Listen to Podcasts?

[Reeler]

The proprietary nav from Tesla forces us to use their limited streaming services (e.g., Spotify or Tunein) for podcasts presuming you have the Premium Connectivity. For podcasts, both forget where you left off in your playback and have other issues. Most resort to Bluetooth playback from their phones since Tesla is the last major brand lacking support for Android Auto / Apple Carplay. What do folks use when they listen to podcasts in their Tesla?

Feel free to list any issues you have with these solutions below.

 

[Reeler]

Wow. No one can apparently figure out how to get Tesla's proprietary nav working with podcasts. Bluetooth is soooo last decade!

This is a total fail on Tesla's part. Other car brands have excellent podcast support by using standard nav platforms like Android Auto and Apple Carplay.

Tesla is the lone brand insisting on proprietary nav, but yet not supporting key functionality. I could care less about video games and movie streaming while parked as I never supercharge or wait in my car for long periods. How about some love for the Tesla drivers?

 

[Reeler]

There are a couple in the poll that use Spotify or Tunein for playing podcasts. Have you figured out a way to have the car remember where you were in playback? Maybe we are missing something.

 

[RTPEV]

Seems like you need to wait for a few more responses to draw any conclusions. I think I was only the 9th person to answer your poll.

I agree that podcast support inside Tunein leaves quite a bit to be desired and is generally buggy. There is definitely room for improvement. Having said that, it does work for me reasonably well within a set boundary. And that is:

1. I only have two podcasts I listen to. I have seen complaints from others that have a dozen or more and find it tricky to navigate around their favorites. Fair enough. I probably wouldn't even bother with Tunein except that with only 2 podcasts that I listen to, it is nice to have them easily accessible from my favorites bar on the music app. If I had more than two, I would probably go to an alternate solution right off the bat.
2. I generally listen to a podcast from start to finish without switching to something else. If I switch audio sources AT ALL, it does forget where I was at. But as long as I don't switch to radio, or streaming music, it usually does fine in picking up where I left off (even after exiting the car and getting back in at a later time).
3. Tunein does not handle episodes longer than an hour well. It does work, but the time isn't always shown correctly, and if you get past a certain point of a long episode, sometimes it will not pick up where it left off. I usually go ahead and start a long episode with Tunein, but if it glithces, I will switch to my backup player.

Now my backup player is streaming from my phone using Bluetooth. I know you say it is soooo last decade. I am no fan of Bluetooth, believe me, and I think you are even being generous by a decade, but it actually works fine for me. The one thing I don't like about it is that the podcast player I use (Google Podcasts) has a persistent notification that you cannot get rid of without rebooting your phone. That is annoying. If not for that, and the fact that my 2 podcasts are easily accessible right from the music on on the Tesla, I'd probably just use it all the time. I don't need something like Android Auto just because something is "last decade". I couldn't care less about how old the solution is. If it works, it works. And the nice thing is that if I do decide I want to pick up listening when I'm not in the car, I can just do that.

 

[swaltner]

I can figure out how to use the Tesla software it’s just that their podcast implementation is garbage and I refuse to use it. The most glaring issues are:

• It doesn’t track which episodes of a podcast you have listened to previously
• If you park the car, the software can lose your place, so in addition to remembering which episode you were listening to, you need to remember how far you made it through the episode.
• There are no 15/30 second skip buttons to quickly jump through commercial breaks.

 

[F1atline]

As I said in the other post, I picked up Spotify because it had podcasts and I wanted to get away from using my phone. The down side, as you already mentioned, is the program doesnt remember where I left off on my shows and I have to remember where I was on the timeline when I shut the car down. A couple of times it has picked up where it left off but I cant figure out what made it happen.

I really dont want to go back to using my phone but I may have to...

 

[RTPEV]

• There are no 15/30 second skip buttons to quickly jump through commercial breaks.

Is this a Spotify-specific comment? The Tunein implementation does have skip buttons to allow you to skip ahead (or back).

I've also found that using the skip forward/back buttons while streaming a podcast via Bluetooth also performs the 15/30 second skip function.

 

[swaltner]

My experience was with TuneIn, but it’s been a while (at least a year) since I messed with it. They may have addressed the skip functions since I last tried to use it.

