Interview with Slacker CEO Dennis Mudd

Napster. Urge. Rhapsody. Yahoo. Several online music veterans have attempted to peddle all-you-can-eat tunes to go, but all of their efforts have fallen on deaf ears. Why? Because if you stop paying your monthly subscription fee, your songs disappear. But what if you didn't have to pay a cent to hear your favorite artists anywhere? The man behind Slacker, Dennis Mudd, is making it happen.
 
As the former CEO and co-founder of Musicmatch, Mudd is taking a fundamentally different approach than his competitors. His San Diego-based startup is making Internet radio portable using a Wi-Fi-enabled digital audio player. All a Slacker needs to do is create and customize his favorite stations online, then sync them to the device. The company will also be selling a satellite-radio kit, so you can get your Gnarls Barkley or John Mayer fix in the car. Note to XM and Sirius: Your merger will probably go through now, but you've got serious competition.
 
Slacker's service and digital audio players will be available in the second half of this year, with prices running from $149 for a 2GB model to $349 for a 120GB model; 4GB and 8GB versions will also be available.
 

Though the service is free, it does come with a couple of strings attached. One, you'll have to sit through "interstitial" audio commercials here and there (ones obviously customized to your tastes--hey, Slacker knows what you listen to). And you can skip only six songs per hour. If you want unlimited skips and no commercials, you can pony up for a $7.50 monthly subscription. Another perk of being a paying customer: You can save any songs you like to your portable player.
 
Are consumers ready for this brave new world of digital audio delivery and consumption? We sat down with Mudd in our offices before the company came out of stealth mode to get the scoop on this groundbreaking and disruptive service.