many of the lyrics will be legally licensed. We'll lay out the program's highs and lows, general availability, and some legal particulars.

We mostly liked TuneWiki when it first came out--certainly the idea of it, and in general the application's performance. It is also the first application of this type that I've seen for mobile phones. (The free-to-try application MiniLyrics has been around for a while on the desktop.) TuneWiki wasn't always as stable as we'd have liked, and syncing wasn't always on-point. We looked forward to the media application's next steps. Lyrics precision and a few stability issues were still present in our preview version of TuneWiki; hopefully the latter will be addressed by the time TuneWiki 1.0 reaches the Android Market.

Streaming Internet radio
Providing Internet lyrics, and legal ones at that, are the two biggest points of interest in this update. First let's tackle the streaming Internet feature. Like Pandora, Last.FM, and Slacker Radio, TuneWiki's Internet radio feature (designated by a microphone icon on the application's navigation menu) lets you choose stations by genre and popularity, and save favorite stations. In addition, TuneWiki can display a music map showing you where else the song is playing at that moment, and can stream lyrics that users have uploaded into TuneWiki's database from its Web site--the 'wiki' element of TuneWiki's service.

TuneWiki's streaming lyrics component only works for some stations, and then the lyrics are only as good as the user-generated database itself. If you're lucky enough to get a station compatible with TuneWiki's lyrics software, making them sync with the streaming song is your next challenge.

TuneWiki tasks you with finding your place and then tapping on it, after which the software takes over and highlights the lines for you. This TuneWiki did, but on a song with a quick tempo, the feature didn't kick in until two more lines had played. This is by far the application's biggest drawback. In addition, artist credits were only present on stations that could stream TuneWiki's lyrics. For many stations, we were left in the dark.

Of legalities and lyrics
In addition to streaming Internet radio, TuneWiki is announcing a partnership with a major music publishers association that grants TuneWiki the rights to stream lyrics for almost 2 million songs. Music law is complicated stuff, but as TuneWiki's President, Amnon Sarig, explains it, the licenses let TuneWiki legitimately give the green light to many user-submitted lyrics. Those that fall outside the licensing scope are protected under the 'safe harbor' provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (Wikipedia). TuneWiki isn't breaking any laws--for now--by streaming any unlicensed lyrics its users upload, unless the rights-owner asks for a take-down. (Sarig told CNET in an interview that his company complies with publishers' requests to block song lyrics.) This is interesting stuff, especially in light of Warner Music Group's lawsuit against Seeqpod for its role in corralling copyrighted MP3s for users to play. Perhaps TuneWiki's show of good faith and latest licensing gains will shield it from similar lawsuits.

Availability
TuneWiki plans to submit the free version 1.0 of its lyrics application to Google's Android Market. By March or April, the company expects to release TuneWiki for BlackBerry, J2ME, Symbian, and Windows Mobile. These versions are currently being tested in a closed beta program. It is also possible to download TuneWiki onto jailbroken iPhones and iPod Touches, though there is currently no listing in the iTunes App Store.

(Credit: Slacker Radio)

When Slacker Radio first introduced its streaming Internet radio app for the BlackBerry, it only worked on standard BlackBerrys running version 4.3 and above. Starting Wednesday, the free app gets touchy-feely with a brand new version for the BlackBerry's touch-screen Storm.

Slacker Radio for the Storm brings with it everything we loved on the Curve and Bold, including its best feature ever, caching a song to play offline later. It also throws in some touch-screen specials, like support for landscape mode.

The app still serves U.S. customers only on the BlackBerry and iPhone.

To get it, go to www.Slacker.com from the BlackBerry browser.

Related stories:
First Look video: Slacker for BlackBerry
How to cache Slacker stations on BlackBerry

Slacker Radio for iPhone 1.0 (and iPod Touch) may be late to the party of streaming-music apps for the iPhone, but that's no reason to overlook it.

The excellent, free app offers up a sleek, dark display and a lot of visual goodness, from large album art to visual icons for your favorite and custom stations.

Sure, we've got a few complaints, too, but if you're deciding whether to add another music app into the mix, this First Look video may help you decide.

Slacker Radio started 2009 with a burst, releasing a mobile version of Slacker's streaming-Internet radio app for BlackBerry (story|download) that takes unique advantage of its hardware and storage capabilities to add some truly useful features.

Check out this First Look video to watch these features play out on the BlackBerry Bold.

Since its release in July of 2008, the Pandora Internet radio iPhone app has been one of our favorites and a consistent top download from Apple's iTunes App Store. Pandora's uncluttered and intuitive interface, coupled with its unique knack for song recommendations, makes it an ideal no-fuss app for anyone looking to add streaming music capabilities to their iPhone or iPod Touch.

Pandora added many new features to version 2.0 of its iPhone app, but its clean, intuitive Now Playing screen remains unchanged.

In version 2.0, Pandora adds several new features without undermining the simplicity that made the original app so great. Users can now listen to 30-second previews of bookmarked tracks directly within the app, without bouncing over into the iTunes store. You can also send links to songs now, as well as stations, to contacts from your address book.

