# Music Streaming



## epmenard (Mar 5, 2019)

I don't get it. I hear everywhere people praising the M3 streaming service but I just can't get it to work like any basic music app on the planet. Here are a few real life scenarios that I just can't seem to figure out. Am I not getting something? How do the rest of you do it?

1. I want to listen to an album. Streaming service plays the first song of the album but then the next song is by another artist completely.

2. I want to search for songs by album...I can find the album I'm looking for, but can't see any of its songs.

3. I want to look for a song by an artist. If I put both the artist and the song name, search returns empty. If I just search for the song and the song name is a common word, I get a ton of unrelated songs and can't find the right one. Say I want to listen to a version of Summertime...there's probably no less than a thousand versions. I'm driving, I should be focusing on the road, not losing my attention to a complex and unintuitive app!

4. Voice search absolutely doesn't work (partly my responsibility I guess). I live in Quebec where street names and locations are obviously in french. Navigation butchers street names if I set it in english (try saying "École de technologie supérieure ÉTS" or "rue du Cap-à-l'Aigle" and see if you can fare better). So I need french navigation for obvious reasons and voice command doesn't recognize any word I say, whether it be in french or english. If I can't make a phone call, forget requesting for any song by title.


----------



## GDN (Oct 30, 2017)

I marked your post as informative as there is some interesting information about how well the voice recognition works being in a multi-lingual area like you are. 

Slacker definitely has some drawbacks. It won't play an album at all. That is more Spotify's thing. It also won't repeat songs (you can't play the same song twice in a row) and many other limitations. 

In the US the voice recognition has always been good for me and Slacker will play most any song or artist I ask for, even if using my Southern accent. 

I hope they can improve the recognition, but will say likely due to your location and the way Slacker works, most of your complaints are both founded and likely won't have a resolution any time soon.


----------



## Flashgj (Oct 11, 2018)

Yep, I agree, slacker radio and smart phone integration just plainly sucks on any Tesla. Hopefully Tesla will do something about it, but I am not holding my breath!


----------



## evannole (Jun 18, 2018)

The Slacker account Tesla provides (and presumably pays for) is a mid-tier one that allows us commercial-free listening and unlimited ability to skip tracks. However, it does not allow us to play entire albums. It will usually play a particular track when asked, unless that track has been played recently, in which case it will play something similar. Your requested track will usually show up within the next 5-10 songs.

To get full albums and unlimited singles-as-requested, you need to sign up for a premium Slacker account. I believe it's $10 per month. I have not done so but I have heard that to get full albums on the Tesla system, you need to first create the album as a playlist on your computer or other free-standing device.

I agree that French voice recognition isn't the greatest, though for you, at least, I think that Québécois voice navigation is coming soon, via an announced update. (I am in Atlanta and don't expect that it will be offered to us French speakers south of the border.)

I have had luck finding French music by typing in the song or artist I want to hear. Less elegant than voice recognition but still pretty good. The catalogue is surprisingly robust... Many of my favorite _tubes _from the 80s and 90s are available.


----------



## Hollywood7 (Sep 14, 2017)

Compared to Spotify or Apple Music, then you can say it sucks... Compared to FM radio it's great!
No DJ's with contests every 5 minutes, no commercials, just music!
From someone coming from a car with just FM radio, it's a big step forward.


----------



## Alighieri256 (Oct 14, 2017)

Yes, Slacker is not real good. Just to see what was up, I signed up for Slacker Premium, and the biggest difference I noticed is that if you create a station based on an artist, on Premium, that station will only play that artist unless you go to the Slacker website and manipulate the station to play other artists. The base account doesn't allow single artist stations. The one thing I did want in the Premium feature set was Play on Demand. However, Play on Demand doesn't work with Tesla. I asked Slacker why not, and they said Tesla opted not to support it.


----------



## Johnston (Oct 12, 2018)

I think OP's expectations were too high. Tesla's streaming service was never meant to offer premium features like full albums on demand. Also want to clarify I don't see any praises for Tesla's streaming service, only for the quality of the audio system. The streaming service and features were pretty much dumped on all over.

Slacker comes in 3 formats like Pandora: 
1. Free: streams randomly with commercials
2. Plus: this is what our Teslas come with, but it uses its own account that you cannot modify using Slacker's interface
3. Premium: on-demand, but not fully functional with Tesla's interface

That being said, there are also some features that a regular Slacker Plus account has that is not implemented in the Tesla's Slacker account. When using my own account, I really liked how Slacker lets me create custom stations by adding artists. However, once you have multiple artists in a station, it becomes a custom station, and Tesla's interface does not let you select the custom stations. You only get Favorites, Genres, and other Slacker's own stations.

Slacker also allow banning certain artists to not play on a custom station via its web interface. This is also not doable with Tesla's account since they don't provide us the credentials to make customizations via web login.


----------



## Jay79 (Aug 18, 2018)

Slacker is decent but nothing special for sure. Best bet is Bluetooth from your phone for now and hope Tesla goes with Spotify when their contract with Slacker is up for renewal


----------



## epmenard (Mar 5, 2019)

Hollywood7 said:


> Compared to Spotify or Apple Music, then you can say it sucks... Compared to FM radio it's great!
> No DJ's with contests every 5 minutes, no commercials, just music!
> From someone coming from a car with just FM radio, it's a big step forward.


But now who's going to let me know they're the number one station!?!


----------



## epmenard (Mar 5, 2019)

Jay79 said:


> Slacker is decent but nothing special for sure. Best best is Bluetooth off your phone for now and hope Tesla goes with Spotify when their contract with Slacker is up for renewal


What did Tesla ever expect from a bunch of slackers? ;-)


----------



## Johnston (Oct 12, 2018)

Jay79 said:


> Slacker is decent but nothing special for sure. Best best is Bluetooth off your phone for now and hope Tesla goes with Spotify when their contract with Slacker is up for renewal


Provided they implement all of Spotify's features into the UI. Otherwise we'd still be better off using our phones and Bluetooth.


----------



## FRC (Aug 4, 2018)

I'm with @Hollywood7 above. Beats the hell out of radio. I'm probably an outlier here and certainly no audiophile, but I love the Tesla sound system and have enjoyed Slacker for the last 7 months. It does a nice job of predicting my listening likes. I've heard a lot of music that I had completely forgotten about and it seems to update to a new lineup occasionally. I'll happily take streaming as it is.


----------



## Needsdecaf (Dec 27, 2018)

Flashgj said:


> Yep, I agree, slacker radio and smart phone integration just plainly sucks on any Tesla. Hopefully Tesla will do something about it, but I am not holding my breath!


My guess is Tesla doesn't want to pay any licensing fees for any services other than Slacker in the car. Because honestly, for as good as the UI is in most areas, for infotaiment it totally SUCKS.

Maybe we should all go on a twitter campaign and bombard Elon with complaints about how bad streaming / voice command / smartphone integration is. A freaking Honda Civic has better smartphone integration. We need a catchy hashtag, though. What should we call it? I lack creativity...



FRC said:


> I'm with @Hollywood7 above. Beats the hell out of radio. I'm probably an outlier here and certainly no audiophile, but I love the Tesla sound system and have enjoyed Slacker for the last 7 months. It does a nice job of predicting my listening likes. I've heard a lot of music that I had completely forgotten about and it seems to update to a new lineup occasionally. I'll happily take streaming as it is.


Meh, I stream it through the various stations and find it VERY repetitive and not at all looking outside of the box. Seems like it plays the same 50 songs in each category.


----------



## JustTheTip (Jun 7, 2018)

I actually like the Tesla slacker account. I’ve discovered a lot of new artists to listen to. If I’m in the mood for albums, I’ll switch to USB.


----------



## Johnston (Oct 12, 2018)

JustTheTip said:


> I actually like the Tesla slacker account. I've discovered a lot of new artists to listen to. If I'm in the mood for albums, I'll switch to USB.


It's not bad, but Tesla's UI doesn't allow full functionality of Slacker. Not being able to access Custom Stations is a huge bummer imo.

I also find Pandora's algorithm to be better than Slacker's. One example is if I make a Lord Finesse station, Big L songs never show up, and they're very related artists.


----------



## Johnston (Oct 12, 2018)

Needsdecaf said:


> Meh, I stream it through the various stations and find it VERY repetitive and not at all looking outside of the box. Seems like it plays the same 50 songs in each category.


I feel like all the streaming services have this issue. Ones I've used are Pandora, Google Play Music, Spotify, and Slacker. Pandora imo has the best variety, being able to customize stations is a big help.


----------



## FRC (Aug 4, 2018)

Johnston said:


> It's not bad, but Tesla's UI doesn't allow full functionality of Slacker. Not being able to access Custom Stations is a huge bummer imo.
> 
> I also find Pandora's algorithm to be better than Slacker's. One example is if I make a Lord Finesse station, Big L songs never show up, and they're very related artists.


Could it be that the fact that I've never heard, nor heard of, Lord Finesse or Big L and the fact that I'm happy with Slacker be related in some way??


