Ok, I tried Tidal, and…(and “premium” audio too)

[dburkland]

Roughly 12GB on MCU2 cars (and same space is used for storing games- you can delete those to clear some of it)

MCU3 should have a LOT more.

You can't use external storage at all currently for this.

I have a MCU3-based Model 3 and sadly Tesla has not allocated more space for TIDAL downloads. I maybe have 10-12 albums downloaded and it complained I'm already out of space :\

 

[Canyonero]

You can’t download tracks to an external SSD for the simple reason that you’d basically be, you know, ripping the music to your personal hard drive which is what streaming music was invented to put a stop to.

 

[Tezlowski]

There's coding to stop that from happening, no different than downloading Apple Music to your phone or computer. Without the proper credentials the music doesn't play... plenty of technology around in 2022 to make this happen

 

[DelPhonic1]

Interesting and thanks for that update. I’ve had model 3’s with both the premium and partial-premium sound systems (we had them at the same time) and they are (IMO) virtually identical and (again IMO) both very average. Not bad but given all the “Elon is an audiophile and won’t put up with anything less than awesome sound systems” chatter - very underwhelming. Still love the cars. But sound system is meh.

Unless your listening to hi quality files on a usb stick or listening to Tidal downloads, you’ll never hear the best from a Tesla sound system. At the very least, a great sound system will absolutely reveal when you shove garbage into it— lofi mp3’s will make the good system sound like total crap— when in fact, it’s the garbage going into it.

I go further than most, and have a wi-fi device in the trunk plugged in always. And the car sees it when I drive off. Then it automatically downloads the 16b, 44.1 files if they are available. I’ll use the wi-fi device in a pinch when i’m on the road and need to get some work in.

Remember with a good sound system, as these vehicles do have— put mp3 garbage into it, and garbage will surely come out of the speakers. It’s a choice.

 

[heavyD]

It's so strange that Tesla would go through the trouble of putting in a decent premium system into these cars only to render it useless because they force you to stream low bitrate garbage. At the very least they should activate one of the front USB ports for basic Ipod connectivity so you can at listel to decent quality audio. Before anyone thinks of replying to my post with "just use the USB flash drive". It's 2023 not 2005 and nobody wants to have to transfer music back and forth from a PC to your car every single time they want to listen to a new song or album in their car.

 

[Knightshade]

It's so strange that Tesla would go through the trouble of putting in a decent premium system into these cars only to render it useless because they force you to stream low bitrate garbage. At the very least they should activate one of the front USB ports for basic Ipod connectivity so you can at listel to decent quality audio. Before anyone thinks of replying to my post with "just use the USB flash drive". It's 2023 not 2005 and nobody wants to have to transfer music back and forth from a PC to your car every single time they want to listen to a new song or album in their car.

AFAIK you can set up a wireless RaspPi to auto-sync your music library to the USB key every time you're in wifi range of your home network.

But otherwise, yeah, just use the USB flash drive

 

[Mikecm1]

You can’t download tracks to an external SSD for the simple reason that you’d basically be, you know, ripping the music to your personal hard drive which is what streaming music was invented to put a stop to.

Yeahhh that’s not true.