Things I learned about Slacker Streaming

[Kenx008]

I am interested in how you get lyrics!

 

[Tanquen]

I am interested in how you get lyrics!

Yea, never seen them in car or the phone app. I know they or one of the other streaming companies had them and then got rid of them a year or so ago even though I managed to find it on one of their web sites they just said it shouldn't say that we don't have them anymore.

My free Amazon Prime music app has them.

 

[SomeJoe7777]

So, according to the above posts, you do need to use playlists on Slacker Premium in order to get all of the additional functionality, e.g. ability to scrub and repeat songs, as well as play albums all the way through. Which, as I said, isn't documented anywhere. Neither Slacker's web site nor Tesla's manual details this.

This is pretty useless to me, as I'm not at all interested in creating playlists. I don't have time for that. I only want to be able to play songs on demand, even if they're repeats, that's it. And without creating playlists, you can't do it.

Of course, when I detailed my first-hand, accurately-relayed experience with this in my first post in this thread, I get a big "disagree". Par for the course on this forum -- anything that isn't worshiping of all car features is frowned upon.

Kinda like an iPhone 4 that I must be "holding wrong".

 

[tliving]

Recently I did a deeper dive into how Slacker streaming works by doing research on this board, other discussion groups, emailing Tesla, and RTFM. Since I came across a lot of conflicting information out there, I thought I'd write what I found down all in one place. It may be common knowledge to many, but here goes. Note, this applies to a mid-2016 facelifted Model S with UHFS. YMMV.

1. Our cars come with 4 years of free access to Slacker Radio Plus. According to Slacker this allows "...ad-free listening, unlimited song skips, complete song lyrics and mobile station caching. You'll also get the custom ESPN radio stations that you can personalize with your favorite teams, sports and shows!"
2. There's no need to login in your car, but you can email Tesla for your log in credentials to use on the iPhone app, etc. It's pretty cool to be listening to a song on your phone, hop in your car and pick up where you left off. Email your VIN to Tesla to get your credentials. Your email has to come from the email account registered with your Tesla account.
3. Your Tesla Slacker account is not upgradeable, but if you go out an purchase your own Premium account at full price, you can log in with those credentials instead and listen to songs on demand.
4. If you click the Sign In button at the bottom of the Slacker screen it takes you to a log in screen that has a "High Bitrate Streaming" checkbox. If you leave that checked Slacker streams 320kbps mp3. If you uncheck it the stream is 128kbps mp3. According to Slacker you can uncheck that if you're having buffering problems, but I've never experience buffering unless I'm completely out of LTE range anyway.
5. If you want to listen to a particular song on demand just press the voice command button on your steering wheel and say "Play song whatever by whoever". Your Tesla will search Slacker and play that song if it's in their library (I've never had it fail to find one). It will set up a "song whatever" station and start playing related songs after your requested song is over. You can't go back and repeatedly request the same song, Slacker will just take you to the newly-created station that's playing related songs, but if you wait a day or so you can request the same song again. There must be a minimum waiting period to request the same song over again.

That's what I found out. I hope it's informative to some people. As someone who has never invested in a streaming account before I've been very impressed with what Slacker has to offer, all completely free of charge with my Tesla!

Your mileage may vary with #2. I've asked Tesla several times over the years for the login for my car so I can disalble explicit lyrics and they've denied it each time.

 

[pdxrunr]

With a premium Slacker account, you can play any song on demand and play albums all the way through w/o creating playlists. The only thing you can't do w/o the playlist is reverse during a song. If you say play "album name" by "artist name" it will start playing the first song on the album and then play them in order, etc. You would think the playlist would be a pain, but it's really easy to do on their website. I just search for an album name, then create a playlist for that album by name, done and it's in the car. Same thing for songs or artists, etc. It's pretty slick.

So, according to the above posts, you do need to use playlists on Slacker Premium in order to get all of the additional functionality, e.g. ability to scrub and repeat songs, as well as play albums all the way through. Which, as I said, isn't documented anywhere. Neither Slacker's web site nor Tesla's manual details this.

This is pretty useless to me, as I'm not at all interested in creating playlists. I don't have time for that. I only want to be able to play songs on demand, even if they're repeats, that's it. And without creating playlists, you can't do it.

