How do you listen to music?

[arvindm]

Yep, as far as I understand it, the Car account that you get for free is exactly the same as a premium account minus the ability to create playlists (might be wrong on the playlists, I already had a spotify account so never used the free one)

There is a big difference between the free streaming (No streaming) vs the paid streaming account in the 2024 MY. It is definitely not the same! Yes you can pay for Spotify instead of the Tesla streaming or another streaming service but you will not get a lot of other stuff thrown in with the Tesla streaming. The services offered by premium connectivity may vary depending on the area but the following is a synopsis of what is available in the US. The biggest difference is music streaming and Sentry mode live access.

 

[schnaxxl]

External playlists created using iTunes or Mp3tag will work but need to be modified every time you add or delete a few songs from the SSD or Flash Drive. That's really besides the point here. The inability or Tesla to program in a solid media player is really a disgrace to a car company that prides itself on electronics. Elon! Take away all those stupid fart sounds and martian terrain landscapes and gives us a good media player! Is that so hard? Or you just dont want to?

car companies have usually lagged behind the tech and so they’ve never done a great job with music, and probably interfaces in general
a few cars back when I first used Carplay the difference was staggering - particularly music and maps

 

[LikesToys]

Unfortunately I have to Bluetooth music from the iPhone to the car which causes some loss in quality although I can live with it given other road noises. I use somewhat uncommon streaming sources with high res music such as Tidal, Qobos via Roon ARC which streams from home to my iPhone. Roon ARC works well so all my physical digital music files, playlists and streaming services from my home system stream to the iphone and I Bluetooth from there. I use a wireless charger connected to the Tesla screen to keep the iphone charged.

I use the iPhone for everything except the one thing it can’t do: Battery Preconditioning before arriving at a Supercharger. For that I have to route via Tesla to a Supercharger with voice guidance turned off. Everything else works better on the iPhone for me although having the large Tesla screen for maps is very useful. I use the iPhone Maps for routing most of the time as I find the Tesla routing does not give me much warning and it does not work with my Apple Watch which giggles my wrist before turns.

I am considering some type of 3rd party screen that would support Apple Car Play - perhaps with a few physical buttons to make up for other UI weaknesses in 2024 MY such as wipers and fan speed controls which I find distracting to access using the Tesla screen.

Too bad that such a sophisticated driving system has a second rate UI for everything else. Tesla - give up and give us CarPlay.

 

[Vostok]

As a test, I put some .m3u formatted playlists on my SSD and… the Tesla does not recognise them.

 

[schnaxxl]

As a test, I put some .m3u formatted playlists on my SSD and… the Tesla does not recognise them.

Apple Music recognises them

 

[Vostok]

Apple Music recognises them

I don’t use Apple Music.

 

[Quickst]

Apple Music recognises them

I am embedded within the Apple ecosystem except for Apple music.

 

[schnaxxl]

I am embedded within the Apple ecosystem except for Apple music.

it’s the best bit
I needed convincing

 

[LikesToys]

I got tired of seeing the same questions so I have documented how to get USB music to work regardless of the type of drive used. As I use one drive for USB music and Sentry Mode I have included the information on how to get this to work for both Media and Sentry mode and included the file information for the Lock tone as well. Any type of USB drive works but to avoid the problems with the Tesla USB stick protruding in the glove compartment and to provide additional sentry mode space I used a SSD. Any one should work however all USB drives have usage limits so get a good one. I use a USB-C to USB-A cable (the one with an old fashion square end that matches my LR MY 2024) and a SanDisk Extreme Pro and it seems work support many re-writes but any good drive should work.


Disk Unit: SanDisk Extreme Pro 55AF SSD USB. The unit I purchased is 2 TB.


Formatted into 2 partitions


Both partitions have a format of: ExFAT


Note that the partition names are in UPPER CASE.


Partition: MEDIA

I checked how big my music files are - in my case 200 Gig Bytes (GB) so I created a partition of 250GB to allow for some growth.

My music is organized into over 400 folders - you may load this information as you wish. In my case, each folder contains sub folders which appear in the car USB display. Each of those folders contain various audio files in many different formats.


Partition: TESLA

I wish to keep all of the camera video possible. I therefore formatted this partition to have all of the drives remaining space - in my case 1.68TB. Currently this partition contains 71GB of data.


In this partition, I created a folder called TeslaCam (case sensitive).


The car then created 3 folders with no action on my part:


Folder: RecentClips


- which appear to contain individual files from each camera for the last 2 days.


Folder: SavedClips


This folder contains sub folders by date / time and a video files for each camera. These folders go back to when I bought the car in Jan 2024.


Folder: SentryClips


This folder contains sub folders by date / time and a video files for each camera. These folders go back to when I bought the car


LockChime.wav

LockChime.wav (case sensitive). I included this information as it is pertinent to the format of the USB. I wanted a unique sound when the doors are locked. This file is placed on the root of partition TESLA (not in a folder) . It is played every time the car is locked regardless of how the car is locked - typically I listen for it when I walk away with my phone. There are other settings that I won’t go into on making this work which has been documented many times. Put it in the root of TESLA.

Hope that helps everyone trying to sort all of this out.

 

[Vostok]

LockChime.wav

I wanted a unique sound when the doors are locked. This file is placed on the root of partition TESLA (not in a folder) . It is played every time the car is locked regardless of how the car is locked - typically I listen for it when I walk away with my phone.

That only works on the latest Teslas, does it not, with the external speaker?

 

[dronus]

Bring winamp to Tesla UI It kicks the llamas ...

 

[johnchidgey]

It kicks the llamas ...

...posterior.

 

[Vostok]

Sitting in the car for 10 hours going to Brisbane meant I could give the new Media Player in 2024.14.8 and my SSD a good workout.

• The new larger media player card is great, giving direct access to additional controls like shuffle, repeat, and the EQ.
• Tapping on the artwork on the card replaces the nav screen with a larger view of the artwork, artist name and song, along with the progress bar with the elapsed and remaining times (which used to be shown on the media player a few years ago). However underneath that, it would be more helpful to show the next songs to be played. Instead, it shows recent items played, with tabs to choose Favourites, Media sources etc.
• Tapping on this larger artwork then does take you to the list of songs in the album or folder currently being played, but you lose the artwork, and it does not jump to the current song being played, but shows the track list from the top.
• The shuffle randomisation resets whenever the car is parked, meaning even if you pause the song currently being played before parking the car, then unpause it when driving off, it won’t be long before it plays a song it has already played.

 

[Vostok]

Oh, and I reformatted my SSD as ExFAT and it works. I understand ExFAT is less prone to corruption than FAT32 and supports files > 4GB not that that is ever an issue in a Tesla.

 

[Quickst]

it’s the best bit

You mean apple music or apple ecosystem?