----------



## garsh (Apr 4, 2016)

JustTheTip said:


> I actually like the Tesla slacker account. I've discovered a lot of new artists to listen to. If I'm in the mood for albums, I'll switch to USB.


I agree. I've been happy with it. But unlike a lot of people, I think my preferred way to listen to music just happens to match what Slacker offers. I've "liked" several songs, and I usually just leave it on the "Liked" channel. This will play those songs plus songs that slacker deems similar. This is basically what I want - my own personal radio station with no commercials. I love it.

Every once in a while, I'll think of a song that I want to hear (yesterday, it was _Little Sheba_ by 38 Special). I tell slacker to play it, and then I'll listen to the next several songs to see if there's anything else closely related that I'd like to add to my Like list.

If I actually want to listen to a particular album or songs by a single artist, then I switch to my phone.


----------



## MelindaV (Apr 2, 2016)

during all of this, how has nobody brought up the TuneIn issue of some stations constantly having loading issues? Slacker may not be perfect and as customizable as some want, but it does play reliably 100% of the time. multiple of my saved TuneIn stations fail 90% of the time.


----------



## lance.bailey (Apr 1, 2019)

i'm echoing @garsh and @JustTheTip. i use it as a radio replace with a "theme" so if I search out the eagles I get "Eagles Radio" with every 2nd or 3rd song by them and the others are "related". it can be interesting or annoying depending if I really want that particular cup of tea and not a "mix of dead leaf in hot water that may or may not resemble tea"

bearing that in mind, i now listen to more genre stations like "100 best new wave" or "Acid Jazz" because I expect those to be a mix and that is what I get. And my kids never seem to tire of "Kids Classics"

All, and I mean all, the daytime Jazz is gone from Radio out here in Vancouver BC (and most of the classical) so the Tesla has been a good return to cool licks and hot rubber drives home.


----------



## lance.bailey (Apr 1, 2019)

MelindaV said:


> during all of this, how has nobody brought up the TuneIn issue of some stations constantly having loading issues? Slacker may not be perfect and as customizable as some want, but it does play reliably 100% of the time. multiple of my saved TuneIn stations fail 90% of the time.


nope, I think i've had the streaming fail twice on me. For the most part it is rock solid (no pun meant, really).

Do you have reduced LTE bars when it fails? I haven't driven through your area for a very long time - what is cellular like at the other end of WA state?


----------



## MelindaV (Apr 2, 2016)

lance.bailey said:


> nope, I think i've had the streaming fail twice on me. For the most part it is rock solid (no pun meant, really).
> 
> Do you have reduced LTE bars when it fails? I haven't driven through your area for a very long time - what is cellular like at the other end of WA state?


Always have full LTE bars (same thing happens when on a strong Wifi signal, and the stations that do fail in TuneIn fail all the time, while others load immediately without the reload error.


----------



## Needsdecaf (Dec 27, 2018)

FRC said:


> I'm with @Hollywood7 above. Beats the hell out of radio. I'm probably an outlier here and certainly no audiophile, but I love the Tesla sound system and have enjoyed Slacker for the last 7 months. It does a nice job of predicting my listening likes. I've heard a lot of music that I had completely forgotten about and it seems to update to a new lineup occasionally. I'll happily take streaming as it is.





Johnston said:


> I feel like all the streaming services have this issue. Ones I've used are Pandora, Google Play Music, Spotify, and Slacker. Pandora imo has the best variety, being able to customize stations is a big help.


Yeah, I agree with that. Pandora seems to grab the most oddball selections. Amazon Prime radio seems to be the most repetitive. Slacker isn't far behind.


----------



## Needsdecaf (Dec 27, 2018)

MelindaV said:


> during all of this, how has nobody brought up the TuneIn issue of some stations constantly having loading issues? Slacker may not be perfect and as customizable as some want, but it does play reliably 100% of the time. multiple of my saved TuneIn stations fail 90% of the time.


I have this same issue. Sometimes they load where I left off. Sometimes they load at the beginning. Sometimes they load quickly and I can jump forward back to where I was. Other times they load slowly and I have to wait to jump back. And sometimes they just fail to load.

Annoying. Glad I have most of them on my phone as a backup. These are all podcasts, I don't really listen to any of the music on TuneIn. I haven't seen any pattern related to a specific station.


----------



## garsh (Apr 4, 2016)

MelindaV said:


> during all of this, how has nobody brought up the TuneIn issue of some stations constantly having loading issues?


I've never even tried TuneIn. penmouth:

I can't imagine why I'd pick TuneIn over FM HD, unless I really wanted to listen to a regular radio station while I was out of town. Which doesn't happen. I'd rather stick with Slacker and not listen to commercials.


----------



## Needsdecaf (Dec 27, 2018)

garsh said:


> I've never even tried TuneIn. penmouth:
> 
> I can't imagine why I'd pick TuneIn over FM HD, unless I really wanted to listen to a regular radio station while I was out of town. Which doesn't happen. I'd rather stick with Slacker and not listen to commercials.


Podcasts.


----------



## MelindaV (Apr 2, 2016)

garsh said:


> I've never even tried TuneIn. penmouth:
> 
> I can't imagine why I'd pick TuneIn over FM HD, unless I really wanted to listen to a regular radio station while I was out of town. Which doesn't happen. I'd rather stick with Slacker and not listen to commercials.


"local" stations that are not local to you. I don't even know any local FM stations where I live, but have a couple saved for other places (specifically to listen to Vegas hockey, who's station always loads, and Seattle baseball, who's station hardly ever loads).

and the issue isn't blackouts during games... It acts the same 24/7


----------



## Johnston (Oct 12, 2018)

FRC said:


> Could it be that the fact that I've never heard, nor heard of, Lord Finesse or Big L and the fact that I'm happy with Slacker be related in some way??


Well, those are a bit obscure. It'd be similar to making a Eminem station and Dr. Dre songs never play, or a Beethoven station that never plays Mozart.


----------



## Alighieri256 (Oct 14, 2017)

The one thing I've wanted to do with Slacker that Slacker simply won't do is listen to a specific song right now. If I call out a song that I've never listened to in the car, it will play it maybe 70-80% of the time. But once the car has played that song, it will never happen that way again. Instead, it will play a related song, and if I want to hear that song, I have to skip skip skip until it randomly ends up on the playlist. Super irritating. I guess it's probably time to try USB again. When I got the car in Sept, USB could basically only play everything on the drive in alphabetical order, which was even more useless. But I recall hearing that they've made some improvements there.

By the way, this post sounds seriously negative. I want to clarify that I'm very happy with the car other than the sound system. It sounds great, but the UI and functionality seems like an afterthought.


----------



## Needsdecaf (Dec 27, 2018)

Alighieri256 said:


> The one thing I've wanted to do with Slacker that Slacker simply won't do is listen to a specific song right now. If I call out a song that I've never listened to in the car, it will play it maybe 70-80% of the time. But once the car has played that song, it will never happen that way again. Instead, it will play a related song, and if I want to hear that song, I have to skip skip skip until it randomly ends up on the playlist. Super irritating. I guess it's probably time to try USB again. When I got the car in Sept, USB could basically only play everything on the drive in alphabetical order, which was even more useless. But I recall hearing that they've made some improvements there.


It will reset itself in a certain time period (48 hours?) and then you can direct request the song again.


----------



## Alighieri256 (Oct 14, 2017)

Needsdecaf said:


> It will reset itself in a certain time period (48 hours?) and then you can direct request the song again.


Wish mine worked that way. Had the car almost 8 months and hasn't 'reset' yet.


----------



## Needsdecaf (Dec 27, 2018)

Alighieri256 said:


> Wish mine worked that way. Had the car almost 8 months and hasn't 'reset' yet.


Strange.


----------



## Johnston (Oct 12, 2018)

Alighieri256 said:


> The one thing I've wanted to do with Slacker that Slacker simply won't do is listen to a specific song right now. If I call out a song that I've never listened to in the car, it will play it maybe 70-80% of the time. But once the car has played that song, it will never happen that way again. Instead, it will play a related song, and if I want to hear that song, I have to skip skip skip until it randomly ends up on the playlist. Super irritating. I guess it's probably time to try USB again. When I got the car in Sept, USB could basically only play everything on the drive in alphabetical order, which was even more useless. But I recall hearing that they've made some improvements there.
> 
> By the way, this post sounds seriously negative. I want to clarify that I'm very happy with the car other than the sound system. It sounds great, but the UI and functionality seems like an afterthought.


The function you're asking for is not provided with a Slacker Plus (a $4/m service, I don't think Spotify has this tier) account. It's not really an issue of the car. Have you tried signing up for Slacker Premium, and logging into the Premium (a $9/m service) account on the car?









I got my car in November. USB can now show your songs by artists, song names, albums, and also folders. I put a bunch of my favorite songs in one folder and put that folder on shuffle. It's my preferred method of music listening in the car.