Creating new personalized radio stations in Pandora has never been easier. As before, Pandora lets you create stations by entering any artist, song, or genre as a starting point. In addition to creating stations from scratch, users can now create stations on the fly based around any artist or song on Pandora's Now Playing screen or user bookmarks.

Pandora 2.0 now offers biographical information for the currently playing artist right from the Now Playing screen (similar to the Last.fm app), as well as a detailed account of why each song was chosen to be included in your station. Pandora also added a track progress bar to the Now Playing screen, showing how far along you are within a particular song.... Read more

Updated 5:40 p.m. PST with more information on storage capacity.

(Credit: Slacker Radio)

Caching radio stations to listen to later is, as far as I'm concerned, Slacker for BlackBerry's No. 1 feature.

While sound quality and speed are excellent as long as you're on a Wi-Fi connection, as soon as you stumble into 3G territory, quality takes a noticeable nosedive. It still sounds good, mind you, but buffering bumps and delays take their toll. Even worse is when you're cut off completely from all data sources and you just have to have your Slacker Radio. My personal case in point: the underground train commute.

If you have the capability to use this crucial caching trick, so far unique to BlackBerry among the mobile cell platforms, you ought to do so. Here's how.

Step 0: Check the specifications
Make sure that your phone is running version 4.3 of RIM's operating system, if not higher. Also, make sure you have a microSD card. Otherwise, don't even bother.

Step 1: Get pickin'
When you begin playing a station, press the menu button, and select the second option, 'Cache Playing Station.' You can also cache an inactive station by highlighting it and selecting 'Cache Highlighted Station' from the context menu. I have room for 60 stations on my 8GB microSD Card.

(Note: Slacker told us they will institute a 15-station limit, though right now there's no cap. Hence my impractical, but nevertheless possible, capacity to store 60 stations. Roughly calculated, that's a 125MB minimum storage requirement per station. According to Slacker, "The limit is useful to avoid lengthy station refresh times and inadvertent use of the entire SD card for Slacker music.")

Step 2: Plug it in
Simply telling Slacker Radio to cache a station isn't as good as storing it--yet. To finish the job, stick a USB cord into the BlackBerry and connect it to your computer. Turn on Mass Storage Mode.

Caching can take some time if you've got a lot of stations to store.

(Credit: CNET)

Step 3: Slacker's sync
No need to look for the BlackBerry Desktop Manager to pop up--but you might see a BlackBerry window pop up from which you can process files (this is the E-drive on my PC.) Ignore this. What you really want is the second pop-up window, the removable disk helper window (F-drive for me), which has an option to sync Slacker stations. Double-click the Slacker station loader and you're good to go. Note: Syncing can take a few minutes, especially the more stations you have.

Step 4: Cache payout
After syncing, your station roster should show the number of stations you've cached in parenthesis. When connectivity dies out, you can click in to this list to play your favorite artists' songs.

Troubleshooting
I didn't have any problems setting up the sync on my BlackBerry Bold, but not everyone has been so lucky. If the Removable Drive dialog box doesn't open and offer you the Slacker syncing tool, try doing it manually. Open the Removable Drive for your memory card from My Computer. Then double-click the Slacker executable file (slacker.synclauncher.exe) to get started.

Slacker Radio on the Storm
While Slacker Radio doesn't officially work on the Storm, some people have got it working, though problems have been noted.

Updated 1/14/08 at 12:16 a.m. with U.S.-only service details.

(Credit: CNET)

Leave it to Apple to make Slacker look like a...you know.

Last week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, streaming Internet radio company Slacker Radio released Slacker Radio for BlackBerry (download), and announced that an iPhone cousin was coming out as soon as Apple approved it.

Announced on Tuesday, Slacker Radio for the iPhone and iPod Touch is just as lip-smacking good as anticipated, and is primed to give other streaming music apps like Pandora, Last.fm, and Tuner Internet Radio a beating.

The app makes the most of Slacker Internet Radio's customary dark, good looks on the iPhone's tall display. The album art is much more prominently displayed here than on the BlackBerry, and the controls take center stage. You'll be able to fine-tune a station while it plays, and pick a new station without terminating the current song.

Choosing the next station is incredibly easy--your favorite and custom stations are at the top of a vertically scrolling list, with a search option, top stations, and the Slacker spotlight just below. Keep scrolling down to flick through the genres.

The songs sounded great through the Wi-Fi connection, and fairly good through 3G. We're bummed you can't build a new station on the iPhone, and for more flexibility, Slacker Radio ought to flip over to landscape mode.

Also, though it's Apple's doing and not Slacker's, we miss the app's ability to cache songs onto a Micro SD card as on the BlackBerry, and furthermore its ability to play songs in the background while you work on other tasks.

The next best thing Slacker can offer is to resume playing your station when you reopen the app.

Slacker Radio is free and available now from the iTunes Store. Like other streaming music services born of the Web, you'll need to register to begin. It currently works in the U.S.; Slacker is not releasing details on when the service will internationally expand.

Note: Last.fm is owned by CNET's parent company, CBS.