Of course, when I detailed my first-hand, accurately-relayed experience with this in my first post in this thread, I get a big "disagree". Par for the course on this forum -- anything that isn't worshiping of all car features is frowned upon.

Kinda like an iPhone 4 that I must be "holding wrong".

 

[sdorn]

Agreed. Have you found a way to make the car update your playlists? I created new playlists on the computer, but the only way I could get the car to pick up the new ones was to sign out and back in again. I couldn't seem to manually force a reconnect. Perhaps it will over time, but it seems like we should have a way to force it on demand right after they are created. My Sonos system picks them up just by switching from one list to another, etc.

Mine takes a while to update (sometimes up to a day), but they eventually show up.

You can also add songs to playlists with the Slacker app on your phone, so don't have to use a computer.

 

[sdorn]

Your mileage may vary with #2. I've asked Tesla several times over the years for the login for my car so I can disalble explicit lyrics and they've denied it each time.

They gave me the login credentials for my account no issue. I think I had to send them the VIN, but that was it. No questions asked.

 

[SomeJoe7777]

With a premium Slacker account, you can play any song on demand

You can play any song on demand with the Tesla account (which is a plus account) or your own personal premium account. That's not the issue.

The problem is that you cannot repeat a song with either of those options, unless you use a playlist on a premium account.

If I ask for "Rainbow Stew" by Merle Haggard, it'll play it, but if I want to play it again 30 minutes later, you get the "Rainbow Stew Radio" station which plays something similar. This happens with any form of Slacker account. The only way around this is to use a premium account, create a playlist with the song you want in it, and then you can repeat it when playing your playlist. I'm not going to do that for every last song I might want to repeat.

It's stupid that it allows you to repeat songs, but only after jumping through hoops on their website by creating playlists. If I'm paying the damn monthly fee, how come I can't repeat them on demand?

It's a real PITA on road trips where Internet is spotty. I'll request a song, Internet will hang up for a minute, and Slacker will fail to download my request and skip to another song. But that uses up my one allotted request for that song, so if I request it again, I don't get it and I never even heard it the first time due to the failed download. I'm not about to pay $10/month for that.

 

[kash]

so my slacker premium account is only good for a year, For some reason i dont have the tesla station either

You are currently subscribed to Slacker Radio Plus from a gift subscription

Your subscription will expire on 04/13/2018

 

[Max*]

Since I came across a lot of conflicting information out there

I feel like there's some conflicting info here too.

Do you know for a fact that it's streaming at different bitrates? Sure, you checked a box, but what happens on the backend? (I'm not asking if you can hear a difference). Someone did this experiment, did some packet captures, and said Slacker is sending the same stuff regardless of what you select for the Tesla (it'll send higher bitrate to the computer/phone/whatever, but not the car).

 

[sdorn]

I feel like there's some conflicting info here too.

Do you know for a fact that it's streaming at different bitrates? Sure, you checked a box, but what happens on the backend? (I'm not asking if you can hear a difference). Someone did this experiment, did some packet captures, and said Slacker is sending the same stuff regardless of what you select for the Tesla (it'll send higher bitrate to the computer/phone/whatever, but not the car).

Yes, there were some threads where someone contacted Slacker and confirmed that Tesla didn't support the higher bitrate option at all even if you select it. Would be interested to know if that information was wrong, or if it changed.

 

[andrewket]

I tried this very thing, and not a single additional capability was present. I still could not request songs on demand repeatedly without the same waiting period as the plus account, and albums wouldn't play through either. Many albums couldn't be found, just like the plus account.

I cancelled the premium account and went back to the Tesla-provided plus account.

This was my experience as well. There was zero benefit to moving to premium. The last time I tired this was ~2.5 years ago. Perhaps it has changed?

 

[boonedocks]

This was my experience as well. There was zero benefit to moving to premium. The last time I tired this was ~2.5 years ago. Perhaps it has changed?

I have used my premium account as stated (-lyrics?) since I took delivery of my first S85D in June 2015

 

[Black/Black MS]

Yes, there were some threads where someone contacted Slacker and confirmed that Tesla didn't support the higher bitrate option at all even if you select it. Would be interested to know if that information was wrong, or if it changed.

