In early 2017, LiveXLive, a platform focused on delivering live music streams, purchased the Editors' Choice award-winning Slacker Radio for $50 million.
It wasn't until early 2019 that the brand synergy emerged, however, with Slacker Radio now being officially known as LiveXLive Powered by Slacker Radio.
Though the original Slacker Radio streaming music service still exists (at least for now), LiveXLive has its own Slacker-powered site and rebranded Slacker Radio apps for Android, iOS, Amazon FireTV, AppleTV, and Roku.
It's a bit confusing situation, but the good news is that Slacker Radio remains as excellent as ever in its new form.
LiveXLive Pricing
LiveXLive offers three listening plans for music fans.
With Basic, you get 128Kbps audio and the ability to skip a maximum of six songs per hour.
In exchange, you have to endure plenty of audio and banner advertisements.
Subscribing to the $3.99 per month Plus removes the ads and skip limitations, and ups the bit rate to 320Kbps.
The $9.99 per month Premium builds upon the Plus tier by letting you cache albums and playlists for offline listening, and play songs and albums on demand.
If you sign up for a Slacker Radio account (or already have one), your credentials will work when logging into LiveXLive.
It's probably only a matter of time before the two sites become one.
In fact, if you explore Slacker's settings area, you'll see LiveXLive branding.
On-demand playback is easily the best reason to upgrade to a Premium account, as you'll no longer have to wait for LiveXLive to serve up the tracks you most want to hear.
I simply keyed song titles into the search box and listened to my favorite tunes.
You can't record music, as you can with SiriusXM Internet Radio.
LiveXLive lacks a Family Plan, an attractive feature for multi-user households.
Amazon Music Unlimited, Apple Music, Deezer, Spotify, Tidal, and YouTube Music one-up LiveXLive in this regard.
A (Somewhat) New Look and Feel
Like YouTube Music, LiveXLive has a panel-driven interface that's more than just eye candy, as it puts a lot of information right on the home page.
Across the top are daily recommended tracks and news articles, with featured songs, artists, and playlists living just south of that.
If you have a Slacker Radio account, your custom playlists and channels carry over to LiveXLive.
Overall, LiveXLive's interface isn't much different from Slacker Radio's with the exception of the color scheme.
That said, there is one major difference between LiveXLive and the Slacker Radio site: the menu bar categories.
Live Events is where you'll find playlists associated with upcoming concerts; Stations houses the dozens of Slacker Radio-powered stations in multiple genres, such as Comedy, Decades, Jazz, and News/Talk; Channels is where you'll find LiveXLive's video work, including artist interviews, music news updates, and live performances.
Merging LiveXLive and Slacker's strengths under one banner is a chocolate-and-peanut butter situation.
Choice Content
Slacker's unique content lives on in LiveXLive.
I particularly enjoy the channels that link the past with the present.
The Artist DNA stations, for example, are channels hosted by music experts who play the tracks that influenced important artists.
Likewise, Sample City highlights the musical snippets that have built popular, contemporary songs.
The pair are music history classes that competing services, such as Spotify and iHeartRadio, lack.
In addition, LiveXLive's many informative stations are hosted by DJs who make you recall the heyday of traditional over-the-air radio.
For example, Red, who hosts many Slacker Stories and one of the many alternative channels, offers an effervescent personality and deep music knowledge that beckons you to return every morning.
The Listening Experience
LiveXLive has a deep catalog.
It boasts Talking Heads' Speaking In Tongues album, as well as songs by other popular artists who were previously unavailable.
If, for example, you're in the mood for killer guitar riffs from The Purple One, please note that LiveXLive now has Prince's library.
It was a Tidal exclusive for a while, but reappeared on other streaming music platforms after the artist's death.
In addition to its robust music collection, LiveXLive carries ABC News, though it no longer has live ESPN Radio.
Another cool feature is Slacker Stories, which delivers Bill Murray Stories, Star Wars Stories, and other pop culture tales.