----------



## Alighieri256 (Oct 14, 2017)

Johnston said:


> The function you're asking for is not provided with a Slacker Plus (a $4/m service, I don't think Spotify has this tier) account. It's not really an issue of the car. Have you tried signing up for Slacker Premium, and logging into the Premium (a $9/m service) account on the car?
> View attachment 24904
> 
> 
> I got my car in November. USB can now show your songs by artists, song names, albums, and also folders. I put a bunch of my favorite songs in one folder and put that folder on shuffle. It's my preferred method of music listening in the car.


Yes, bought the Premium, and the Play on Demand didn't work. I wrote to Slacker and this is what I got back:

Tesla has chosen not to support Slacker's Premium Radio subscription at this time. Premium Radio is only supported on the Slacker website and mobile phone apps.

So for $10/mo, basically all you get is the ability to make artist specific stations.


----------



## Johnston (Oct 12, 2018)

Alighieri256 said:


> Yes, bought the Premium, and the Play on Demand didn't work. I wrote to Slacker and this is what I got back:
> 
> Tesla has chosen not to support Slacker's Premium Radio subscription at this time. Premium Radio is only supported on the Slacker website and mobile phone apps.
> 
> So for $10/mo, basically all you get is the ability to make artist specific stations.


As in mix multiple artists into a single station? That isn't supported by Tesla either as I was never able to find the Custom Stations that resulted from mixing. Looks like for any on-demand via voice to work, we'd need to use our Google Assistant/Siri with our phones connected to car via Bluetooth.


----------



## Alighieri256 (Oct 14, 2017)

Johnston said:


> As in mix multiple artists into a single station?


No, I mean a station that plays the catalog of a single artist without trying to find similar artists.


----------



## Hugh_Jassol (Jan 31, 2019)

What I am hopeful for is that ~July 2019, they will update in the entertainment options. That will be when the first cars that only included the first year free come due and I suspect no one will be willing fork over $100/yr for slacker/tunin. Downright criminal to charge money for the options we have now.


----------



## PNWmisty (Aug 19, 2017)

I'm not a huge music guy and my tastes vary from classic rock to swing and even a little bit of classical and jazz depending upon my mood. I've been blown away by the world of music that is now at my fingertips and voice command. I think the people that are unhappy with it are accustomed to paid subscriptions of other music services which I've never partaken of. But Slacker is about 100 times better than FM radio!

Speaking of voice command, I've found it to be amazingly accurate and very handy (but then I speak pretty close to broadcast American English). It rarely makes a mistake. The only drawback is it only works if you have cellular service. I regularly drive into areas with no cellular coverage and lose the streaming music and voice control. I need to get a collection of MP3's on my phone for those situations.


----------



## GDN (Oct 30, 2017)

Hugh_Jassol said:


> What I am hopeful for is that ~July 2019, they will update in the entertainment options. That will be when the first cars that only included the first year free come due and I suspect no one will be willing fork over $100/yr for slacker/tunin. Downright criminal to charge money for the options we have now.


We will all be forking over the $100 because it is about more than the music options. I wish we could vote by withholding that money, but i"m not giving up the other options.


Premium Connectivity adds satellite-view maps with live traffic visualization, in-car streaming music & media, an internet browser (for Model S and Model X) and over-the-air software updates via Wi-Fi and cellular.


----------



## lance.bailey (Apr 1, 2019)

Hugh_Jassol said:


> ... That will be when the first cars that only included the first year free come due and I suspect no one will be willing fork over $100/yr for slacker/tunin. Downright criminal to charge money for the options we have now.


I will be looking at the $100/year as all the required LTE sourced data for keeping the car on the road and where I am going. I look at the music as icing on that already tasty Tesla cake.


----------



## Johnston (Oct 12, 2018)

Once the LTE becomes a paid sub, they need to allow us to connect the car online through hotspots or BT on our phones.


----------



## Alighieri256 (Oct 14, 2017)

PNWmisty said:


> I'm not a huge music guy and my tastes vary from classic rock to swing and even a little bit of classical and jazz depending upon my mood. I've been blown away by the world of music that is now at my fingertips and voice command. I think the people that are unhappy with it are accustomed to paid subscriptions of other music services which I've never partaken of. But Slacker is about 100 times better than FM radio!
> 
> Speaking of voice command, I've found it to be amazingly accurate and very handy (but then I speak pretty close to broadcast American English). It rarely makes a mistake. The only drawback is it only works if you have cellular service. I regularly drive into areas with no cellular coverage and lose the streaming music and voice control. I need to get a collection of MP3's on my phone for those situations.


Admittedly, the performance of Slacker is my one big sore spot with the car, which is why I started posting here. I'm used to either putting a CD in the slot and being able to select whatever track I like, or using Serius XM and having essentially no control.

Something about being between the two with Slacker is a bit disconcerting for me, and leaves me wondering what good is such an outstanding sound system if I can't listen to what I want to listen to. Frankly, I was much happier with Pandora on my Prius. Seems like they'd be the same basic thing, but Pandora made much better choices IMHO in terms of which songs it would dig up, and actually seemed to learn based on which songs I tagged up. Slacker just seems to pull random stuff based on the origin material, and then play the songs I tag up more often, but doesn't expand it's field of reach to include songs similar to ones I've tagged.

I also noted on my drive home from the dealership on day 1 that playing MP3s over USB sounded bad, like really bad. I definitely need to try that again to see if their decoding has improved in subsequent firmware versions, and to see what UI updates have been made. If that turns out to be a little more user friendly, and doesn't absolutely require FLAC files to sound decent, I may just skip Slacker for the most part.

The fact that I haven't tried the USB again is my own failing. Similarly, if I had just stopped using AutoPilot the first time it took an exit by mistake, I'd definitely be missing out on how much it has improved since then.


----------



## Johnston (Oct 12, 2018)

Alighieri256 said:


> Admittedly, the performance of Slacker is my one big sore spot with the car, which is why I started posting here. I'm used to either putting a CD in the slot and being able to select whatever track I like, or using Serius XM and having essentially no control.
> 
> Something about being between the two with Slacker is a bit disconcerting for me, and leaves me wondering what good is such an outstanding sound system if I can't listen to what I want to listen to. Frankly, I was much happier with Pandora on my Prius. Seems like they'd be the same basic thing, but Pandora made much better choices IMHO in terms of which songs it would dig up, and actually seemed to learn based on which songs I tagged up. Slacker just seems to pull random stuff based on the origin material, and then play the songs I tag up more often, but doesn't expand it's field of reach to include songs similar to ones I've tagged.
> 
> ...


Do you know what bitrate your MP3s are at? Higher bitrate (196+) sound pretty good to me.


----------



## GDN (Oct 30, 2017)

I know that listening to music is very subjective, something that sounds good to one, doesn't to someone else, so I understand, but I have no problems with bluetooth or USB. I know it doesn't sound like a $50K setup at home, but considering it is a moving automobile and comparing to other Bose and name brand systems in other autos, I'm sticking with what I've got in my 3 all day long.


----------



## Needsdecaf (Dec 27, 2018)

GDN said:


> We will all be forking over the $100 because it is about more than the music options. I wish we could vote by withholding that money, but i"m not giving up the other options.
> 
> 
> Premium Connectivity adds satellite-view maps with live traffic visualization, in-car streaming music & media, an internet browser (for Model S and Model X) and over-the-air software updates via Wi-Fi and cellular.


Although the live traffic is HOPELESSLY dated. I drive around at 9:00 at night and it's still showing traffic and there's not a car on the street in some of those places.


----------



## lance.bailey (Apr 1, 2019)

I use FLAC at home, but WAV on my USB sticks as that is what my V70 radio wants and the Tesla uses it as well.


----------



## Alighieri256 (Oct 14, 2017)

Johnston said:


> Do you know what bitrate your MP3s are at? Higher bitrate (196+) sound pretty good to me.


Most of my stuff is 200+ VBR and sounds fine on my other hardware. I'll give it another try and report back.


----------



## Midnit3 (Oct 8, 2017)

garsh said:


> I've never even tried TuneIn. penmouth:
> 
> I can't imagine why I'd pick TuneIn over FM HD, unless I really wanted to listen to a regular radio station while I was out of town. Which doesn't happen. I'd rather stick with Slacker and not listen to commercials.


Satellite radio stations as well.


----------



## Alighieri256 (Oct 14, 2017)

Alright, I made a up a new drive of MP3s and it definitely sounds better, and the interface has improved a lot. I'll give that a go for a while.


----------



## Johnston (Oct 12, 2018)

Alighieri256 said:


> Alright, I made a up a new drive of MP3s and it definitely sounds better, and the interface has improved a lot. I'll give that a go for a while.


Good to hear. Ultimately USB is my most-used source for music in the 3.


----------



## Hugh_Jassol (Jan 31, 2019)

lance.bailey said:


> I will be looking at the $100/year as all the required LTE sourced data for keeping the car on the road and where I am going. I look at the music as icing on that already tasty Tesla cake.


The data required to keep the car on the road is included no matter what (including traffic based routing).

