Welcome to Tesla Motors Club
Discuss Tesla's Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y, Cybertruck, Roadster and More.
Register

Slacker radio interface

This site may earn commission on affiliate links.
OK, so the user manual doesn't say anything about how to use slacker. Most stuff I can figure out or have gleaned reading the forum, but I have a couple questions.

I assume the "favorite song" button is supposed to cause the song to be played more often. After a few hours of listening (over several days) I don't think I've ever had one of the songs come up again. How is it really supposed to work? Also there does't seem to be a way to list or control your favorite songs.

What is custom stations for? Is this something you can only use with a paid account (i.e. not the account that came with the car)?
 
It's probably the latter. No one really knows for sure the answer. Just from observation, when I favorite a song, it won't play again if you never switch out of the station, but most definitely will play again if you have switched and came back to the station at a later time. And there doesn't seem to be a way to list or control your favorite songs with the Tesla interface. I don't have an account other than the Model S so no knowledge there from myself. No experience with customer stations yet.
 
It will eventually play again as I hear the songs I favorite without ever switching from the station. I cant say with any degree of certainty but I always assumed that it uses your likes to tailor the station to your tastes. That being said I normally listen to the Indy stations so the new music I hear might not have anything to do with my likes but just new band's that were added to the channel.
 
I asked these in another Slacker thread, but perhaps wasnt the best place...I'll ask them here too since this thread is generically titled.

So let me ask these questions, as I can't clearly ascertain the answers from other posts:

If I do sign up for a Premium Slacker subscription (the $10/mo option), and set the MS to use my account,
- What features of the premium will work in the car, which won't?
- Will playlists be accessible in any way?
- Will I be able to do unlimited skips?
- Will stations I create on the PC/Mac be available in the MS and vice versa?
- Will "any song" work like it should? (Even if I have to select from a list on the screen)

Thanks. I pay $10 a month to Spotify as it is. I can easily switch to Slacker if the answer to all or at least most of the above are positive.

I see that the MS already has a SLacker ID and PW. I would try to overwrite them with my ID and PW, but I don't know what the PW is in case I want to switch back. Anyone know that?
 
I asked these in another Slacker thread, but perhaps wasnt the best place...I'll ask them here too since this thread is generically titled.

So let me ask these questions, as I can't clearly ascertain the answers from other posts:

I submitted your questions plus a couple more to the Slacker website. The answer will be posted when they send it.

Thanks,

RNG
 
I submitted your questions plus a couple more to the Slacker website. The answer will be posted when they send it.

Thanks,

RNG
Awesome. Thanks! Hope to hear back soon. I'll happily switch from Spotify Premium to Slacker Premium, if the answers are "good". I just suspect the capabilities will be limited. If so, hopefully it'll be changed in the future. As nice as using BT streaming from my iPhone is, it just isnt quite as easy and integrated as having a native MS app.

I didnt get the audio upgrade pkg cuz I didnt need any of it. But I considered it due to SiriusXM. I have had it in all my recent cars. And I thought I could move on without it using Slacker or TuneIn. But I've found the stock Slacker capabilities lacking and TuneIn is just streaming stations with commercials. Didn't realize how much I'd miss commercial-free integrated radio.
 
I asked these in another Slacker thread, but perhaps wasnt the best place...I'll ask them here too since this thread is generically titled.

So let me ask these questions, as I can't clearly ascertain the answers from other posts:

If I do sign up for a Premium Slacker subscription (the $10/mo option), and set the MS to use my account,
- What features of the premium will work in the car, which won't?
- Will playlists be accessible in any way?
- Will I be able to do unlimited skips?
- Will stations I create on the PC/Mac be available in the MS and vice versa?
- Will "any song" work like it should? (Even if I have to select from a list on the screen)

Thanks. I pay $10 a month to Spotify as it is. I can easily switch to Slacker if the answer to all or at least most of the above are positive.

I see that the MS already has a SLacker ID and PW. I would try to overwrite them with my ID and PW, but I don't know what the PW is in case I want to switch back. Anyone know that?

Jomo: your DS will have the Slacker Premium Login and Password for your Model S. If you decide to switch back (or need it for any reason), they have it. But if you are getting your own Slacker account, not sure why you would revert back.
 
Jomo: your DS will have the Slacker Premium Login and Password for your Model S. If you decide to switch back (or need it for any reason), they have it. But if you are getting your own Slacker account, not sure why you would revert back.

Thanks Apoc! I havent' signed up for the Radio Plus or Premium yet. But before I got my car, I was messing with Slacker on my Mac/iPhone and set up a few preferences (likes/dislikes) and radio stations. So, I wanted to see if those were accessible on the MS. Im worried if they aren't I might want to go back to the default account since I think that seems to be a trial premium or radio plus type account. once I get answers to the questions, then I might sign up for a paid account and switch for good. depending on the answers of course...
 
