Slacker (the device, not the person) steals scene at SXSW

Over at Wired's "Listening Post" blog, Eliot Van Buskirk posts what I'm pretty sure are exclusive details on a soon-to-debut service called Slacker. One interesting side effect -- if this takes off, Sirius and XM may not have to worry about antitrust so much after all. Snip from Eliot's review:

At the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas today, Broadband Instruments launched the potentially disruptive "Slacker" music ecosystem, which combines interactive webcasts, satellite radio, and traditional MP3 playback in a next-generation device that could make Apple's iPod – and even its upcoming iPhone -- look, well, a little unconnected.

Slacker will roll out in stages; currently, the only aspect available to consumers is the beta version of the free interactive online radio service at Slacker.com, which allows users to mold their own customized channels in the 128 Kbps MP3 format, starting with either Slacker's presets or a list of one or more favorite artists. A premium version of the service will surface in early summer that will charge subscribers $7.50/month to get rid of banner ads, eliminate the "six song skips per hour per channel" limit, and allow users to designate any currently-playing track as a favorite to have it added to their online music library.

The free version is a bit like Last.fm and Pandora, but Slacker will offer key advantages over those services when the Slacker line of portable audio hardware becomes available, including the ability to listen to interactive radio away from the computer. The devices will refresh the user's customized Slacker channels over available Wi-Fi connections (WEP and WPA wireless security to be supported), whenever they sense that content is getting stale. Starting late this summer the players will go on sale for between $150 and $300 depending on how much flash memory is included (Broadband Instrument's Jonathan Sasse said that the high-end model will hold "several gigabytes" of music).

The Slacker ecosystem will get even more interesting when Broadband Instruments releases satellite radio docks for both car and home, allowing users to download entire channels from satellites when there's no Wi-Fi around. However, unlike Sirius and XM, which use their own expensive satellites to accomplish this, Broadband Instruments will lease bandwidth from existing Ku-band satellites, currently used for satellite television and global positioning.

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