The $100/yr (or whatever they settle on) is for the internet access (web) and streaming. Essentially if you don't pay for the data, I think it reverts to "SR/SR+" connectivity.


----------



## Hugh_Jassol (Jan 31, 2019)

Midnit3 said:


> Satellite radio stations as well.


Would love to see a Sirius app...


----------



## MachV (Jan 15, 2019)

its you. The streaming music is great. Don't like it, go back to radio where they talk over your music and you have no control over whats played.
or plug in USB and play MP3's from there.

Be thankful that Tesla is PAYING for the Slacker account. and the data plan


----------



## Hugh_Jassol (Jan 31, 2019)

MachV said:


> Be thankful that Tesla is PAYING for the Slacker account. and the data plan


For the first year. Then $100/yr after that.


----------



## TheHairyOne (Nov 28, 2018)

Make sure to periodically check for new DJ lists, and mark as favorite to keep. You then get an album-like experience for that artist. Thumbs up your favorites and down the ones you don’t want to hear so you can then quickly skip around and get to your favorites again.


----------



## billionaiire (Apr 16, 2019)

In the Partial Premium, what’s the Any Music option? And why is it there if it’s dead?


----------



## StromTrooperM3 (Mar 27, 2019)

Guess my last post was moved for no reason. Music streaming options in the Tesla suck. There should be a headphone input as well for those of us that like FLAC. So many dropped balls in the infotainment system


----------



## Johnston (Oct 12, 2018)

StromTrooperM3 said:


> Guess my last post was moved for no reason. Music streaming options in the Tesla suck. There should be a headphone input as well for those of us that like FLAC. So many dropped balls in the infotainment system


You can play FLAC files through the USB. If you're wanting to use headphones while driving, please don't.


----------



## StromTrooperM3 (Mar 27, 2019)

Johnston said:


> You can play FLAC files through the USB.


They don't sound anywhere near as good as using the DAC in a phone. Very flat


----------



## francoisp (Sep 28, 2018)

When I want to play an album, I download it to my phone using my Google Music subscription and play it offline. I also play my podcasts the same way. Works for me.


----------



## PNWmisty (Aug 19, 2017)

I'm impressed with the sound quality of even the compressed music over LTE. When I'm in my wife's Model 3 I notice her song selection sucks. But mine just belts out one good tune after another. 

Because Slacker uses artificial intelligence to improve the suitability of its selections for you. So, yeah, garbage in, garbage out. But apparently I've trained it properly and it has an uncanny ability to avoid the kind of songs I dislike and play ones I wanted to hear (but didn't know it). Leave it on the "Favorites" channel for that and make sure to train it by using plenty of thumbs ups and thumbs downs.


----------



## Hugh_Jassol (Jan 31, 2019)

FrancoisP said:


> When I want to play an album, I download it to my phone using my Google Music subscription and play it offline. I also play my podcasts the same way. Works for me.


Well, of course it does. The whole point of this thread, however, is that you shouldn't have to do that. Given the always-on internet access, you should be able to just say "Play <whatever> album" and it "just works" - at the very least it should connect you to your phone's voice assistant to do it.

I can just get out of my car an manually open my garage door every time. But that's not the point.


----------



## Johnston (Oct 12, 2018)

Hugh_Jassol said:


> Well, of course it does. The whole point of this thread, however, is that you shouldn't have to do that. Given the always-on internet access, you should be able to just say "Play <whatever> album" and it "just works" - at the very least it should connect you to your phone's voice assistant to do it.
> 
> I can just get out of my car an manually open my garage door every time. But that's not the point.


What car actually provide a audio system that lets drivers just say "play x album" and it just works? Honest question. I'm not aware of any other car even having a built in streaming service account other than Tesla.

What I'd actually like to have is what built-in apps, or perhaps Android Auto/Apple CarPlay, that lets users control their streaming accounts on the car's beautiful touchscreen. An example would be my wife's CX-5 that has a built-in Pandora app. When you click the icon for it, it launches the app on your phone but displays functions on the car's screen.


----------



## PNWmisty (Aug 19, 2017)

Johnston said:


> What car actually provide a audio system that lets drivers just say "play x album" and it just works? Honest question. I'm not aware of any other car even having a built in streaming service account other than Tesla.


I know, this ^^^^^.

It just blows me away!


----------



## Hugh_Jassol (Jan 31, 2019)

Johnston said:


> What car actually provide a audio system that lets drivers just say "play x album" and it just works? Honest question. I'm not aware of any other car even having a built in streaming service account other than Tesla..


I have no idea... but I do know I have been able to do exactly this in every car I've had in past decade (Volt, Jetta, BMW 3-Series). How? Long-press the "voice" button in a car that has bluetooth and it gets you your phone's assistant. Also CarPlay or Android Auto.

My point was/is the Teslas are the most tech-forward, advanced cars, yet their infotainment is lacking many features that are common in even the base model mass market cars these days. If they are going to insist they don't want to forward/offload infotainment features to the phone, then they should be able to at least have the capability the phone would provide.

Also for the past decade or so... over Bluetooth, it's common to be able to browse the music stored on the phone. Could do that in the cars on the above list as well. Even my co-workers bargain-basement Dodge Dart does this.

Many other examples as well: Why can't I answer/hang up the phone from the "voice" button the wheel? Why can't I say "Call John Doe mobile" and have it just call John Doe's mobile rather than displaying the contact, which I have to scroll and then select mobile? Or "Navigate to John Doe work" - can't do that either - Contacts and Nav aren't even connected.

It's just embarrassing.

The only thing that makes sense to me is there must be a lot of people that are coming from really old cars that had nothing so they "don't know what they are missing" or are the kind of people that never use most features of most tech they have. Or something like that.


----------



## Johnston (Oct 12, 2018)

Well said, and I definitely wish the display can do more phone functions. 

I think Teslas excuse for not doing more on this end is by saying once we have FSD we won't need those conveniences.


----------



## SimonMatthews (Apr 20, 2018)

Hugh_Jassol said:


> For the first year. Then $100/yr after that.


I think that depends on when you bought your car and what level of upgrades you bought.

We have a LR RWD drive model which is a year old now and Tesla hasn't asked us for any money to keep the connectivity, maps, real time traffic, etc. working.


----------



## SimonMatthews (Apr 20, 2018)

Hugh_Jassol said:


> Well, of course it does. The whole point of this thread, however, is that you shouldn't have to do that. Given the always-on internet access, you should be able to just say "Play <whatever> album" and it "just works"


The last time I added a station, that's exactly what happened. I hit the button, said "Play Supertramp" and was rewarded with a new station of '70s rock music. It just worked.


----------



## RUN TM3 (Sep 30, 2018)

PNWmisty said:


> Because Slacker uses artificial intelligence to improve the suitability of its selections for you. So, yeah, garbage in, garbage out. But apparently I've trained it properly and it has an uncanny ability to avoid the kind of songs I dislike and play ones I wanted to hear (but didn't know it). Leave it on the "Favorites" channel for that and make sure to train it by using plenty of thumbs ups and thumbs downs.


Giving this a shot.


----------



## Hugh_Jassol (Jan 31, 2019)

SimonMatthews said:


> I think that depends on when you bought your car and what level of upgrades you bought.
> 
> We have a LR RWD drive model which is a year old now and Tesla hasn't asked us for any money to keep the connectivity, maps, real time traffic, etc. working.


If purchased prior to July 1, 2018 the "premium connectivity" is free forever. After July 1, 2018, it's only free for the first year. Since every model 3 so far is either free forever or still in the free year, they haven't had to figure this out yet. I'm hopeful when they start charging for it, they make it something worth charging for.


----------



## Hugh_Jassol (Jan 31, 2019)

Ugh. You are missing the point. When I say "play supertramp" I expect shuffled supertramp songs....not a 70's station. Otherwise I would say "play 70's rock music" - this is what I can do on every other streaming provider (assuming not in free tier). On Tesla you can't even PAY to get this.


----------



## Hugh_Jassol (Jan 31, 2019)

I don't understand why this concept is so hard to get. Has no one every subscribed to a Music service before? It's like everyone seems amazed the car plays music at all. Like that episode of Seinfeld where he gave his dad an electronic organizer and all he used was the tip calculator and he thought it was amazing.

On Apple Music, Spotify, Google Play Music, Amazon Music Unlimited you can:

"play songs by Billy Joel"
"play 80's pop"
"play 'I want to hold your hand' by The Beatles
"play my 'Road Trip' playlist on shuffle.
"play 'Ride the lightening' podcast" (and it starts where you left off, even across devices)
You can do NONE of this on Tesla's system. You can't even PAY to do it by upgrading to premium slacker. And "soon" (theoretically July 1, 2019) they will start _charging_ 100/yr for not being able to do any of this. Each of these services above are about ~100/yr.


----------



## francoisp (Sep 28, 2018)

Hugh_Jassol said:


> If purchased prior to July 1, 2018 the "premium connectivity" is free forever.


Not wanting to be picky but my recollection is that customers got free connectivity forever when making a non-refundable payment of $2500 prior to July 1st 2018 which I did. I made the final payment upon delivery the following September.