As with SiriusXM Internet Radio's MySXM feature, LiveXLive has sliders you can use to tweak playback metrics in the Related Artists, Favorite Songs, Popular Songs, and New/Older song categories. Unlike SiriusXM's MySXM, LivexLive's sliders remain the same from station to station; they aren't customized for the stations.
Still, the additional customization options open the door to more tightly crafted personalized stations.
As is common with these sorts of services, clicking the ban icon prevents a song or artist from appearing.
Clicking the heart-shaped favorite icon, on the other hand, gives a song extra weight, causing LiveXLive to play it more frequently.
You can also turn on and off the music, sports, and news updates.
Unfortunately, LiveXLive lacks lyrics.
That's not unexpected, as Slacker Radio hadn't had lyrics for a while.
If you wish to sing along to official lyrics, check out Amazon Music Unlimited.
LiveXLive streamed crisp, hiccup-free audio at 128Kbps and 320Kbps (for the Free and Premium plans, respectively) in testing over both my home and office network connections.
Unless you're a serious audiophile, Slacker Radio's sound quality will satisfy even when the audio is pumped through desktop speakers.
That said, if you demand nothing less than the best audio quality, Tidal is the service for you.
Its $19.99 HiFi plan streams delicious, uncompressed 1,411Kbps FLAC audio.
Baby, I'm a Star
LiveXLive's quality streaming audio, on-demand access, news, and deep customization options make it a co-Editors' Choice (along with SiriusXM Internet Radio and Spotify) among premium streaming audio services.
A few minor complaints aside, LiveXLive is a complete package, and one that continues to dominate the streaming music landscape.
LiveXLive Powered by Slacker
Cons
No family plan.
Lacks lyrics.
Some branding confusion.
The Bottom Line
The revamped LiveXLive combines the company's live music streams with Slacker Radio's knowledgeable DJs and deep music well to produce one of the most complete streaming music services on the market today.
Slacker Radio is Slacker Radio no more—mostly.
In early 2017, LiveXLive, a platform focused on delivering live music streams, purchased the Editors' Choice award-winning Slacker Radio for $50 million.
It wasn't until early 2019 that the brand synergy emerged, however, with Slacker Radio now being officially known as LiveXLive Powered by Slacker Radio.
Though the original Slacker Radio streaming music service still exists (at least for now), LiveXLive has its own Slacker-powered site and rebranded Slacker Radio apps for Android, iOS, Amazon FireTV, AppleTV, and Roku.
It's a bit confusing situation, but the good news is that Slacker Radio remains as excellent as ever in its new form.
LiveXLive Pricing
LiveXLive offers three listening plans for music fans.
With Basic, you get 128Kbps audio and the ability to skip a maximum of six songs per hour.
In exchange, you have to endure plenty of audio and banner advertisements.
Subscribing to the $3.99 per month Plus removes the ads and skip limitations, and ups the bit rate to 320Kbps.
The $9.99 per month Premium builds upon the Plus tier by letting you cache albums and playlists for offline listening, and play songs and albums on demand.
If you sign up for a Slacker Radio account (or already have one), your credentials will work when logging into LiveXLive.
It's probably only a matter of time before the two sites become one.
In fact, if you explore Slacker's settings area, you'll see LiveXLive branding.
On-demand playback is easily the best reason to upgrade to a Premium account, as you'll no longer have to wait for LiveXLive to serve up the tracks you most want to hear.
I simply keyed song titles into the search box and listened to my favorite tunes.
You can't record music, as you can with SiriusXM Internet Radio.
LiveXLive lacks a Family Plan, an attractive feature for multi-user households.
Amazon Music Unlimited, Apple Music, Deezer, Spotify, Tidal, and YouTube Music one-up LiveXLive in this regard.
A (Somewhat) New Look and Feel
Like YouTube Music, LiveXLive has a panel-driven interface that's more than just eye candy, as it puts a lot of information right on the home page.