 

[mreynolds767]

Does not really bother me much to use the phone for podcast listening through Bluetooth in this case.
Would be more convenient if I didn't have to, there is 1 podcast on Slacker I like but only has a new episode once every 6 weeks or so.

Same problem if not even worse with Slacker Podcast as well, can only play the most recent episode, remembers where you were if you don't leave the app but leave it and it starts over with no way to fast forward/rewind. For this one podcast I enjoy the convenience of playing it from Slacker though. That podcast is American Greed by the way if anyone is interested, I like the narrator's voice and it is basically the TV show done in a podcast format.

 

[Reeler]

That podcast is American Greed by the way if anyone is interested, I like the narrator's voice and it is basically the TV show done in a podcast format.

American Greed is a TV show I enjoy.

 

[Reeler]

None of these music streaming services have good podcast capability in my opinion. If Tesla added a good cross-OS podcast option to their proprietary nav, it would solve my problems. I need both an Android and iOS phone for my work.

Stitcher is a good cross-platform podcast app I have used in the past. Are there others we could suggest to Tesla?

 

[BrianDunning]

I drive other cars, all of which I’ve installed CarPlay decks if they didn’t already have it. The ability to have my podcast list move with me from car to car, with the playhead position stored for each, is what made me fall in love with CarPlay. I’ll be honest: the loss of this feature made me think twice about getting a Tesla.

The workaround, obviously, is to manually use the podcast app on my phone, which requires picking it up to select what I want to hear — which is illegal in my state.

 

[KD5MDK]

Or get really skilled at precise voice commands. Which might be impossible.

 

[house9]

There are a couple in the poll that use Spotify or Tunein for playing podcasts. Have you figured out a way to have the car remember where you were in playback? Maybe we are missing something.

So far I have used Spotify to listen to only a few pods casts, in each case I listened straight through so no idea about play back - my guess is it doesn’t work well.

After listening to the podcast it took me longer than expected to get back to ‘music’ mode, I would search and it would not return anything because it was only searching podcasts instead of music, the Spotify UX/UI on Tesla could use some serious improvement.

 

[hugh_jassol]

Minimum needed before I would use it:
- remember playback position
- remember played episodes

Really should also have:
- allow playback from oldest to newest

Nice-ty-have:
- Sync position / status / etc. with some phone podcast app

 

[Reeler]

For modern proprietary nav units, Tesla has very little support for third party apps. Most brands had an anemic set of third party apps like, iHeartRadio, and a few others. All other brands went with Android Auto and Apple Carplay to get out of supporting third party apps natively. Tesla has to start supporting more or give up.

 

[schmluss]

I drive other cars, all of which I’ve installed CarPlay decks if they didn’t already have it. The ability to have my podcast list move with me from car to car, with the playhead position stored for each, is what made me fall in love with CarPlay. I’ll be honest: the loss of this feature made me think twice about getting a Tesla.

The workaround, obviously, is to manually use the podcast app on my phone, which requires picking it up to select what I want to hear — which is illegal in my state.

If you turn on “Hey Siri” on your phone or say it to your watch you can simple say, “Hey Siri, play MacBreak weekly”. and it will start where you left off.

 

[hugh_jassol]

If you turn on “Hey Siri” on your phone or say it to your watch you can simple say, “Hey Siri, play MacBreak weekly”. and it will start where you left off.

You need an apple watch to do this (or need to take your phone out of your pocket - the phone does not listen to hey, siri when the face is covered - however, I have heard that the betas for the upcoming 13.4 have a switch where you can have it listen even if the ace is covered).

 

[holmgang]

use my phones app because it has option to play at variable speed. im too impatient to listen to podcasts (or watch youtube) at 1.0x. 1.5x lets me consume content so much more quickly

 

[BrianDunning]

If you turn on “Hey Siri” on your phone or say it to your watch you can simple say, “Hey Siri, play MacBreak weekly”. and it will start where you left off.

Yes the continuation of the existing podcast works nicely, as with any Bluetooth device. But when that show ends and I want to browse to see what episodes are up from all the shows I listen to...