I’ve been a big fan of Pandora radio for a while now and have turned several of my friends & family into fans as well but one thing that’s been bugging me for a while is why I couldn’t ban a particular artist from my stations. According to Pandora’s support page, if you thumbs down at least 2 of an artist’s songs, they will be automatically banned provided they aren’t seed artists on any of your stations. Well there have been 2 artists in particular that I’ve been giving the thumbs down to from the beginning and I certainly didn’t make them seed artists on any of my station that I just cannot get rid of. When I tweeted about this particular issue today, @talk2jorgelopez replied turning me onto Slacker radio.
Since I was working, I quickly googled for “slacker radio sidebar gadget” and not finding one dismissed the idea of switching from Pandora to Slacker. But then it happened again, an artist whose voice just rubs me the wrong way and who I’ve given the thumbs down to several times played thru my trusty Pandora sidebar gadget so I took another look. And this time I liked what I saw!
I spent a few minutes on their site and found a WinMo app that was available for download with device recommendations but the download was not actually prevented if you didn’t own the devices on their list like it is on Pandora. I figured I could stream music from my phone while at my desk all day. My Samsung Omnia 2 is listed as “similar” to the actual device the app was built for (HTC HD2) so while it’s not perfect –- you can see 1/3 of the next song’s album cover on the right -- it fits my display a whole lot better than the Pandora app that seems to be designed for smaller screens.
(The Pandora app, btw, worked just fine on my Samsung Blackjack/Epix devices but is horrible on the Omnia 2’s screen as you can see below. Which, I’m sure is why it’s not supported ;))
I still have to play with Slacker a little more to see if I’ll be making the actual switch from Pandora though. While I like their features so far like the WinMo app and the fact that they have a dedicated “Ban” button – which is the whole reason I found them in the first place – they only allow 10 free song plays a day (at least through their software player) whereas Pandora allows 40 hours a month w/ no daily limit.
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