Across the top are daily recommended tracks and news articles, with featured songs, artists, and playlists living just south of that.
If you have a Slacker Radio account, your custom playlists and channels carry over to LiveXLive.
Overall, LiveXLive's interface isn't much different from Slacker Radio's with the exception of the color scheme.
That said, there is one major difference between LiveXLive and the Slacker Radio site: the menu bar categories.
Live Events is where you'll find playlists associated with upcoming concerts; Stations houses the dozens of Slacker Radio-powered stations in multiple genres, such as Comedy, Decades, Jazz, and News/Talk; Channels is where you'll find LiveXLive's video work, including artist interviews, music news updates, and live performances.
Merging LiveXLive and Slacker's strengths under one banner is a chocolate-and-peanut butter situation.
Choice Content
Slacker's unique content lives on in LiveXLive.
I particularly enjoy the channels that link the past with the present.
The Artist DNA stations, for example, are channels hosted by music experts who play the tracks that influenced important artists.
Likewise, Sample City highlights the musical snippets that have built popular, contemporary songs.
The pair are music history classes that competing services, such as Spotify and iHeartRadio, lack.
In addition, LiveXLive's many informative stations are hosted by DJs who make you recall the heyday of traditional over-the-air radio.
For example, Red, who hosts many Slacker Stories and one of the many alternative channels, offers an effervescent personality and deep music knowledge that beckons you to return every morning.
The Listening Experience
LiveXLive has a deep catalog.
It boasts Talking Heads' Speaking In Tongues album, as well as songs by other popular artists who were previously unavailable.
If, for example, you're in the mood for killer guitar riffs from The Purple One, please note that LiveXLive now has Prince's library.
It was a Tidal exclusive for a while, but reappeared on other streaming music platforms after the artist's death.
In addition to its robust music collection, LiveXLive carries ABC News, though it no longer has live ESPN Radio.
Another cool feature is Slacker Stories, which delivers Bill Murray Stories, Star Wars Stories, and other pop culture tales.
As with SiriusXM Internet Radio's MySXM feature, LiveXLive has sliders you can use to tweak playback metrics in the Related Artists, Favorite Songs, Popular Songs, and New/Older song categories. Unlike SiriusXM's MySXM, LivexLive's sliders remain the same from station to station; they aren't customized for the stations.
Still, the additional customization options open the door to more tightly crafted personalized stations.
As is common with these sorts of services, clicking the ban icon prevents a song or artist from appearing.
Clicking the heart-shaped favorite icon, on the other hand, gives a song extra weight, causing LiveXLive to play it more frequently.
You can also turn on and off the music, sports, and news updates.
Unfortunately, LiveXLive lacks lyrics.
That's not unexpected, as Slacker Radio hadn't had lyrics for a while.
If you wish to sing along to official lyrics, check out Amazon Music Unlimited.
LiveXLive streamed crisp, hiccup-free audio at 128Kbps and 320Kbps (for the Free and Premium plans, respectively) in testing over both my home and office network connections.
Unless you're a serious audiophile, Slacker Radio's sound quality will satisfy even when the audio is pumped through desktop speakers.
That said, if you demand nothing less than the best audio quality, Tidal is the service for you.
Its $19.99 HiFi plan streams delicious, uncompressed 1,411Kbps FLAC audio.
Baby, I'm a Star
LiveXLive's quality streaming audio, on-demand access, news, and deep customization options make it a co-Editors' Choice (along with SiriusXM Internet Radio and Spotify) among premium streaming audio services.
A few minor complaints aside, LiveXLive is a complete package, and one that continues to dominate the streaming music landscape.
LiveXLive Powered by Slacker
Cons
No family plan.
Lacks lyrics.
Some branding confusion.
The Bottom Line
The revamped LiveXLive combines the company's live music streams with Slacker Radio's knowledgeable DJs and deep music well to produce one of the most complete streaming music services on the market today.
