If for some reason Slacker hasn’t been uploaded to your Tour, pull the battery and restart. You should see a icon on the home screen when it powers back on that prompts you to download the app.

The Walkmans are available for pre-order at Sony’s site; $299 for the 16GB version and $399 for the 32GB version. Each contains a 3-inch OLED touchscreen, podcast and YouTube access, up to 33 hours of music playback on a single charge, web browsing, and the aforementioned Slacker feature.

According to the product description:

“Slacker Radio comes integrated on the X Series. Once you register your Walkman MP3 player with Slacker.com, you can choose up to 3 stations of music. Each station is cached on the device and can be refreshed using a Wi-Fi connection. Best of all, it’s free.”

There’s no mention of whether or not you’ll be able to subscribe to Slacker’s premium service. Perhaps that’ll be added later. The devices are expected to ship on or around June 20th.

OLED Touch Screen Walkman [SonyStyle.com via Electronista]

In order to make way for the new Slacker portable players, it looks as though the first-generation units will continue to be priced to move. You can grab an 8GB Slacker WiFi Internet Radio Player for $69.99 plus $5 shipping over on sellout.woot.com, today only.

You can listen to free, lightly ad-supported streaming radio on the device or pay $7.50 per month strip out commercials and be able to download tracks directly to the 8GB of storage.

Slacker 8GB WiFi Internet Radio Player [sellout.woot.com via Gear Diary]

Here’s a pretty great deal on a 2GB Slacker Portable player. It generally costs about $75 to $100 elsewhere but you can pick one up for just $54.99 at Geeks.com – that’s for a new unit, too, not a refurbished one (Geeks.com sells a fair amount of refurbished stuff).

Keep in mind that the second generation of the Slacker Portable, the G2, is now out. Our own Peter Ha called it “10x better than the first gen device,” but it starts at $199.

If you just want to get in the game, $55 for the first-generation device might not be that bad.

Slacker Portable 2GB Personal Radio Player [Geeks.com]

When we had our surprise hands-on with the Slacker for iPhone application a few days ago, the rep mentioned that it could be available “as soon as tomorrow”. Well, just a mere 5 tomorrows later, their prophecy has come true. Apple has greenlit the application, and now nothing stands between you and the customized internet radio goodness.

What it can do:

-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

What it can’t do:

- Fight bears
- Solve criminal mysteries

Even if you’re a hardcore Pandora (or last.fm) devout, Slacker has plenty of features that make it worth checking out. Nab it from your local Stevie J’s Tunes and Vids here.

Hungry for some Slacker streaming radio on your iPhone? The BlackBerry app just became available earlier today, and it looks like they’re already prepped to go live on Apple’s finest. We ran into a Slacker rep tonight at the ShowStoppers CES event, said some magic words, and were presented with Slacker for iPhone in all of its glory – and we’ve got the screenshots to prove it.

Hungry for some Slacker streaming radio on your iPhone? The BlackBerry app just became available earlier today, and it looks like they’re already prepped to go live on Apple’s finest. We ran into a Slacker rep tonight at the ShowStoppers CES event, said some magic words, and were presented with Slacker for iPhone in all of its glory – and we’ve got the screenshots to prove it.

Have you been drooling over the Slacker for BlackBerry app that made its demo-debut all the way back in September of ‘08? At long last, it’s available to satisfy your streamin’-radio needs, packed with preprogrammed genre stations, custom stations, album art and reviews, song skipping, and the fancypants caching that makes it oh-so-special. The base version of the application is free, but subscription add-on services are available if you want the bells and whistles.

Sony’s $300 Internet Video Link add-on box for BRAVIA-series TVs has recently added the Slacker streaming music service to the list of available channels. Also added was content from Howcast.com, a site that contains a series of user-generated how-to videos. Slacker ought to lend some good music features to Sony’s service and Howcast has won some awards from TIME and PC Magazine, so both seem like good additions.

Full release after the jump…

SONY ADDS SLACKER PERSONAL RADIO TO BRAVIA INTERNET VIDEO LINK SERVICE

Howcast Also Added to Expanding Channel Line Up

SAN DIEGO, Nov. 19, 2008 – Sony today introduced Slacker Personal Radio and Howcast Media as the latest Sony^® BRAVIA^® Internet Video Link content providers.

Slacker Personal Radio delivers millions of licensed songs and more than 100 individually programmed genre music stations, while Howcastoffers up a selection of its engaging how-to videos. Both channels offer content at no additional charge to BRAVIA Internet Video Link users.

“Internet content is expanding faster than ever and Sony is bringing it straight to BRAVIA televisions,” said Randy Waynick, senior vice president of Sony Electronics’ Home Products Division. “Slacker andHowcast are great examples of new types of entertainment that are bridging the gap from an Internet experience to entertainment shared in the living room.”

