I've had a hard time finding Slacker and Spotify details so I'm going to post some observations I've made in the hopes that it might help someone. If anyone wants to add on to this list, please do so.
To start, let me say that since v10, for me at least, voice commands will no longer directly play a song request. Instead, it will bring up the results screen (top hits, artist, song, etc) where I have to manually pick what I'm looking for. I don't know if this is a bug, or a feature change, but it's certainly not as nice as it was before. Granted, the success rate of playing the song I actually requested was maybe 65%, but that could also have been a limitation of Slacker itself. Still, it was very convenient, and I don't like having to take my eyes off the road to pick a song, so I'm hoping it's a bug. Is anyone else having this same issue?
1. Slacker - Tesla Account: This is the account that comes with the Tesla. As far as I know, it's basically the $3.99 account. No commercials and unlimited skips. I occasionally get an ABC News Update after a song finishes, but you can skip that without issue, and it happens very infrequently that it doesn't bother me. The Premium account also has this ABC News track as well.
2. Slacker - Premium Account: Upgrading to your own $9.99/month account has a few benefits. For one, it allows you to create playlists on the web version, and then play those playlists in the car. I haven't found a way to add music to a playlist from the car itself, so I just do it on the web and it'll usually update in the car in 10 minutes or so. The bigger improvement for me is playing music itself. If I use the built in Tesla account, and ask the car to play "Weird Al Yankovic" (I have 8 & 10 y/o boys) it will play a Weird Al song, and the next song will be something in the same genre as Weird Al, but most likely NOT Weird Al. I can skip it and keep skipping until another Weird Al song comes on, but that could be 4-7 songs before I get one. With the Premium account, I can keep skipping songs and they will ALL be Weird Al. It might not seem like a big difference, but it's huge in my opinion, especially with kids involved.
3. Spotify - Premium Account: I believe you need a Premium account to even use Spotify in the Tesla. I wanted to try it out so I signed up. The nicest feature I can see with Spotify so far is that it seems to have more music available than Slacker. I don't have concrete evidence of this, other than some of the songs I've tried to play have not been available on Slacker but Spotify found them no problem. Also, if I search for a song and select it, it seems to actually play that song, unlike Slacker which will sometimes play another song by the same artist. I believe Slacker doesn't have great "on-demand" playback, while Spotify seems to excel at that. Another nice thing about Spotify is that with Slacker, unless the song is in your playlist, you cannot just select the same song again. It won't play it. You'll need to keep skipping through the artists songs until it randomly gets chosen again. For instance, if I want to play "Ebay" by Weird Al, I might get it playing once, but if they want to hear it again within 24 hours, I'll need to skip through a lot of Weird Al songs until it randomly comes up again. However, with Spotify, I can select that song over and over and it'll play.
What's not so nice, however, is if I ask Spotify to play Weird Al, it will bring up a curated playlist from someone (assuming I don't have my own) and only play those songs. It won't just start playing Weird Al that I can see. I feel that Slacker is actually better at this in that it will just keep playing Weird Al songs at random until I change it.
So for now, I actually have both Slacker and Spotify premium accounts because each offers features that I like. I'd hate to miss out on being able to just play an artist like I can with Slacker, but I also really like the extra music that Spotify offers as well as better on-demand playback.
Hope this was helpful!
To start, let me say that since v10, for me at least, voice commands will no longer directly play a song request. Instead, it will bring up the results screen (top hits, artist, song, etc) where I have to manually pick what I'm looking for. I don't know if this is a bug, or a feature change, but it's certainly not as nice as it was before. Granted, the success rate of playing the song I actually requested was maybe 65%, but that could also have been a limitation of Slacker itself. Still, it was very convenient, and I don't like having to take my eyes off the road to pick a song, so I'm hoping it's a bug. Is anyone else having this same issue?
1. Slacker - Tesla Account: This is the account that comes with the Tesla. As far as I know, it's basically the $3.99 account. No commercials and unlimited skips. I occasionally get an ABC News Update after a song finishes, but you can skip that without issue, and it happens very infrequently that it doesn't bother me. The Premium account also has this ABC News track as well.
2. Slacker - Premium Account: Upgrading to your own $9.99/month account has a few benefits. For one, it allows you to create playlists on the web version, and then play those playlists in the car. I haven't found a way to add music to a playlist from the car itself, so I just do it on the web and it'll usually update in the car in 10 minutes or so. The bigger improvement for me is playing music itself. If I use the built in Tesla account, and ask the car to play "Weird Al Yankovic" (I have 8 & 10 y/o boys) it will play a Weird Al song, and the next song will be something in the same genre as Weird Al, but most likely NOT Weird Al. I can skip it and keep skipping until another Weird Al song comes on, but that could be 4-7 songs before I get one. With the Premium account, I can keep skipping songs and they will ALL be Weird Al. It might not seem like a big difference, but it's huge in my opinion, especially with kids involved.
3. Spotify - Premium Account: I believe you need a Premium account to even use Spotify in the Tesla. I wanted to try it out so I signed up. The nicest feature I can see with Spotify so far is that it seems to have more music available than Slacker. I don't have concrete evidence of this, other than some of the songs I've tried to play have not been available on Slacker but Spotify found them no problem. Also, if I search for a song and select it, it seems to actually play that song, unlike Slacker which will sometimes play another song by the same artist. I believe Slacker doesn't have great "on-demand" playback, while Spotify seems to excel at that. Another nice thing about Spotify is that with Slacker, unless the song is in your playlist, you cannot just select the same song again. It won't play it. You'll need to keep skipping through the artists songs until it randomly gets chosen again. For instance, if I want to play "Ebay" by Weird Al, I might get it playing once, but if they want to hear it again within 24 hours, I'll need to skip through a lot of Weird Al songs until it randomly comes up again. However, with Spotify, I can select that song over and over and it'll play.
What's not so nice, however, is if I ask Spotify to play Weird Al, it will bring up a curated playlist from someone (assuming I don't have my own) and only play those songs. It won't just start playing Weird Al that I can see. I feel that Slacker is actually better at this in that it will just keep playing Weird Al songs at random until I change it.
So for now, I actually have both Slacker and Spotify premium accounts because each offers features that I like. I'd hate to miss out on being able to just play an artist like I can with Slacker, but I also really like the extra music that Spotify offers as well as better on-demand playback.
Hope this was helpful!
