Finally discovering TuneIn

[doctorwho]

I have a love/hate relationship with TuneIn in the Tesla. From the very beginning (3+ years ago), there are constant issues with streams that just don't start playing (forever-spinning circle or need WiFi to play), or just randomly stopping the stream (this has been fixed), or no way to continue where you left off (this has been sort of fixed with the scrub-bar), horrible search/browse capability, and no way to favorite a category/folder.

TuneIn, Spotify, media player, there's the same common thread in all the comments - the apps are partially functional but Tesla go all Microsoft on us and just add more features rather than improve the functionality of the existing ones

 

[tinm]

Hmm. My enthusiasm for TuneIn is waning fast. Why? Because I discovered the little trick they pull, particularly with public radio stations around the country.

I select KQED and instead of getting the live stream of KQED I get a minute-or-so long "live stream brought to you by" promotional ad for KQED and if I wait long enough, I get the live stream.

So while that promo is going on, I press the DOWN button on the left side of steering wheel, to get another TuneIn pre-set station, which happens to be a public radio station too....

"We know you love streaming, this TuneIn broadcast brought to you by"...

Crap. DOWN button.

"WNYC streaming is brought to you by..."

DOWN button.

"KBPS is funded by..."

DOWN button.

"Hey, everybody loves KPCC..."

DOWN but-- no. This time I press middle button -- to MUTE the audio. I thought, surely that'll do the trick. I'll just drive along muting the promo message. La de da, waiting 30 seconds.

Middle button again.

"...and we know you love KPCC too. Sponsors for this live stream include...."

Aaaaaaaaaaaauuugh.

It's all frickin' ads.

I'm guessing the Tesla is sending an http request for a certain stream ID to TuneIn's servers, and TuneIn's servers are thinking, "IF this station ID has a promo message, play promo message now, then start the live stream." And every time TuneIn gets an HTTP request, it runs this IF. And so no matter how many times you have heard the damn promo message on a given station ID in the past, oh, 5 minutes, TuneIn keeps playing it. So basically users can't flip between stations trying to find something interesting. Bummer. TuneOut.

 

[ohmman]

@tinm, I don't believe your sponsorship message issue is TuneIn related. If you stream the KQED live stream from the KQED website on your computer, you get the exact same message. For instance, European Sleepworks in Berkeley is a live stream sponsor frequently. If you listen to the 15 second segment, you typically do not have to listen to it repeatedly.

Additionally, if you are a KQED sponsor, you can add the pledge-free live stream to your TuneIn account and access that from your Tesla. That's pretty nice during pledge drives.

My point is that the NPR stations you list all require sponsorship of their bandwidth. TuneIn merely relays that live stream to you, so your NPR stations are still on the hook for a bandwidth bill. I've never found it a very big deal, since the rest of the programming is relatively commercial free.

 

[tinm]

That's interesting. Could be. I just noticed this pattern with so many radio stations in TuneIn. The aggregate result is an onslaught of come-ons and promos and you don't actually get to "flip through the dial" trying to see "what's on" and find some interesting program to listen to. Instead, it's just the aural equivalent of banner ds.

However, I can find occurrences where only the TuneIn experience gets one the promos and ads, but not streaming directly from a station's website. And not just with PBS stations it turns out. KNX-1070 AM radio, the CBS News all news/weather/traffic station in LA runs an obnoxious BMW ad every single time you access KNX via TuneIn. I just tried KNX via its own website (well, radio.com) and it jumped right into the stream, no BMW ad.

I've contacted the technical staff at a couple of stations as well as the team at TuneIn to see what they have to say. If I get anything back, I'll summarize here. (I'm totally expecting TuneIn's CEO to tell me, "purchase TuneIn Premium and all those promos go away....")

 

[msnow]

That's interesting. Could be. I just noticed this pattern with so many radio stations in TuneIn. The aggregate result is an onslaught of come-ons and promos and you don't actually get to "flip through the dial" trying to see "what's on" and find some interesting program to listen to. Instead, it's just the aural equivalent of banner ds.

However, I can find occurrences where only the TuneIn experience gets one the promos and ads, but not streaming directly from a station's website. And not just with PBS stations it turns out. KNX-1070 AM radio, the CBS News all news/weather/traffic station in LA runs an obnoxious BMW ad every single time you access KNX via TuneIn. I just tried KNX via its own website (well, radio.com) and it jumped right into the stream, no BMW ad.