Slacker’s library of CD-quality music across all genres and eras ensures that music lovers can enjoy radio stations on their BRAVIA HDTV ranging from music of the golden-era classics to today’s hottest hits. By simply linking their BRAVIA Internet Video Link to your online Slacker account, users can easily enjoy their own custom Slacker stations created online where they have fine-tuned categories to set artist, year, popularity and more.

Slacker’s service also allows users to personalize choice across the web, BRAVIA Internet Video Link, Slacker G2 or soon on BlackBerrysmartphones, ensuring that your favorite artists and ratings follow you to whatever device you’re using.

Recently named a top website of 2008 by both Time and PC Magazine, Howcast.com features useful how-to videos and guides. Howcast will offer nearly 100 videos on the BRAVIA Internet Video Link including select content from channels like “Hot How-To’s,” “Fun & Games,” “Food & Drink,” “Home & Family,” and “Health & Beauty.”

The BRAVIA Internet Video Link Module, which attaches to the back of a compatible BRAVIA TV, streams on-demand entertainment including hit movies, televisions shows, user generated videos, and a variety of other high-definition and standard-definition content not found on network or cable/satellite TV. The module connects to the Internet via an existing broadband Ethernet connection and streams content, much of which is available at no additional charge.

The Slacker and Howcast channels add to the existing BRAVIA Internet Video Link lineup, which already includes Amazon Video OnDemand; YouTube; Dailymotion; CBS; Yahoo!; Sports Illustrated; blip.tv;CondéNet’s Style.com, Men.Style.com, Epicurious, Wired.com and Concierge.com channels; Sony Pictures’ Crackle, and others.

The device is currently available for about $300 and can be purchased online at www.sonystyle.com, Sony Style retail stores and Sony authorized retailers across the country.

That’s all the updated info and if you’re interested then keep reading for a full-on review.

Hardware

The G2 is super, tiny and easily portable. The exact dimensions are as follows: 87×53x13.5mm and weighs only 2.5 ounces. The screen may look small (320×240), but it’s big enough to show album art, an artist picture, biography and album review. All of this can be accessed with the old BlackBerry-like scroll wheel. You can “favorite” or “block” tracks via the top two buttons. The rest of button scheme is simple with a play/pause, forward and rewind button located on the bottom half. Volume controls are found on the top of the player next to the 3.5mm headphone jack. A “back” button is located just below the scroll wheel that is mainly used when navigating the menu system.

You can charge and sideload tracks over USB. Depending on which model you choose to purchase, your stations will sync over USB or Wi-Fi. Syncing over Wi-Fi takes a long time, like, hours depending on how many stations you choose. I’m unsure about it over USB since I’m on a Mac, though. However, you can have Slacker pre-load your stations and everything else when you purchase through them. Even though it takes a while to sync you’re getting a ton of music, so I can live with that. I synced before going to bed and you don’t necessarily have to sync all that often.

The hardware is easy to use and much improved over the previous model. There’s a 30-pin connector located on the bottom that will work with upcoming power adapters, FM transmitter and speaker docks. Also included in this model is a custom EQ and volume normalization options. You can purchase through Slacker or Amazon now, but it will ship to Best Buy stores this month. The G2 includes a case with removable clip, USB cable, USB-compatible power supply, and premium-ears. Admittedly I did not try these out since I’ve been testing out Shure’s new SE 110 in-ears, but I’ll update shortly.

Service

This is the bread and butter for Slacker. There are over two million tracks available and they’re CD quality, which is a very good thing considering all you audiophiles will want to know about that. When you rate, fave or ban tracks on the player itself it syncs with your online account and vice versa.
Experts maintain the 100+ stations and the variety is quite good. I rarely found myself skipping tracks. The free service limits you to six track skips within one hour whereas the paid service costs $7.50 a month. The free service also subjects you to about one advertisement per hour, but you won’t find that with the paid subscription. Paying for the service gives the ability to save songs to your library and access them whenever you want with the paid service. This also gives the ability to go back to the previous song you were listening to. You can also request an unlimited number of songs to the most kickass custom stations as possible, but this, too, requires the paid service.

Depending on the model you choose, the number of stations you pick will vary the depth of songs you get in each station. So the less you have the more variety you get. You can sync over Wi-Fi whenever you have access and keys are also stored.

Overall, I’d recommend the G2 if you’re heavily invested in Slacker’s online service and even if you’re not, then you should get one anyway. It’s free music that’s constantly changing and, for someone like me, that’s a good thing. I get stuck listening to the same stuff over and over again.

Today RIM announced the Slacker application available for BlackBerry. It was demoed at CTIA and I got a chance to play around with it a little bit.