Thanks Apoc! I havent' signed up for the Radio Plus or Premium yet. But before I got my car, I was messing with Slacker on my Mac/iPhone and set up a few preferences (likes/dislikes) and radio stations. So, I wanted to see if those were accessible on the MS. Im worried if they aren't I might want to go back to the default account since I think that seems to be a trial premium or radio plus type account. once I get answers to the questions, then I might sign up for a paid account and switch for good. depending on the answers of course...

yeah the MS comes with a Premium account that is good for 6 months. My DS told me that if I liked it that I could pay into keeping the premium account. otherwise, I could use my own account, and suffer all the annoying ads and only 6 skips per hour :scared:
 
I asked these in another Slacker thread, but perhaps wasnt the best place...I'll ask them here too since this thread is generically titled.

So let me ask these questions, as I can't clearly ascertain the answers from other posts:

If I do sign up for a Premium Slacker subscription (the $10/mo option), and set the MS to use my account,
- What features of the premium will work in the car, which won't?
- Will playlists be accessible in any way?
- Will I be able to do unlimited skips?
- Will stations I create on the PC/Mac be available in the MS and vice versa?
- Will "any song" work like it should? (Even if I have to select from a list on the screen)

Thanks. I pay $10 a month to Spotify as it is. I can easily switch to Slacker if the answer to all or at least most of the above are positive.

I see that the MS already has a SLacker ID and PW. I would try to overwrite them with my ID and PW, but I don't know what the PW is in case I want to switch back. Anyone know that?

OK, so the user manual doesn't say anything about how to use slacker. Most stuff I can figure out or have gleaned reading the forum, but I have a couple questions.

I assume the "favorite song" button is supposed to cause the song to be played more often. After a few hours of listening (over several days) I don't think I've ever had one of the songs come up again. How is it really supposed to work? Also there does't seem to be a way to list or control your favorite songs.

What is custom stations for? Is this something you can only use with a paid account (i.e. not the account that came with the car)?
I've upgraded to the Slacker Premium (or w/e the $10/month version is) and tied it to the car.

1) The car interface is very limited. It might be the free version, might be radio plus. I suspect base version with car is a radio plus variation; unlimited skips.
2) With a full version you can create playlists in the web app (Flash) or phone app (iPhone for me) and they'll be available to the car. I've found I need to re-login to get new playlists available, but maybe it periodically updates and I'm just being impatient. I'll prolly still re-login if a playlist is added. I'm suspicious I need to re-login to get playlist updates (more or less songs on a previously existing playlist), but I'm not certain of that.
3) Unlimited skips is part of either Slacker subscription model. Sometimes, however, I'll get a "you are listening to Slacker Radio" announcement. Usually with custom channels, not with playlists.
4) Custom stations made with the PC (or Mac) are available to the car. The ability to 'tune' the station, however, is not. The '#myStuff' interface in the Flash enabled web browser (ie: PC or Mac) isn't available to the car in any way. So I can't create a custom station in the car either. I can create an ad-hoc custom channel, but not one fully customized and memorized.
5) Any song is limited by some licensing, but otherwise works great.

The car interface is very limited and I find I customize my channels on the PC or iPhone app then use them in the car. Favorites chosen in the car for w/e channel will be used appropriately.

Favorites are one of the tuning parms: you can have favorites play more or less often for a channel.

Custom stations are pretty nice: I put a whole bunch of bands together and it'll play music from those bands and related bands (if I tune it that way). For example: I can play ZZ Top with Stevie Ray Vaughan plus get things like Gary Clark Jr tossed in as 'related'.
 
Thanks for sharing your experiences.

The only limitation is you can't use both at the same time.
What happens if you try? Does the first one playing get interrupted when you try playing on the second? Or does the second present an "in use" error?

Also, if I have player #1 paused can I begin playing on player #2? If I then pause player #2, can player #1 resume where it was paused? In particular, I'm referring to in-song pauses not in-station pauses.
 
Thanks for sharing your experiences.

The only limitation is you can't use both at the same time.

What happens if you try? Does the first one playing get interrupted when you try playing on the second? Or does the second present an "in use" error?

Also, if I have player #1 paused can I begin playing on player #2? If I then pause player #2, can player #1 resume where it was paused? In particular, I'm referring to in-song pauses not in-station pauses.
I'm pretty sure the first one gets interrupted and I know the second one gets a msg saying something like "Are you in two places at one time? Hit something to say you want to play on this device..."

I've left it 'playing' on my phone while getting in the car and the car wouldn't play until I stopped the phone.

It typically will start up whereever you leave off with whichever device. But won't sync; if I stop my phone then start on the car, I'll get whatever was playing in the car last, not whatever was playing on the phone.
 
Thanks for all the input for us newbies to Slacker.

At first when I used Slacker the song of the station I chose played the favorite song first. Now I can hardly get it to play that song at all. Someone mentioned licensing??? Does anyone know any details about how this works? After it no longer plays fy "favorite" song first it looses the Pandora difference and is just like my Pandora paid membership. Unlimited skips, no direct song choice, only similar songs.

Am I missing something? Anyone else having the same experience?

john