----------



## Johnston (Oct 12, 2018)

SimonMatthews said:


> I think that depends on when you bought your car and what level of upgrades you bought.
> 
> We have a LR RWD drive model which is a year old now and Tesla hasn't asked us for any money to keep the connectivity, maps, real time traffic, etc. working.


IIRC if you took delivery before 7/1 you get


Hugh_Jassol said:


> I don't understand why this concept is so hard to get. Has no one every subscribed to a Music service before? It's like everyone seems amazed the car plays music at all. Like that episode of Seinfeld where he gave his dad an electronic organizer and all he used was the tip calculator and he thought it was amazing.
> 
> On Apple Music, Spotify, Google Play Music, Amazon Music Unlimited you can:
> 
> ...


What car can you pay to do this? The streaming service is, imo, the least important part of what the $100/yr Premium Connectivity gives you. Not defending Tesla, as I would definitely like to have what you're asking for, but I've not had this feature in any other car either.


----------



## MelindaV (Apr 2, 2016)

Johnston said:


> IIRC if you took delivery before 7/1 you get


it was ORDER by 7/1, not delivery.


----------



## Johnston (Oct 12, 2018)

MelindaV said:


> it was ORDER by 7/1, not delivery.


Thanks for the correction. I was actually going to delete that line.


----------



## Hugh_Jassol (Jan 31, 2019)

Johnston said:


> What car can you pay to do this?


As I meantioned at least twice now... this functiality was afforded by allowing connection to the phone's voice assistant. THAT IS, when you long-press the voice button on the steering wheel, you were connected directly through Bluetooth, to the phone's voice assistant. At that point you could do anything - read texts, play music, make a call, do math, ask for the weather, sports score, what time some store closes, etc. If you subscribe to a Music service (Apple Music) you get all of the "play <whatever>"

I could do that in my BMW, Jetta, Volt - all cars I've owned over the past decade.

Have you really never heard of this?

My complaint is Tesla doesn't hand-off to the voice assistant and their system is LESS CAPABLE than the voice assistant. So either make so I can get to the Siri/Android Auto (without the hacky shouting "hey google" over the radio) or make the built-in option as capable.

90% of the complaints could be solved by activating Siri/GoogleAssistant by a long press of the voice button. This is a standard interface that both platforms support.


----------



## Johnston (Oct 12, 2018)

Hugh_Jassol said:


> As I meantioned at least twice now... this functiality was afforded by allowing connection to the phone's voice assistant. THAT IS, when you long-press the voice button on the steering wheel, you were connected directly through Bluetooth, to the phone's voice assistant. At that point you could do anything - read texts, play music, make a call, do math, ask for the weather, sports score, what time some store closes, etc. If you subscribe to a Music service (Apple Music) you get all of the "play <whatever>"
> 
> I could do that in my BMW, Jetta, Volt - all cars I've owned over the past decade.
> 
> ...


Don't phones now take the Hey google/Siri commands just via voice now? My Pixel 3 does. Instead of the voice button, I'd press the media pause button on left thumb wheel, say "hey Google, play x on (insert music streaming service)", and hit the pause button again. Is it that diff from long press voice button?

Also, I know for Android, you can now get Google Assistants that plug into the 12v sockets. Anker Roav I think is the name.


----------



## PNWmisty (Aug 19, 2017)

Hugh_Jassol said:


> On Apple Music, Spotify, Google Play Music, Amazon Music Unlimited you can:
> 
> "play songs by Billy Joel"
> "play 80's pop"
> ...


Last night I drove my wife's Model 3 to dinner. She doesn't have a Slacker account (other than the free lifetime one that came with her car). She also doesn't use her phone for music or subscribe to any music service. The first thing I did as we drove off into the sunset was press the right steering wheel scroll wheel and say "Play I Want to Hold Your Hand by the Beatles".

As expected, it played "I Want to Hold Your Hand" by the Beatles. I guess I don't understand why you are having trouble making this work.


----------



## Johnston (Oct 12, 2018)

PNWmisty said:


> Last night I drove my wife's Model 3 to dinner. She doesn't have a Slacker account (other than the free lifetime one that came with her car). The first thing I did as we drove off into the sunset was press the right steering wheel scroll wheel and say "Play I Want to Hold Your Hand by the Beatles".
> 
> As expected, it played "I Want to Hold Your Hand" by the Beatles. I guess I don't understand why you are having trouble making this work.


The complaints here have been people wanting to "play songs by the Beatles" and "play the white album by the Beatles".


----------



## PNWmisty (Aug 19, 2017)

Johnston said:


> The complaints here have been people wanting to "play songs by the Beatles" and "play the white album by the Beatles".


Actually, I was responding to a very specific complaint. Read again.


----------



## TechMinimus (Apr 30, 2019)

Johnston said:


> It's not bad, but Tesla's UI doesn't allow full functionality of Slacker. Not being able to access Custom Stations is a huge bummer imo.
> 
> I also find Pandora's algorithm to be better than Slacker's. One example is if I make a Lord Finesse station, Big L songs never show up, and they're very related artists.


"Big L, rest in peace!"

The services are okay. I find myself using Slacker more, but I really wish we had Spotify integration. I will say that Slacker has some nice sub-genres and is fairly stable. Tuned-In is choppy for me; I'm not sure what the deal is there, but it is annoying. The Bluetooth implementation leaves a lot to be desired, but maybe I just miss CarPlay.


----------



## Johnston (Oct 12, 2018)

TechMinimus said:


> "Big L, rest in peace!"
> 
> The services are okay. I find myself using Slacker more, but I really wish we had Spotify integration. I will say that Slacker has some nice sub-genres and is fairly stable. Tuned-In is choppy for me; I'm not sure what the deal is there, but it is annoying. The Bluetooth implementation leaves a lot to be desired, but maybe I just miss CarPlay.


"One of the best yet"

I played with CarPlay a bit in my mom's new car, would definitely be nice to get that in our Teslas.


----------



## Vendacious (Aug 3, 2017)

PNWmisty said:


> Last night I drove my wife's Model 3 to dinner. She doesn't have a Slacker account (other than the free lifetime one that came with her car). She also doesn't use her phone for music or subscribe to any music service. The first thing I did as we drove off into the sunset was press the right steering wheel scroll wheel and say "Play I Want to Hold Your Hand by the Beatles".
> 
> As expected, it played "I Want to Hold Your Hand" by the Beatles. I guess I don't understand why you are having trouble making this work.


This doesn't always work. If it had played "I Want to Hold Your Hand" recently, the tier of Slacker that's included with the car wouldn't let you hear it again and would instead play something it thinks is similar.


----------



## PNWmisty (Aug 19, 2017)

Vendacious said:


> This doesn't always work. If it had played "I Want to Hold Your Hand" recently, the tier of Slacker that's included with the car wouldn't let you hear it again and would instead play something it thinks is similar.


I guess I don't request the same song I've already listened to the same day!

There is a big world of music out there so i guess I tend to mix it up, not play the exact same song over and over!

But the claim was you couldn't say "Play Let Me Hold Your Hand by the Beatles", not that you couldn't play the same song repeatedly in the same day! Also, it was claimed that paying extra for an upgraded subscription wouldn't let you do any of those things. My understanding is that upgrading to a paid Slacker subscription would allow you to hear the same song an unlimited number of times each day. Not that that's something I would want to do!


----------



## Hugh_Jassol (Jan 31, 2019)

No specifically you can't request an album to be played, you can't reques songs by an artist, you can't have it remember which episode or place you were in podcasts. It is a big world of music out there. Not everyone wants to to be played to them randomly. 

And I have definitely had it ignore my request for a song if it is too close or it's played too many by that artist. 

And my big complaint is that all of this functionality is already available on all of our phones, but they car won't let you access it. And soon, we'll be charged $100/yr


----------



## Johnston (Oct 12, 2018)

Hugh_Jassol said:


> And my big complaint is that all of this functionality is already available on all of our phones, but they car won't let you access it. And soon, we'll be charged $100/yr


No reason to pay it if you dislike it that much. There's nothing stopping you from using Bluetooth and doing what you need via your phone.


----------



## Spinball (Jun 20, 2017)

Johnston said:


> Don't phones now take the Hey google/Siri commands just via voice now? My Pixel 3 does. Instead of the voice button, I'd press the media pause button on left thumb wheel, say "hey Google, play x on (insert music streaming service)", and hit the pause button again. Is it that diff from long press voice button?


It is different because it depends on you having your phone out where the phone mic can hear you, not in a bag or pocket. That may sound trivial but it's annoying and I don't want to get out my phone each time I hop in the car for a short drive, just as I don't want to carry keys or use a start button anymore. Having to do nothing and it "just works" is always objectively better than having to do something pre-emptively every time.

The other reason it's different is with other cars, the "Siri hands free" picks up over BT (phone doesn't need to hear you at all, ever) and it uses the car mic which is appropriately located to hear you best, much closer to your mouth than even having the phone in the console tray.