The relationship brings Slacker Personal Radio to BlackBerry devices. The biggest benefit is the ability to cache thousands of songs. Every time you hit a hotspot the device will sync and update the station. Plenty of music is available from Fergie to Bad Company. If you don’t like something, you can ban the song or artist. Conversely, if you do like something you hear, you can rate the artist or get more info. I didn’t see a “buy now” link, but I’ll bet donuts to dollars somebody is working on that.

Read the rest and see some pics over at MobileCrunch.

Today at CTIA, Slacker announced that come October they will have a full fledged app ready to roll on BlackBerry devices. I previewed this yesterday on a Bold that happened to be T-Mobile branded, but it’s probably a European model. Anyway, the app was integrated into the BB very well and left rather impressed. The app and service are free, but you do have the option of the pay service should you choose to go that route. Our boys on the floor at CTIA will have a video demo shortly.

When you’ve seen one unboxing, you’ve pretty much seen them all. Laptop points out that the player is big and bulky, but it does have a 4-inch screen. Umm. Why do you need such a large screen for a device that doesn’t play video? The UI is very similar to the Web site so you won’t get discombobulated when using it. It has a touch strip for the sake of having some touch controls. Refreshing content wirelessly seems to be a breeze and is quite fast. It doesn’t sound all that impressive, but we’ll soon find out when we get our paws on one.

Lovers of Slacker Radio, prepare to shower me with petals of rare flowers, delicious food, and promises of sexual favors, for I bring news that the Slacker Portable, which has been delayed more times than Winehouse’s rehab visits, is finally set to ship tomorrow.

For those not in the know, the Slacker Portable is a device not unlike an iPod or Zune, but it uses local Wi-Fi to load songs into the device which are played for your, and you rate them, as you do on the Slacker website.

For those who like social networking mixed in with their music, this is the player for you, and you can thank me for the news later.

Slacker Portable Ships Tomorrow. What’s Next? [Laptop, whom we bested in Beer Pong at CES, just so's ya know]

So I groped the Slacker Portable last night. I’ve been hard on Slacker about how delayed its portable player has been. First it was supposed to be here by the end of the summer, then it was supposed to be here in December, then it got delayed again until the end of January. I hope it launches in the end of January like it’s supposed to because I don’t think it’ll be able to survive another delay.

The player itself is pretty nice — much, much lighter than I thought. The device I had in my hands isn’t the finished version, though, so there might still be some things missing from its innards.

There was another interesting player on the Slacker table from Logitech. Logitech has been adding Slacker support to many of its more recent Internet radio and streaming audio devices, so look for more and more of these to come out over the coming months. This one (I’m pretty sure) won’t handle direct to device downloads like the Slacker Portable. Rather, it’ll transfer music from your computer’s Slacker player software and stream it or transfer it, depending on whether or not it’s got built-in storage.

Aaaaaaand, I’m done. That’s enough for me, thank you. I give up. First it was the end of summer, then it was mid-December, now it’s the end of January when the Slacker Portable is supposed to ship. I have no faith that it’ll ship on that date. Sorry.

I’d been waiting to buy this thing since the moment it was announced. I had custom searches and RSS feeds set up for news about it. I anxiously waited for summer to turn to fall. Then nothing.

This has undertones like the Phantom game system and the Palm Foleo. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to hear Slacker announce that it’s going to scrap its plans to sell hardware players altogether to instead concentrate on software. The Slacker software player is great, don’t get me wrong. I’ve just lost faith in the hardware part.

Slacker Personal Radio [Slacker.com] via Google News

Well it’s here (almost). Although promised by the end of the summer, the Slacker Portable is now available for pre-order and should ship in mid-December.

You shouldn’t think of it as an MP3 player, per se, although you can load MP3 and WMA files onto the device. Think of it more as a personal portable radio. You listen to songs and rate them. The ones you hate never show up again and the ones you love show up more often. Music is transferred to the player over a Wi-Fi connection and artist/song biographical information is displayed on the 4-inch color screen (it’s not a touchscreen, though).

I had high, high hopes for this device. I suppose part of me is still hanging on to the possibility that it might still be all it’s cracked up to be. My main concern is the price, however.

The cheapest player is $200 and that’s for 2GB of storage. The 4GB and 8GB versions are $250 and $300, respectively. Plus to be able to skip more than six songs per hour, keep advertisements off of the device, and save songs to be played whenever you want (only on Slacker’s software or portable player, though), you’ll have to pony up another $7.50 per month for the premium service. Battery life is rated at around 10 hours and the thing only plays music.

Don’t get me wrong. I like the idea of being lazy and telling the player, "Hey, I like AC/DC. Gimme a bunch of stuff that sounds like that," and then sifting through the good and the bad and finding new artists. I use the Slacker desktop software a lot and it works really well. It just seems weird to spend at least $200 plus $90 per year to be able to walk around with a hardware device that does the same thing.