I've contacted the technical staff at a couple of stations as well as the team at TuneIn to see what they have to say. If I get anything back, I'll summarize here. (I'm totally expecting TuneIn's CEO to tell me, "purchase TuneIn Premium and all those promos go away....")

That's the way TuneIn works. They sell ads, plug them in the live broadcast and make money (presumably). The KNX 1070 you are listening to is the real deal just sometimes several seconds out of sync with the AM broadcast. I think TuneIn is awesome and free but maybe if you pay for it the ads go away? I don't know.

 

[iffatall]

That's the way TuneIn works. They sell ads, plug them in the live broadcast and make money (presumably). The KNX 1070 you are listening to is the real deal just sometimes several seconds out of sync with the AM broadcast. I think TuneIn is awesome and free but maybe if you pay for it the ads go away? I don't know.

I don't really mind listening to ads when free streaming on TuneIn. Although, it some cases, it does get on my nerves. For example, when streaming CNN, every CNN commercial break switches to the specific sponsors in TuneIn and they only have a couple of those. So, if you listen to the channel for an hour, you might end up hearing the same ad fifteen times.

 

[msnow]

I don't really mind listening to ads when free streaming on TuneIn. Although, it some cases, it does get on my nerves. For example, when streaming CNN, every CNN commercial break switches to the specific sponsors in TuneIn and they only have a couple of those. So, if you listen to the channel for an hour, you might end up hearing the same ad fifteen times.

Agree BUT your listening to high quality streamed audio for free plus it's so awesome to be able to listen CNN in your car, also free! Pretty cool I think.

 

[UberEV1]

In our experience, there are no ads or promos for podcasts. When listening to stations in Europe, we get the usual 10 or 15 second promo banter right at the beginning, then it is gone for the remainder of the connection to that station. Of course, we then get to listen to the commercials as broadcast locally - sometimes fun to hear what they are peddling in London this month (it is kind of cool listening to XFM while driving in California).

 

[tinm]

I've heard back from the staff at TuneIn who confirm it's the stations, not TuneIn. Each station can do and is doing what it wants. Tesla is just using TuneIn's API, and TuneIn is dutifully fetching whatever stream a given station provides. It's the individual stations who are mucking around with their streams and in so doing, in my opinion, ruining the experience with all their promos and ads.

I remember something similar happening years ago when I lived in Silicon Valley. AT&T offered CableTV services, and one day they changed the firmware in their set-top box, so that an upsell/monetization blurb would appear as soon as you flipped from one cable channel to the next. Well, you can imagine what that did to the user experience: the interstitial ads killed the very notion of "flipping" between channels. It now took 3-5 seconds to switch channels. When there were, what, 200? 500? channels? I dropped AT&T on the spot.

The other downside of TuneIn, at least here New Mexico... as soon as you get out of range of cell towers, which is like a huge chunk of the state, no more TuneIn.

 

[msnow]

I've heard back from the staff at TuneIn who confirm it's the stations, not TuneIn. Each station can do and is doing what it wants. Tesla is just using TuneIn's API, and TuneIn is dutifully fetching whatever stream a given station provides. It's the individual stations who are mucking around with their streams and in so doing, in my opinion, ruining the experience with all their promos and ads.

I remember something similar happening years ago when I lived in Silicon Valley. AT&T offered CableTV services, and one day they changed the firmware in their set-top box, so that an upsell/monetization blurb would appear as soon as you flipped from one cable channel to the next. Well, you can imagine what that did to the user experience: the interstitial ads killed the very notion of "flipping" between channels. It now took 3-5 seconds to switch channels. When there were, what, 200? 500? channels? I dropped AT&T on the spot.

The other downside of TuneIn, at least here New Mexico... as soon as you get out of range of cell towers, which is like a huge chunk of the state, no more TuneIn.

Not buying that, in my area (SoCal) there's a lead in that says something to the effect that they (TuneIn) are breaking away temporarily to bring you these messages. Secondly, I don't get all of the local station commercials so net net, same amount of programming. Finally, once you're out of range of anything including a AM or FM broadcast tower you as going to lose the station. I have to assume it must be different in NM.

 

[tinm]

Great, so TuneIn is fibbing? Would not surprise me.

 

[ohmman]

It's the individual stations who are mucking around with their streams and in so doing, in my opinion, ruining the experience with all their promos and ads.

