Yet another audial consumer offering is being made available to American listeners as Slacker Inc. prepares to roll out its line of "Personal Radio," enabling U.S. consumers to customize and carry their own radio stations for listening wherever they happen to be. Designed to be more user-friendly than an MP3 player, more portable than a satellite radio (much less a PC), and more individualized than terrestrial radio, the company is angling for its own niche in the vast yet crowded audio marketplace. The Personal Radio Player, roughly the same size as a deck of cards, features a four-inch color screen and can store and play back digital music and videos that its user owns.

The Rancho Bernardo, Calif.-based company is a start-up of approximately 50 employees led by a team of digital-music experts from Musicmatch, Rio and iRiver, and they bring a breadth of experience and ideas to the turntable. For example, by having acquired already rights from content owners including Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and hundreds of independent labels, Slacker offers highly personalized, continuously refreshed radio via WiFi and satellite music distribution, as well as DJ intelligence embedded in portable players. By securing the rights even before offering its units, Slacker has already sidestepped the potential legal minefield that is still being mapped out in the courts, as demonstrated by a lawsuit filed against XM Satellite Radio on March 26 by the National Music Publishers’ Association over XM’s XM+MP3 service, which the association alleges enables consumers to engage in digital piracy. For now, listeners can check out the Slacker Personal Radio online at http://www.slacker.com. The service was made available on March 14 in beta for streaming over a personal computer. The company said it is in discussions with selected partners to provide Slacker Personal Radio through a broader range of devices in the future. A separate, Wi-Fi-enabled portable unit that will be able to play personalized selections will be available in the early summer, with estimated prices of models ranging from approximately $150 to $300. The company has not yet disclosed the retail price for the car kit, which will feature a car-top antenna to receive high-speed music feeds from satellites throughout the continental United States, while the integrated Slacker DJ ensures favorite stations stay current.

The company also said it is seeking to integrate its radio service in devices made by others, including cellphone manufacturers.

Initially, Slacker’s basic radio service is advertising-funded, though a premium version of the Slacker service will cost $7.50 a month. Slacker Premium Service will offer no advertising, unlimited skipping, and the ability to save radio tracks to a library. The basic radio is advertising-funded and will remain free to use on Slacker software and portable Slacker Personal Radio Players.

Slacker’s extensive music library is organized into variously programmed genre and sub-genre stations, with more than 10,000 stations built around specific artists. Personally customized options include adjusting playlists between popular and more eclectic music, new and old material, and tagging tracks as favorites: Clicking on a "heart" button will save the track as a favorite and cause the song to be played more often; conversely, in a deft touch of attitude-enablement, Slacker lets users click a button to ban a certain song. Users also will be able to share their favorite stations with friends via e-mail. Other touches will include album cover art, band profiles, reviews and artist photos.

"Personalized radio is a great way to listen to the music you love without having to work at it," said Dennis Mudd, CEO of Slacker. "The only problem is that until now, personalized radio has been stuck on the PC. Slacker solves that problem. Now you can just kick back and listen."

Mudd was the co-founder and former chairman and CEO of Musicmatch, an online music jukebox software provider that was sold in 2004 to Yahoo Inc. for $160 million. Not too bad for a slacker.