The old threads I read were people who had enabled high quality streaming on their Slacker account settings, not on their Teslas. The Model S owners manual literally states:

"...touch Use High Bitrate to stream higher quality sound..."

 

[Black/Black MS]

I haven't quite figured out how often you're able to repeat songs just by requesting them. I know that if I request a song it will play it. I can't immediately request it again but if I do it the next day I can. Even the same day if I wait an hour or so, but I haven't figured out exactly how much time needs to transpire or whether it doesn't work until the next time I drive the car, etc.

You can play any song on demand with the Tesla account (which is a plus account) or your own personal premium account. That's not the issue.

The problem is that you cannot repeat a song with either of those options, unless you use a playlist on a premium account.

If I ask for "Rainbow Stew" by Merle Haggard, it'll play it, but if I want to play it again 30 minutes later, you get the "Rainbow Stew Radio" station which plays something similar. This happens with any form of Slacker account. The only way around this is to use a premium account, create a playlist with the song you want in it, and then you can repeat it when playing your playlist. I'm not going to do that for every last song I might want to repeat.

It's stupid that it allows you to repeat songs, but only after jumping through hoops on their website by creating playlists. If I'm paying the damn monthly fee, how come I can't repeat them on demand?

It's a real PITA on road trips where Internet is spotty. I'll request a song, Internet will hang up for a minute, and Slacker will fail to download my request and skip to another song. But that uses up my one allotted request for that song, so if I request it again, I don't get it and I never even heard it the first time due to the failed download. I'm not about to pay $10/month for that.

 

[EV-lutioin]

What I would like to know is why Slacker stations are not continuous like Pandora. In other words why do Slacker stations always restart with the first song in the playlist when you click on them? Shouldn't they start at the last song you listened to?

 

[msnow]

The old threads I read were people who had enabled high quality streaming on their Slacker account settings, not on their Teslas. The Model S owners manual literally states:

"...touch Use High Bitrate to stream higher quality sound..."

Thats because prior to 8.0 the settings you made on slacker via the web interface including bitrate would carry over to the car. Since 8.0 you can't even log into your car using the Tesla provided credentials and Tesla has limited the Plus accounts bitrate perhaps to save money on bandwidth.

 

[davinci2017]

Pardon my ignorance or noobishness on this matter but I am a bit confused by all of this.

At delivery I saw the DS create an account for me and "set it up". Streaming seems to be working fine in the car, but upon scrolling down I see an empty login username/password option saying sign in. Does that mean its not yet signed in? Signed in back end?

If I were to create a non-premium basic account on Slacker, and then use that to sign in, does that override the Tesla account that was created and do I lose the streaming abilities that I have currently?

Without signing in I dont get to see high-bitrate streaming option right? I dont see any such selector anywhere

Or am I supposed to contact Tesla as the OP suggested and make sure I sign in to the account that was created for the car and then login?

I am not planning on getting premium, but I would like to enable high-bitrate streaming if possible. Any help is appreciated

 

[Snowstorm]

So Slacker is like a crappier version of Spotify? Where you have to jump through hoops to play the songs or album you want and scrub through/repeat songs?

Can we please just get Spotify?

 

[msnow]

Pardon my ignorance or noobishness on this matter but I am a bit confused by all of this.

At delivery I saw the DS create an account for me and "set it up". Streaming seems to be working fine in the car, but upon scrolling down I see an empty login username/password option saying sign in. Does that mean its not yet signed in? Signed in back end?

If I were to create a non-premium basic account on Slacker, and then use that to sign in, does that override the Tesla account that was created and do I lose the streaming abilities that I have currently?

Without signing in I dont get to see high-bitrate streaming option right? I dont see any such selector anywhere

Or am I supposed to contact Tesla as the OP suggested and make sure I sign in to the account that was created for the car and then login?

I am not planning on getting premium, but I would like to enable high-bitrate streaming if possible. Any help is appreciated

Tesla will send you the ID & password as mentioned above but it will only work on the web and phone versions of the Slacker app. The credentials will NOT log you in to your car Slacker app. I suspect you are currently logged in with that ID already by default. You aren't getting the high bitrate streaming and apparently can't unless you upgrade to Premium.