From Jefferson Graham in USA Today: "Personalized Internet radio is expanding from the PC to portable devices.

"The 'Be Your Own DJ' notion of creating stations based on your favorite artists is a popular pastime online: Yahoo's Launchcast, Pandora, Last.FM and Slacker all offer such services.

"Thursday, Slacker introduces the Slacker Portable, a $199 device [pictured right] that lets you take its personalized stations anywhere you go. Wireless carrier AT&T just made stations from Pandora available on eight phones, for $8.99 monthly (the service is free online) [see RAIN coverage here]. Earlier, Sprint began quietly offering Pandora for $2.99 monthly on 15 phones [RAIN coverage here].

"'The whole world is moving in this direction,' says Kurt Hanson, [publisher] of RAIN (Radio And Internet Newsletter)...

"Redefining" radio
"Pandora attracted 3.3 million Internet listeners in October, according to measurement service ComScore Media Metrix. It expanded to Sprint phones in the spring with a low-key offering that is barely mentioned on Sprint's website. AT&T is offering the same low-key approach, with little marketing on the Web but instead an offer on the phone itself to sign up. Westergren [left] says the carriers are treading cautiously to make sure the phones work well with Pandora.

"'When you get personalized radio wherever you are, that's when we're able to redefine radio,' Westergren says.

"Moving personalized radio off the PC is in its early days. Beyond Pandora and Slacker, SanDisk's $149 Sansa Connect player offers Net radio from Yahoo, available anywhere there's a Wi-Fi connection.

Slacker CEO: "WiFi isn't the way to go"
"Slacker CEO Dennis Mudd didn't want to go the WiFi route. Instead, a selection of songs from your favorite artists is transferred to the Slacker portable player from your PC. New songs are added every time the player is hooked up. They are stored on the player, so you don't need an Internet connection to listen...

"Mudd says... 'Being connected to WiFi isn't the way to go. There could be static, or you might lose the signal. This way the music is always there.'

"An ad-supported version of the service is free; $7.95 monthly without ads. The device starts at $199.99 with 2 GB of storage (roughly 1,000 songs) and 15 stations, or $249.99 for 4 GB and 25 stations. The entry-level iPod Nano, by comparison, is $149 and has 4 GB of storage.

"Why spend the extra bucks?.. The automatic refresh of new songs... Mudd says, 'Most people end up with the same old playlists to listen to, week after week, because they don't have the time to do research and get new music.'

"Newsletter [publisher] Hanson [left] says taking Slacker and Pandora away from the computer is a great idea, but, 'The question is whether they can progress quickly and beat the tsunami of every device and webcaster that's headed in this direction. Because they won't be alone a year from now.'"

This entire story is available online from USA Today here.

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From ComputerWorld: "Jango Monday announced the public release of its online radio service that lets users create and share personalized radio stations.

"The site has been in beta test mode for the past four months [see previous RAIN coverage here], signing up more than 300,000 listeners who have created 600,000 stations. The Jango service, available without charge, does not require downloads, searches or playlist, the company noted.

"A user types in the name of a musician and a first station starts playing their music; users can then further customize Jango by rating songs and adding more musicians, it said...

"CEO Dan Kaufman [said,] 'Jango is as easy as a Google search. In literally seconds, you can create a totally customized radio station that plays exactly what you want to hear.'

"The site also is centered around a community, allowing users to see who is listening to the same music, who is tuning into the stations a user has developed and what his or her friends are listening to at any given time."

Read this entire ComputerWorld article here.

...

... Given the constraints of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Jango doesn't really play "exactly what you want," in the sense of an on-demand service. Like the personalized streams described in today's top story (Pandora, Slacker), Jango plays artists that it has determined are similar or related to the artist the user initially chooses. -- PM ...

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