Hasta La Gadget!

Pandora, the ever-popular internet radio service, is now available for Windows Phone 8 devices. It took a while for the app to reach Microsoft’s new platform, but nonetheless, WP8 users can get in on the music-streaming action right now. Plus, Pandora is making their WP8 app ad-free until 2014, as well as tacking on a couple of exclusive features.

Both Pandora and Microsoft know that you’ve been waiting a long time for a Windows Phone 8 version of the app to come out, and they even announced plans to bring Pandora to WP8 during the platform’s launch event, so as a gift for your patience, they’re giving WP8 users an ad-free experience until the end of this year. This is a feature that only normally comes to premium subscribers of the service.

Furthermore, the app comes with Live Tile support, meaning that you can check out what artist and song is playing right from the home screen, and users can simply tap on the tile to go directly to the app. Microsoft and Pandora claim this as the app’s exclusive features, so if you were expecting anything groundbreaking in the actual app (besides the ad-free experience), you may be disappointed.

Along with the ad-free experience, however, users will also be able to play unlimited music. Pandora recently stuck a 40-hour monthly limit on its service for free users, but Windows Phone 8 users will be able to listen to all of the music that their hearts desire until the end of the year, after which you can spring for the monthly or yearly plans ($3.99 monthly or $36 yearly).

Pandora arrives on Windows Phone 8, ad-free until 2014 is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

doubleTwist has been around for a while now delivering its music player to Android users, providing an iTunes-like interface for syncing music between Android devices and computers. However, the company announced a new service today, called Magic Radio, and it looks to take a piece of the streaming music market share.

Magic Radio utilizes a user’s existing music library, as well as the user’s various musical tastes to deliver a personalized music experience. The new service takes the user’s existing library and mixes it with with new songs of similar style from doubleTwist’s music catalog that consists of over 13 million songs.

doubleTwist says that, unlike Pandora, Magic Radio doesn’t base a station on a single song or artist, but rather a user’s existing playlists, favorite genres, and can even cater to a user’s mood. Plus, Magic Radio is launching with a 7-day free trial, and only costs $3.99 per month afterward, which is cheaper than most other music-streaming services out there.

The subscription will also get you ad-free listening and access to more than 13 million songs that doubleTwist says will be all about discovery rather than repetition. The service will even cater music towards specific keywords you mention (like “Woodstock” or “Coachella”) and you can even base a station off a specific tempo that you want. Magic Radio is a part of the doubleTwist Player for Android, which is available for free in the Google Play store.

doubleTwist launches Magic Radio streaming music service is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Jabari Moketsi was a radio talk show host at WVGB until the struggling station was sold to a company that broadcasts classic rock. He had no interest in spinning songs by Boston and Bad Company, so he launched his own …

Pandora is the leader in streaming music mostly because it got there first. But use it for a while, and you realize the service’s catalog—not to mention its features—are limited. On paper, Slacker Radio is superior, and today, the five-year-old service is launching an overhaul aimed at proving it’s superior. More »

Slacker Radio hasn’t done too much the past few years. While they’ve definitely been spreading their service to different devices and platforms, like the Roku streaming media player, and just recently Chrysler’s UConnect at CES 2013, the service hasn’t been making waves like its competitors, Spotify, Pandora, Rdio, etc. However, we’ve been told that Slacker Radio will be holding an event sometime in the near future to reveal a complete overhaul of the service.

A PR representative for Slacker told us that the company will launch a major overhaul of the radio service in order to better compete with Spotify and other popular music-streaming services. We’re not told about any specifics, so exactly what they’ll be bringing to the new service is still a mystery.

However, the service will see a refocusing of its efforts, and the redesign and restructuring will be completely different than what the service is currently all about. It’s supposed to be a pretty major event for the company, and we’ve been hinted that there may be some famous musicians making an appearance at the event, but no details regarding special guests have been confirmed yet.

In any case, we hope to learn more info fairly shortly when the company reveals the new service. They already have a Premium service available, which is fairly similar to Spotify already, so we’re curious as to how the company will redesign the platform, and what new features they’ll bring to the table.

Slacker Radio planning major overhaul is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.