Sure, you'll eventually hear your favorite songs in a playlist, but you can’t pick and choose them at will unless you have Premium. With Basic and Plus, LiveOne plays stations and tracks based on your selections, but not the exact title you search for. On-demand playback is by far the most valuable Premium feature. For $9.99 per month, the Premium plan lets you cache playlists and albums for offline listening on mobile devices, and play songs and albums on demand. If the ads become too much to bear, you can eliminate them with the $3.99-per-month Plus plan that boosts the bit rate to 320Kbps, and removes the skip limits. Banner ads, on the other hand, are extremely distracting, particularly if you need to navigate LiveOne's web or app interface to search for content. Audio advertisements are fairly palatable, since LiveOne gives you a generous clock icon at the bottom of your screen that counts down to your next ad break, which is usually 20-30 minutes of uninterrupted listening. The downside? Your listening experience is bombarded with audio and banner advertisements. Basic is the free tier that delivers 128Kbps audio, a six-song skip limit, and core listening options. LiveOne-which is available on desktop, mobile devices, smart TVs, and the web-remains a top-tier streaming service that rides high as an Editors' Choice pick, due to its deep video well, numerous podcasts, and informative, curated channels.

LiveOne is an excellent music streaming service that combines Slacker's DJs and curated radio stations with LiveXLive's live performances. The service has gone through a few more rebrands since, dropping the Slacker moniker, and eventually settling for what is now simply LiveOne. The beloved internet radio service was absorbed by LiveXLive media in 2017, and eventually rebranded as LiveXLive Powered by Slacker.

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