Slacker Radio Brings the Noise to Xbox 360

LOS ANGELES—We suspected that services would play a large role in Microsoft's Xbox 360 E3 showcase, and those suspicions were confirmed today with the announcement that a Slacker Radio app is headed to Redmond's video game console.

U.S. and Canadian Xbox Live Gold subscribers will find the free Slacker Radio app in the Xbox Live Marketplace this fall.

Slacker Radio will give Xbox Live Gold subscribers a fully customizable selection of over 200 music stations that are curated and hosted by Slacker's expert music programmers, plus artist showcases (such as the Adam Yauch station), comedy, ESPN Radio, ABC News, and official stations for leading music festivals including Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo, and Austin City Limits. Microsoft's Kinect motion-control accessory is compatible with the Slacker Radio app.

"Slacker Radio and Xbox 360, with voice and gesture controls via Kinect, change interactive radio as we know it," said Jonathan Sasse, senior vice president of marketing at Slacker. "The Xbox 360 console brings your favorite music and radio content from expert DJ's to your living room, you can get Slacker Radio virtually anywhere from your automobile, Web, home or mobile device, Slacker is everywhere you listen to radio."

Slacker Radio is a PCMag Editors' Choice pick among streaming music services thanks to its deep artist library, apps, offline caching, lyrics implemtation, and more. For more, see PCMag's full review and the slideshow below.

Besides the Xbox 360 game console, Slacker Radio is also currently available for listening on the Web, on all major smartphones (Android, Blackberry, iOS, Windows Phone 7) the iPad, connected home devices, and Ford vehicles with Sync, powered by Microsoft, Windows 8, and Roku multimedia boxes.

Microsoft today also classifieds, which will let iOS and Android device users control their Xbox 360s and add new content to movies and games. Redmond also showed off several anticipated new titles, like Halo 4 and Splinter Cell: Blacklist, and provided a sneak peek at its own music service, dubbed Xbox Music.