Official Slacker Forums

[Radio Radio]

Coming from an age where albums were paramount, I still have a love for that format. One of the things I love about Slacker is the online information from AMG. But I have a major complaint. Is it possible to have a connection to the album that the song came from instead of a compilation album?

[MikeV]

Ah ha... This is the point where "Build your music library fast" meets "Build your music library cost-effectively"...

Compilation albums bring lots of great music from lots of great artists, or bring lots of great muslc from multiple albums by the same artist, to the table in a cost-effective manner... the perfect manner for a young company working to provide a diverse spread of music without breaking the bank! XM did much the same thing in its early days, though this obviously wasn't quite as evident because we didn't have access to the album info that the song came from... until XM Online came to be.

I'm sure that as time goes on, and money becomes more available, the library will be expanded with original albums over the collections. Whether they'll go back and remap the songs from the collection albums to the original albums, though, would be up to them.

[PatentGuy]

One benefit to compilation albums is that often the music quality of the song is vastly improved over the song from the original album. Heck, even many re-releases of the same album on CD have better sound quality than the original CD release.

[Radio Radio]

I like to read the reviews. I would rather read a review for the album the song came from instead of one of those tossed together "Best Of" releases. Or perhaps I will put it this way, should 'Eleanor Rigby ' connect to 'Revolver' or to 'One'? Like I said, I respect the album.

[MikeV]

For a true music aficionado, there's no doubt that the original album would be much preferable to a compilation or best-of... but when you're a small company looking to build a large music library across many genres of music, with a limited budget to do so, some corners may be cut in the beginning to grow that library to a large size with the plan of going back later and growing it even more with original albums when money permits.

Am I certain that this is what they have done, or that that is their plan? Absolutely not... but having seen XM do the same thing in their infancy, it wouldn't surprise me that Slacker would be starting with compilation/best-of albums to get all the popular songs that the majority of folks like into their system quickly.

[frizgolf]

Can I go back on my portable and read album info from songs that already played?
Would it be possible to have all song titles within the album reviews?
I'd also like to be able to tag song/album information for retrieval later, like when I reach my destination after driving. As much as folks use this service to replace music collections, with saving songs in Premium and whatnot, I will continue to buy CDs from artists I like. It would be nice to be able to retrieve album info in this manner when I'm sitting down next to pencil and paper.

[AOlson]

One trick I do is to hit the 'buy' button on the web player OR search for the song itself from Amazon. They almost always list ALL the versions of that song that have ever been in print. Including the raries and b-sides and weird stuff as used.

A lot of the time you can even buy it as an MP3 straight from them if all you want is the one song.

Andy