Realizing you qualified your statement by saying it was your opinion, I'm just curious what you think "works" for these stations. Thanks to you and this thread, I've looked some things up and learned a little bit. The industry term for the advertisements you get when you start a stream are called "pre-rolls" and they apply to things like YouTube videos as well. The difference is that the pre-roll for an audio stream gets you a long, theoretically uninterrupted stream, while longer YouTube videos inject ads throughout longer content.

I haven't had the experience of other posters in this thread. Today I had a 90 minute drive in my loaner S, which doesn't have a Slacker login configured, so I had the opportunity to flick through a lot of different stations. I stayed away from the NPR ones because I know those often carry a pre-roll on their native Internet streams. Despite changing stations and listening to a few for decent periods of time, I never once got an injected ad. I heard native broadcast ads (distinguishable by locale specifics in some cases), but none that I could identify as TuneIn specific ads.

Going back to my first sentence - I get the feeling you dislike all ads, but specifically you're not happy with the pre-roll. Is that right? In my experience, pre-roll is an NPR thing and in-stream ads are a commercial broadcast radio thing. Assuming that's the case, what is your suggested business model for the radio stations to pay for their content and streaming costs? I can't figure out a good way to solve it where they can still sell ads.

And finally, going way back to your original complaint - instead of pressing the scroll wheel, pausing the stream during the pre-roll, which is what you appear to have done, just roll the volume scroll wheel all the way down to 0, which mutes the stream. It will play the pre-roll (silently) and your stream will begin afterwards.

 

[tinm]

The problem with the pre-roll is that it impedes discovery.

In the Tesla context, it seems like one invests in TuneIn to build up a personal collection of "Followed" stations that are then selectable or browsable while driving the car. TuneIn brings tons of convenience by aggregating gazillions of stations and facilitating the management of a tiny list of personal favorite stations. Ok, fine so far.

And then you're in the car and fire up TuneIn to find something to listen to while driving, the problem I see is, there is a collision between the user's desire to find something worth listening to within the pre-selected personal collection of stations, and the stations' respective desires to monetize your attention to their respective stream, regardless of how it disrupts the smooth, instant flipping between stations. It's no doubt an unexpected consequence that has emerged in the real world that no one station ever considered, nor did TuneIn. But the fact remains, in the "I don't know what I want to listen to, so I'll browse" use case, TuneIn kind of sucks in Tesla. In the "I know what I want" use case, it's not so bad, even with the pre-roll, because I suspect most people are more tolerant of a brief interstitial ad/promo message before their desired content begins.

For me, I guess most of the time I am in the former use case, so TuneIn is really bumming me out. If I were in the latter use case (and podcasts reside here) I'd be perfectly happy.

Maybe I need to just find a whole bunch of podcasts and count my blessings

 

[thecloud]

If I'm checking out a new station that I haven't heard before and I'm greeted with an ad first, I'll immediately switch to something else. However, if the content is a known quantity and I want to listen to it in the car, then I'll tolerate the ads that go along with it. (I listen to both the KCBS 740 and KNX 1070 news streams, so I'm now familiar with what BMW/Audi dealerships to avoid.) What bums me out is when there's no option to listen at all.

 

[iffatall]

Just try CNN on TuneIn. During the commercial breaks, you will hear ads that are not the ads broadcast by CNN on TV, and some of the ads are even TuneIn ads, like ads for a podcast on TuneIn, or another stream on TuneIn. And these few ads repeat in every single commercial break, sometimes the same ad more than once in one break.

 

[Lloyd]

I have a new message using Tunein that I have not heard before. I have a local radio station KVEC that I listen to every morning on my way to/from work. Yesterday, I got a message that this "feed is not available in my listening area" when going to the station. I have complained to the station and to Tunein.

 

[msnow]

Just try CNN on TuneIn. During the commercial breaks, you will hear ads that are not the ads broadcast by CNN on TV, and some of the ads are even TuneIn ads, like ads for a podcast on TuneIn, or another stream on TuneIn. And these few ads repeat in every single commercial break, sometimes the same ad more than once in one break.

That's what I said twice upthread. I don't get a lot of TuneIn commercial breaks per hour though maybe 3 or 4?

 

[ZoomCar]

How do you delete downloaded podcasts from your favorites list? Or do I need to do that?

 

[AustinP]

No need to delete them. It looks like they are deleted as soon as you stop listening. Just a feeling, not knowledge from documented behavior.