Slacker Facts

Interesting facts from the article on WebWare about the debut of Slacker, a one-two punch to Apple’s digital music empire that consists of a music service and custom player hardware:

• About 70 percent of music enthusiasts don’t want to spend hours creating the perfect playlists;
• 51 percent of MP3 player users update their content only once a month or less;
• 46 percent don’t update more often because they don’t have time.

The really interesting twist in the Slacker service is that while the desktop app will perform jukebox duties as these players all do, the service model that integrates into it is radio-focused, meaning a free (ad-supported) version will exist, and the Wi-Fi enhanced player will periodically download and build mixes based on how you rate (and “favorite”) songs on the device, in the web player, and in the desktop app.

The name is clearly appropriate: for those out there who are more into radio and aren’t focused on building a large digital library, this may the device they were waiting for, and clearly targets music listeners that aren’t going to be interested in a library-only system like iTunes and the iPod. This could be big.