Johnston said:


> No reason to pay it if you dislike it that much. There's nothing stopping you from using Bluetooth and doing what you need via your phone.


The suggestion that we should use our phones while driving to control the audio is not only unsafe but illegal in many states. What's next, we should pull over to change a playlist because Tesla refuses to let us activate our phones' built-in assistants over BT? Really?

I agree that it appears that many people aren't familiar with how this works in other cars. If your needs are so low that slacker is enough or you literally don't care what some comes on next, then you probably aren't someone who listens to enough variety of music to subscribe to an "all songs every made" type of service where this problem is most glaring. But many, many people have subscriptions now and they are only growing in popularity, especially among the younger crowd. The idea of "buying" music, listening to whatever slacker semi-randomly serves up, or not being able to *easily* access the same music service from all their devices including their car is as outdated to them as buying an ICE is to us.


----------



## PNWmisty (Aug 19, 2017)

Spinball said:


> The idea of "buying" music, listening to whatever slacker semi-randomly serves up, or not being able to *easily* access the same music service from all their devices including their car is as outdated to them as buying an ICE is to us.


Slacker, like all the major music services, doesn't "semi-randomly" serve up music, it uses sophisticated artificial intelligence to serve up music it thinks you will like.

I really like this in my car where I'm the one training it, in my wife's car all I hear is a bunch of crap.


----------



## Spinball (Jun 20, 2017)

PNWmisty said:


> Slacker, like all the major music services, doesn't "semi-randomly" serve up music, it uses sophisticated artificial intelligence to serve up music it thinks you will like.
> 
> I really like this in my car where I'm the one training it, in my wife's car all I hear is a bunch of crap.


I think you just identified one of the many reasons why the process of training Slacker isn't a great solution even when it does work; People share cars but they (generally) do not share phones.

I also don't want to individually train every single device I own from scratch--It's much better to use the same service everywhere and only do that once (or not at all depending on the service/preferences).


----------



## PNWmisty (Aug 19, 2017)

Spinball said:


> I think you just identified one of the many reasons why the process of training Slacker isn't a great solution even when it does work; People share cars but they (generally) do not share phones.


Well, it's her car so I think she has every right to train it to play her music. And if she wants to play something I like it's as simple as pressing a button and saying "Play Break on Through by the Doors." or whatever I'm in the mood for. That's the real beauty of music on demand. No need to parse gnat's eyelashes as to exactly which music service is superior.


----------



## Needsdecaf (Dec 27, 2018)

PNWmisty said:


> Well, it's her car so I think she has every right to train it to play her music. And if she wants to play something I like it's as simple as pressing a button and saying "Play Break on Through by the Doors." or whatever I'm in the mood for. That's the real beauty of music on demand. No need to parse gnat's eyelashes as to exactly which music service is superior.


I've tried Apple Music (paid), YouTube Music (paid), Amazon Music (the one that comes with your Prime membership), Pandora (free), and now Slacker. IMO, none of them are really any better than the others.


----------



## GDN (Oct 30, 2017)

So really we all just need to go back to ripping our CD's !! Or downloading our purchased MP3's. It's still my favorite way, but I'm old.


----------



## PNWmisty (Aug 19, 2017)

GDN said:


> So really we all just need to go back to ripping our CD's !! Or downloading our purchased MP3's. It's still my favorite way, but I'm old.


Is there a "How to" article for installing an 8-track tape player in a Model 3?


----------



## Needsdecaf (Dec 27, 2018)

GDN said:


> So really we all just need to go back to ripping our CD's !! Or downloading our purchased MP3's. It's still my favorite way, but I'm old.


Bring back Napster.


----------



## Hugh_Jassol (Jan 31, 2019)

Johnston said:


> No reason to pay it if you dislike it that much. There's nothing stopping you from using Bluetooth and doing what you need via your phone.


Ugh. I know. The point is, again, that we shouldn't have to. I mean, the car has a framing web browser, but I can't say "navigate to bob smith's house"

It's not that there aren't "workarounds" - we all know there are. It's that we shouldn't have to work around it.

Imagine you paid 50k for a car and it had manual seats. Sure you can adjust it yourself, but for that level, you shouldn't have to.


----------



## Hugh_Jassol (Jan 31, 2019)

Spinball said:


> It is different because it depends on you having your phone out where the phone mic can hear you, not in a bag or pocket. That may sound trivial but it's annoying and I don't want to get out my phone each time I hop in the car for a short drive, just as I don't want to carry keys or use a start button anymore. Having to do nothing and it "just works" is always objectively better than having to do something pre-emptively every time.


Preach. 


> I agree that it appears that many people aren't familiar with how this works in other cars.


Exactly the problem.


----------



## garsh (Apr 4, 2016)

Hugh_Jassol said:


> Ugh. I know. The point is, again, that we shouldn't have to.


Maybe what we really need to do is rename this thread. It's not that the music streaming sucks. It works very well for its use case. It's just that people have other ways of listening to music that they prefer (such as listening to an album, or a single artist, etc.), and it would be nice if Tesla could provide a solution that doesn't involve a phone or USB drive.

Is that something we can all agree on, or is there some other nuance that I missed?


----------



## Ksb466 (Oct 22, 2018)

Sorry to most here, but Slacker seems fine to me. After 9 months of selecting favorites most songs played on my fav channel are good with me. I have a Spotify premium account but really haven’t spent much time fretting over the difference while driving. Theres so many music, radio and podcast options in the car I can always find something good.


----------



## StromTrooperM3 (Mar 27, 2019)

Looks like after the update to Chrominum Browser someone got Spotify to work. Haven't tested yet ymmv

https://www.teslarati.com/how-to-play-spotify-tesla-music-streaming/


----------



## Hugh_Jassol (Jan 31, 2019)

garsh said:


> Maybe what we really need to do is rename this thread. It's not that the music streaming sucks. It works very well for its use case. It's just that people have other ways of listening to music that they prefer (such as listening to an album, or a single artist, etc.), and it would be nice if Tesla could provide a solution that doesn't involve a phone or USB drive.
> 
> Is that something we can all agree on, or is there some other nuance that I missed?


That's probably correct. It's not that it doesn't do what it's stated capabilities are, it's just unbecoming a Tesla.

It's like buying a first class ticket on an airplane and they they only give you pretzels and peanuts and water. Sure, they fed you, but you would really expect more.

And while there's a segment of the flying public that don't drink or don't drink on planes, that doesn't make it "acceptable" to not have that service.


----------



## Long Ranger (Jun 1, 2018)

Hugh_Jassol said:


> That's probably correct. It's not that it doesn't do what it's stated capabilities are, it's just unbecoming a Tesla.
> 
> It's like buying a first class ticket on an airplane and they they only give you pretzels and peanuts and water. Sure, they fed you, but you would really expect more.
> 
> And while there's a segment of the flying public that don't drink or don't drink on planes, that doesn't make it "acceptable" to not have that service.


I don't think that's a great analogy. I'd say it's more like buying a first class ticket and the plane has seat back movies streaming Amazon Prime over free WiFi instead of the usual canned content, but you're disappointed that it's not Netflix and that you can't plug your own device into their screen.


----------



## Madmolecule (Oct 8, 2018)

I don’t think the music or the navigation is best in class. I feel Tesla purposely made it generic to make an easy transition to either an Apple, Google or Microsoft-based vehicle. I personally believe it’s just a strategy to set themselves up for a huge acquisition. The recent fundraising does not support my position but I still think it will happen. I just hope it’s not Amazon and we’re stuck using Amazon prime


----------



## garsh (Apr 4, 2016)

Madmolecule said:


> I don't think the music or the navigation is best in class.


I understand that people would like more choices for music. But the navigation is by FAR the best offered by any OEM, which is what I think would be in its class. Nothing comes close. Many non-car navigation apps are better in some ways. Google Maps navigation is better in a few ways (showing alternate routes, allowing multiple stops). Waze's social features to warn others of issues is nice. But Tesla's navigation is very, very good, and the ability to include supercharging during route calculations makes it indispensable for long trips.



> I personally believe it's just a strategy to set themselves up for a huge acquisition.


If you read about Tesla's history, you'll learn that Elon had a handshake deal with Larry Page to have Google buy Tesla back in 2013 if it looked like the company would go bankrupt. If Elon wasn't willing to sell it to his friend back then, mere days away from failure, there's no way he's going to sell the company now.

https://business.financialpost.com/...-the-automaker-was-on-the-verge-of-bankruptcy


----------



## DennisP (Jan 5, 2019)

OK so now for a basic question I can't seem to figure out. I got a SSD, formatted it to FAT32, and added some MP3 songs to test. For some reason I don't see the drive - what am I missing here?


----------



## DennisP (Jan 5, 2019)

DennisP said:


> OK so now for a basic question I can't seem to figure out. I got a SSD, formatted it to FAT32, and added some MP3 songs to test. For some reason I don't see the drive - what am I missing here?