I’m just really hung up on the price for some reason. I guess I wish the cost of the player was either subsidized or came with a year of free service, that’s all.

Slacker Portable Player (Finally) on the Way [PC Magazine]

It took me years to realize that maybe it’s not such a bad thing for people to listen to music without owning it, and it was my renewed interest in radio — both FM and Internet — that did it. Now I’m constantly checking out stuff at all these online spots and it’s definitely broadening my horizons. (Newsflash: Jazz Nerd Now Checks Out Indy Rock Bands!)

Remember radio? You don’t own the music, but you hear it for nothing and then you go and buy it if it rings your bell. Well Internet radio is alive and kicking, and it’s starting to play nice with portable players: Look at the happy marriages of SanDisk and Rhapsody, iRiver and Rhapsody, SanDisk and Yahoo, Sonos and Rhapsody, and so on.

For the iPod, though, it’s been lonely at the top. Apple is still holding out on the whole subscription service idea (a la Napster, Rhapsody, and Yahoo), preventing 80 percent of music player owners from getting new music regularly without having to do a term paper’s worth of research. Sure you can get an iPod Shuffle and constantly update the music on it automatically with random tracks from your own library.

There are other online sources of iPod-compatible digital music besides iTunes. But aside from eMusic, which has always done well with the iPod set thanks to its DRM-less MP3s), it’s tough to say how many iPod owners actually use them.

Slacker
One of the better things to come along in the Net radio universe is a Web radio service called Slacker, and the company is about to drop the Holy Grail of dedicated portable music devices. Prototypes are floating around out there, and they look frigging awesome: WiFi, 4-inch screen, I’m all for competition, but it would really kick ass if Apple got in on this early, because I’m starting to get sick of scrolling through my 80GB iPod to find something I haven’t listened to in a while.

Lala
This online CD shop lets you buy discs from other users for a fee. But you can upload your own iTunes library to Lala’s servers, whether your music was ripped or downloaded (as long as there’s no DRM). That means you can access your tunes from any Internet-connected computer, and even copy it directly to your iPod.

For about a month, Lala users were able to stream full-length tracks on-demand from one major label (Warner Music Group) for free — which was huge. But that service went dark; the company cited server overload, which I’m sure is true, but I suspect its immediate success (despite the unstable interface) may have scared some labels into backing out.

Other Freebies
There are always a few free offerings on iTunes and some free music download sites out there, though usually none of them has anything you’ve ever heard of. And then there’s SpiralFrog, a ballsy new ad-supported free download service with 700,000 tracks from the Universal record label (which is making headlines of its own). Of course, those tracks are in WMA format, so the iPod will once again be cut out of a free musical extravaganza.

DIY
While it would be great if there were a subscription service on iTunes, you can still “time-shift” Internet radio with recording programs like WireTap, which simply grab any sound your computer plays. If you’re really determined, you can even use an external sound card like M-Audio Transit USB and line the output back into the input and record analog. (People still tape stuff off the radio with tape recorders, and plenty of MP3 players have FM recording features.)

If the next significant generation of the iPod (not just a capacity bump or internal changes) turns out to have WiFi built in, which is still in question, Slacker would be the ideal partner for Apple to take over the digital airwaves and take iPod owners out of their boxes. Imagine being able to refresh your iPod wirelessly with music tailored to your tastes — though I’m certain “free” doesn’t fit into Apple’s vision.

Wired recently sat down with Broadband Instruments to talk about its new Slacker music service. In a nutshell, it sounds like a music-lover’s dream. Slacker is comprised of both a service and hardware device. The service will use either WiFi or satellite bandwidth to serve up music channels to owners of the Slacker player. Tons of music, lots to choose from, all that great stuff – think Pandora, except a bit more corporate.

Now here’s the kicker: the service is free. Yup, totally free, but you can only skip six tracks per hour on the service. That means if you keep on shuffling and get stuck with Kenny Rogers, you’ll have to wait it out. There’s also ads on the Slacker player itself, which features USB, touch sensitive scrolling, and a massive 4-inch screen. Expect to shell out $150 to $350 for a player depending on the size of the memory inside it.

So how does a company like Broadband Instruments make money out of all this? Well next month or so, they’ll be rolling out a $7.50 monthly fee which will allow you to skip tracks to your heart’s content and gets rid of banner ads on the player. This service sounds extremely promising and I’m curious as to how they’re going to market this. Either way, keep an eye out for Slacker if music is your thing and you like free service.

Broadband Instruments Slacker Offers Satellite, Wi-Fi Connectivity [Wired]
Is Slacker the Long-speculated iPod-Killer? [Laptop]
New Music Service Slacker Has (very) Broad Ambitions [TechCrunch]