The most intriguing of these stations are the ESPN stations that let you tune in to live sports talk. Comedy, ABC News, American Public Media, and ESPN programming fall under this category. The News/Talk/Sports category is exactly what it sounds like-stations that cater to the news, talk, and sports crowds. The show takes you on an alphabetical journey through the band's catalog, and features exclusive interviews with Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, as well as commentary from Redbeard, a host from music site. Led Zepplin: A to Z is a prime example of a Special. The stations in this category are all human-curated and/or human-hosted programming that provide entertaining insight into a song or album. Specials is the section that truly demonstrates Slacker Radio's greatness. It's like having a personalized greatest hits station, and it's a joy. Favorite Songs is easily my, well, favorite section, as it creates a station around songs you've marked as favorites. Your three most recently played stations also live on the home screen as shortcuts. The My Music section lets you access stations you create, playlists, bookmarked stations, and recently played stations. The category king is Holiday, which boasts 35 channels at the time of this writing. Tapping the Themes icon, for example, reveals multiple subgenres, such as Artists to Watch 2016, Attack of the Boy Bands, and Pokemon Radio. The Stations section holds Slacker Radio's 20+ genre categories and more than 100 individual stations. Slacker Radio's recommendation engine is light years ahead of Pandora Internet Radio's oddball Music Genome Project choices. For example, the app recommended that I check out Slacker 20: East Coast Hip-Hop (because I listened to Wu-Tang Clan, I assume) and Great Songs You Forgot (because I listened to the playlist One-Hit Wonders). As a result, it's easy to dive into the service's deep well. The Slacker Radio home screen has a panel-driven interface that highlights new content, recommended stations, and curated playlists. Certainly, a good pair of headphones improves the experience, but it comes down to the signal, in the end. The bass lines were relatively full, and I noted a good separation of high and low sounds. I tested Slacker by listening to, among others albums, Wu-Tang Clan's Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), which streamed criply to my headphones. If that is how you listen, however, you should pay for the uncompressed FLAC audio of Tidal's HiFi plan. Unless you're an audiophile who's used to listening to uncompressed, high-bit-rate music through the highest-end devices, Slacker Radio's sound quality will satisfy. In testing, Slacker Radio streamed crisp, hiccup-free audio over my home and office network connections. Read Our Tidal (for Android) Review Sound Quality You're also limited to six song skips per hour, so you'll want to use the skip button judiciously if you opt for free listening. Slacker Radio's Android app has a free Basic tier that lets you stream dozens of stations, but monetizes the experience with audio and banner ads. Slacker Radio lacks a few minor features found in competing products, such as track crossfading and gapless playback, but it has enough great features and content of its own to be worthy of an Editors' Choice award. Slacker's latest updates aren't as considerable as those we saw in the 2013 revamp, but the under-the-hood fixes and thoughtfully curated stations make the app more appealing to casual and hardcore music fans alike. The service and its complementary Android app have undergone many changes in recent months to help it compete with the likes of Spotify and Tidal. Slacker Radio continues its dominance as one of the best streaming music apps.
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