So I have the TeslaCam folder on the same drive and apparently that's a no no, will try to partition SSD and try again....


----------



## GDN (Oct 30, 2017)

I have a 256GB SSD. It is partitioned in to two halves. Each half formatted fat32. One of those has a Teslacam folder and the other half has my music. Camera and Music behaving normally (or as normal as we all report here.) I can record both driving and sentry events. I can play music.


----------



## Hugh_Jassol (Jan 31, 2019)

Long Ranger said:


> I don't think that's a great analogy. I'd say it's more like buying a first class ticket and the plane has seat back movies streaming Amazon Prime over free WiFi instead of the usual canned content, but you're disappointed that it's not Netflix and that you can't plug your own device into their screen.


Or rather it has seatback movies streaming from Amazon Prime but you can only select a genre and then it just plays movies it thinks you want to see. While other airlines don't provide any movies, but let you connect your phone to their display and you can use Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Sling, etc. through their display.


----------



## SimonMatthews (Apr 20, 2018)

TechMinimus said:


> "Big L, rest in peace!"
> 
> The services are okay. I find myself using Slacker more, but I really wish we had Spotify integration. I will say that Slacker has some nice sub-genres and is fairly stable. Tuned-In is choppy for me; I'm not sure what the deal is there, but it is annoying. The Bluetooth implementation leaves a lot to be desired, but maybe I just miss CarPlay.


I wish there were a Pandora option. Pandora is much better at finding similar music. In fact, I don't think Slacker even attempts this: instead it plays music by related artists.

Today, I was listening to my "Vangelis" station and it began playing some music by Hans Zimmer. A lot of music by Hans Zimmer is similar to music by Vangelis, but this piece was one of the tracks from "The Lion King", which, as you can imagine if you are familiar with Vangelis, was very different to the style of music typically played in my Vangelis station.

So I conclude that Slacker does not analyze music and attempt to find similar, instead it uses a dumb algorithm based on related artists.


----------



## PNWmisty (Aug 19, 2017)

SimonMatthews said:


> Today, I was listening to my "Vangelis" station and it began playing some music by Hans Zimmer. A lot of music by Hans Zimmer is similar to music by Vangelis, but this piece was one of the tracks from "The Lion King", which, as you can imagine if you are familiar with Vangelis, was very different to the style of music typically played in my Vangelis station.
> 
> So I conclude that Slacker does not analyze music and attempt to find similar, instead it uses a dumb algorithm based on related artists.


I wouldn't draw conclusions from such a tiny sample size. It appears like Slacker uses AI to play music it thinks you might like based on past likes/dislikes, plays, etc. Slacker has introduced me to a whole host of new music that I never would have thought of playing on my own.


----------



## SimonMatthews (Apr 20, 2018)

PNWmisty said:


> I wouldn't draw conclusions from such a tiny sample size. It appears like Slacker uses AI to play music it thinks you might like based on past likes/dislikes, plays, etc. Slacker has introduced me to a whole host of new music that I never would have thought of playing on my own.


In my experience, Pandora is *much* better at finding music I might like.


----------



## turnem (Apr 26, 2019)

I'm not in love with Slacker or Tune-In but it gets the job done. Sure, it would be better if they integrated some more popular options and maybe they will at some point.

What I'd LOVE to see is Google Assistant integration. I don't think it's likely to ever happen but it would be a match made in heaven.


----------



## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

PNWmisty said:


> I wouldn't draw conclusions from such a tiny sample size. It appears like Slacker uses AI to play music it thinks you might like based on past likes/dislikes, plays, etc. Slacker has introduced me to a whole host of new music that I never would have thought of playing on my own.


I think he is right. It's definitely different. And I think not as advanced as Pandora. For example if you thumb down on something in Slacker it just never plays it again, and it doesn't take it as a hint that you don't like that style.

Pandora has it's limits. I only use the Free Pandora.
Folks that pay for Spotify think it's better than Pandora or Slacker.

That said, I did sign up for the base Slacker plan and it's nice the phone is "in sync" with the car. And I can use Slacker now in my other Apple Play car and it has the exact stations as the Model 3.
So the time I do put into it, is shared and kept on Slacker server rather than restricted to the car.

One other Bonus is, it creates Favorites Channel which plays music from all your channels. This appears to be a little more biased towards your thumbs up preferences. Where the individual stations sometimes feel like thumbs up does nothing. But the Favorites can be a little odd jumping from Celtic, to Oldies to Rock to Classic  Somethings I like to Random play on my whole FLAC library too.

It would be nice if Tesla added Pandora and Spotify. I wonder who pays whom on deals like that. I would assume the service would pay Tesla for attracting more paying customers or hearing more ads.

I wish USB Music wasn't so brain dead reindexing almost everytime you get in the car. It has other issues too. And if I do use USB Music the TeslaCam tends to corrupt. If don't use USB Music TeslaCam is fine.
It might be that my library is so big that it bogs down and screws up TeslaCam. But my library has not been to large for uConnect Radios (10,000 songs). uConnect only indexes if I add music. It also handles NTFS file system.

For the record I have no issue paying Tesla $100/yr for premium. I'd do it for live traffic alone.


----------



## PNWmisty (Aug 19, 2017)

mswlogo said:


> It would be nice if Tesla added Pandora and Spotify. I wonder who pays whom on deals like that. I would assume the service would pay Tesla for attracting more paying customers or hearing more ads.


I really like that Slacker has no ads. I hope Tesla doesn't switch to Pandora or Spotify if it means we are exposed to ads unless we pay the annual subscription fee.


----------



## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

PNWmisty said:


> I really like that Slacker has no ads. I hope Tesla doesn't switch to Pandora or Spotify if it means we are exposed to ads unless we pay the annual subscription fee.


I think Slacker normally does have ads and Tesla's deal was with no ads.

If Pandora or Spotify did have ads, I'd just sign up. Rather that than nothing.


----------



## DennisP (Jan 5, 2019)

GDN said:


> I have a 256GB SSD. It is partitioned in to two halves. Each half formatted fat32. One of those has a Teslacam folder and the other half has my music. Camera and Music behaving normally (or as normal as we all report here.) I can record both driving and sentry events. I can play music.


Great, thanks - I set mine up the same way. Partitioning the external drive on my Mac was the hardest part, never having done that. There were more steps than I anticipated and had to do a bit of googling to sort it out but in the end, I'm glad I did. Despite the lack of full functionality at least I have better quality music. I don't know how anyone bears the bluetooth streaming method.


----------



## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

GDN said:


> I have a 256GB SSD. It is partitioned in to two halves. Each half formatted fat32. One of those has a Teslacam folder and the other half has my music. Camera and Music behaving normally (or as normal as we all report here.) I can record both driving and sentry events. I can play music.


How much music do you have on your SSD, how long does it take to index?


----------



## GDN (Oct 30, 2017)

DennisP said:


> Great, thanks - I set mine up the same way. Partitioning the external drive on my Mac was the hardest part, never having done that. There were more steps than I anticipated and had to do a bit of googling to sort it out but in the end, I'm glad I did. Despite the lack of full functionality at least I have better quality music. I don't know how anyone bears the bluetooth streaming method.


This was a bit weird for me too. My Macbook (my main computer) would not partition this drive no matter what I did. I plugged it in to my PC, an older desktop running Windows 10 and it partitioned it with ease, but wouldn't format either half. I plugged it back in to my Macbook which now recognized the the two partitions and then it then formatted each half for me quickly and easily.



mswlogo said:


> How much music do you have on your SSD, how long does it take to index?


I will have to double check, but I think I've got about 80 GB. If I recall it took a couple of attempts to index, but no more than 45 minutes to an hour if I can recall at all. It indexed once and has never done it again even though I've pulled the drive and put it back in many times. I rarely play music from it because my iTunes library didn't convert all that well and I've got duplicate albums, etc. iTunes hides some of the mistakes for me so I just typically play over bluetooth from my phone.


----------



## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

GDN said:


> This was a bit weird for me too. My Macbook (my main computer) would not partition this drive no matter what I did. I plugged it in to my PC, an older desktop running Windows 10 and it partitioned it with ease, but wouldn't format either half. I plugged it back in to my Macbook which now recognized the the two partitions and then it then formatted each half for me quickly and easily.
> 
> I will have to double check, but I think I've got about 80 GB. If I recall it took a couple of attempts to index, but no more than 45 minutes to an hour if I can recall at all. It indexed once and has never done it again even though I've pulled the drive and put it back in many times. I rarely play music from it because my iTunes library didn't convert all that well and I've got duplicate albums, etc. iTunes hides some of the mistakes for me so I just typically play over bluetooth from my phone.


Size doesn't say much because you might be running FLAC. Number of tunes matters. I have around 10,000 MP3's highest bitrate (total size around 70GB). If you run FLACs you might have half that number of tunes.
Mine takes 2-3 minutes to index, every time I get in the car (Which I find annoying). Nothing ever took close to 45 minutes, even the first time I put the flash drive in (took 2-3 minutes even the first time).
I have not tested stability of TeslaCam for a while if using UCB Music. Maybe things are better.


----------



## Madmolecule (Oct 8, 2018)

I have been "liking" my favorite songs to try to train slacker. When I play an artist station, like Grateful Dead, around 70% of the songs played are the ones I have selected as favorites. It also doesn't play other versions of the same song or similar artist of that station. The next time I play the same station, I get the virtually the same playlist. I have to skip a bunch of songs to get to some fresh music. 

Playlists from the USB files is essential as well as random play that has already been pointed out. I had a usb player around 2005 that had much more features.

I have played for Slacker premium to bring in playlists, but many of the songs from spotify or apple playlist are not available on slacker, and it will typically replace it with a random somewhat similar version.

I am paying for the premium version of both slacker and tunein to try to get some additional functionality but basic slacker sucks and premium is not much better. It would be nice if they would also add more meta data than just an album cover. It should be possible to see the entire playlist generated so you you can skip to the middle or to a song you really want to hear.

Using voice command like "Play x song by y artist" is also flakey. I recognizes what I am saying but cant find the song, even though it is on slacker if I manually search.


----------



## DennisP (Jan 5, 2019)

The bright side of all the audio control issues is fixes are just a good software update away. The system itself sounds fantastic when given quality input - tracks via USB are amazing, at least to my non-audiophile ears. So I'll deal with the playing limitations for now (not that I have a choice...) and keep my fingers crossed that "Tesla" understands our frustrations and has improvements on the way....


----------



## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

DennisP said:


> The bright side of all the audio control issues is fixes are just a good software update away. The system itself sounds fantastic when given quality input - tracks via USB are amazing, at least to my non-audiophile ears. So I'll deal with the playing limitations for now (not that I have a choice...) and keep my fingers crossed that "Tesla" understands our frustrations and has improvements on the way....


I've heard some of the usability issues have been complained about for years on the Model S. Remember they were promised FSD years ago too.
I'll try to be optimistic.

One obvious bug that drives me crazy is the radio volume goes way up for a couple seconds after a phone call ends. I typically already have it up loud and then it goes crazy loud.


----------



## Madmolecule (Oct 8, 2018)

Also, Dog Mode does not allow you to leave the music on. I would like to select the Tesla Dog channel of the most popular Tesla dog music.


----------



## Hugh_Jassol (Jan 31, 2019)

turnem said:


> I'm not in love with Slacker or Tune-In but it gets the job done. Sure, it would be better if they integrated some more popular options and maybe they will at some point.
> 
> What I'd LOVE to see is Google Assistant integration. I don't think it's likely to ever happen but it would be a match made in heaven.


I've owned two cars now (Volt and Jetta) where a long-press of the "phone" or "voice" button (in Tesla's case the right scroll wheel), would get you Siri/GoogleAssistant via bluetooth. You're 100% correct that doing that would solve about 70% of the issues I have with the infotainment system.


----------



## GDN (Oct 30, 2017)

Hugh_Jassol said:


> I've owned two cars now (Volt and Jetta) where a long-press of the "phone" or "voice" button (in Tesla's case the right scroll wheel), would get you Siri/GoogleAssistant via bluetooth. You're 100% correct that doing that would solve about 70% of the issues I have with the infotainment system.


It's not exactly the same, but noted before maybe in a different thread. What you mention works just almost exactly like you want it to. If your phone is somewhere within your voice (not in your hip pocket) all you have to do is press the right steering wheel button. When the car starts listening say Hey Siri or just give Siri your command. It's really just a trick, the car doesn't know the command or what to do with it and it will just discard the command and return to normal, however your phone will get the Hey Siri/command and respond over the car audio system. You now have your wish of Siri and can interact through the car audio completely hands free.


----------



## Hugh_Jassol (Jan 31, 2019)

GDN said:


> It's not exactly the same, but noted before maybe in a different thread. What you mention works just almost exactly like you want it to. If your phone is somewhere within your voice (not in your hip pocket) all you have to do is press the right steering wheel button. When the car starts listening say Hey Siri or just give Siri your command. It's really just a trick, the car doesn't know the command or what to do with it and it will just discard the command and return to normal, however your phone will get the Hey Siri/command and respond over the car audio system. You now have your wish of Siri and can interact through the car audio completely hands free.


Yeah, I know this trick. My phone lives in my front pocket unless I am using it. And so with the sensor covered, it will not respond to "Hey Siri".

Am I just in the minority here that I don't pull my phone out and put it in the dash/cup holder every time I get in the car??


----------



## FRC (Aug 4, 2018)

Hugh_Jassol said:


> Yeah, I know this trick. My phone lives in my front pocket unless I am using it. And so with the sensor covered, it will not respond to "Hey Siri".
> 
> Am I just in the minority here that I don't pull my phone out and put it in the dash/cup holder every time I get in the car??


Mine stays in the charging dock. And I use Siri a lot.


----------



## Hugh_Jassol (Jan 31, 2019)

FRC said:


> Mine stays in the charging dock. And I use Siri a lot.


Do you take that extra step _because_ you want to use Siri or you just always do that for some reason?


----------



## FRC (Aug 4, 2018)

Hugh_Jassol said:


> Do you take that extra step _because_ you want to use Siri or you just always do that for some reason?


I have always removed both my phone and my wallet when I get in the car. I'm more comfortable with empty pockets and decades ago my chiropractor recommended that I always remove the wallet. I also pass the time on long trips by thinking of stupid questions to ask Siri. Somebody at Apple has spent hours unknown preparing Siri for customers like me who have a warped sense of humor!


----------



## GDN (Oct 30, 2017)

I typically carry my phone in my back pocket. Since it doesn't like to unlock the car from there, I always pull it out of my pocket, unlock and get it, and yes it either goes in the cup holder or on occasion on the charger, but I rarely charge in the car unless a long journey.


----------



## NEO (Jun 28, 2017)

I have been streaming Spotify using tesplayer. Works pretty good although it requires that I have Spotify running on my phone


----------



## Hugh_Jassol (Jan 31, 2019)

FRC said:


> I have always removed both my phone and my wallet when I get in the car. I'm more comfortable with empty pockets and decades ago my chiropractor recommended that I always remove the wallet. I also pass the time on long trips by thinking of stupid questions to ask Siri. Somebody at Apple has spent hours unknown preparing Siri for customers like me who have a warped sense of humor!


I use a front-pocket wallet on right side and iPhone lives in left-front pocket. No removal necessary. It's irks me a little because on my previous cars I never had to remove my phone - steering wheel button got me Siri. Just kinda shocked Tesla doesn't do that - I could understand it if their voice assistant was on-par, but I can't even dial a specific contact number with it (i.e., "Call Bob Smith Work") without having to manually select from the screen


----------



## Mr. Spacely (Feb 28, 2019)

I'm more concerned about finding some of my AM talk radio shows. Most of these AM stations were powerful and worked within large range. The cloned FM stations tend to be very weak...


----------



## MelindaV (Apr 2, 2016)

Mr. Spacely said:


> I'm more concerned about finding some of my AM talk radio shows. Most of these AM stations were powerful and worked within large range. The cloned FM stations tend to be very weak...


check TuneIn. many local AM stations are included.


----------



## slasher016 (Sep 12, 2017)

Madmolecule said:


> Also, Dog Mode does not allow you to leave the music on. I would like to select the Tesla Dog channel of the most popular Tesla dog music.


Is there any way at all to leave the music playing while no one is in the car? This drives me a bit nuts as sometimes I want to use the car as a stereo when I'm cleaning one of the cars or working in the garage.


----------



## garsh (Apr 4, 2016)

slasher016 said:


> Is there any way at all to leave the music playing while no one is in the car?


Leave a door open.


----------



## MelindaV (Apr 2, 2016)

(future) Party Mode


----------



## lance.bailey (Apr 1, 2019)

slasher016 said:


> Is there any way at all to leave the music playing while no one is in the car? This drives me a bit nuts as sometimes I want to use the car as a stereo when I'm cleaning one of the cars or working in the garage.


excellent, a $70,000 portable radio.


----------



## slasher016 (Sep 12, 2017)

garsh said:


> Leave a door open.


Yeah that does work, but that's obviously not ideal for a lot of reasons!


----------



## garsh (Apr 4, 2016)

slasher016 said:


> Yeah that does work, but that's obviously not ideal for a lot of reasons!


But you asked "is there any way_ at all_".

If you're close enough to the car to be able to hear the music, then what's wrong with leaving a door slightly ajar?
I assume the windows are open already, right?


----------



## Long Ranger (Jun 1, 2018)

lance.bailey said:


> excellent, a $70,000 portable radio.


Yeah, but the battery life is really good.

And while it is a bit heavy, at least it comes with wheels.


----------



## slasher016 (Sep 12, 2017)

garsh said:


> But you asked "is there any way_ at all_".
> 
> If you're close enough to the car to be able to hear the music, then what's wrong with leaving a door slightly ajar?
> I assume the windows are open already, right?


Nothing "wrong" with it per say it's just annoying.


----------

