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Slacker Radio

5K views 58 replies 7 participants last post by  Crafty 
#1 ·
I am thinking about this as an alternative to Serius XM and Android Auto, though it can be used in conjunction with AA. If I get the $3.99 a month level, I can set it to have my favorite stations available offline and update at night only using WiFi. It also solves another issue I was having because my Moto Voice app works with it well. I have been testing with the free version. It actually doesn't use all that much data, but I have to read an ad and dismiss it when I head out.

Anyone using this with a paid subscription? How is it working out for you?
 
#3 ·
Here's a gold star moment ---> Your wife would be proud with your savings evaluation. I'm in agreement with your assessment. Slacker is just like several other services out their with a free version just like Pandora. There's different tier levels of a paid membership which give more benefits the higher up one decides they're willing to pay for either service.

I haven't dipped my intrests into the Slacker radio craze so many appear to prefer. I give Pandora a thumbs up just for having a cooler name. >haha< Dunno why the company mentioned above (Slacker) decided to choose their company name. It sounds lame; at least in their chosen decision for a company name.
 
#5 ·
Ha, for years, WLS, 890 KHz in Chicago was all you needed, Only had three commercial TV stations, luck to see one or two feature movies per week, today can watch movies 24/7 commercial free.

Same with music, being slammed to death, youngest kid is glued to Pandora, we get 10GB per month, her mom and I have a 1GB limit, she gets 8, when she uses this up, she's done, quiet about this, so is she, used up her 8g in two weeks, then she is cutoff, I get the notice. But we are down to one kid, you have more.

With this new HD radio, first time for me, learned that Wisconsin Public Radio is playing classical music commercial free 24/7 on channel 2. Ha, the only thing I am going to say about classical music, been popular for 200 years, this new stuff is only popular for 2 weeks. It's free. Also seem to have 4,000 songs on my USB stick, been collecting music since 1957, LP's, reel to reel, 8 Track, got rid of this in a hurry. c assets, CD's now MP3's. Sound Blaster card on a on older computer let's me convert LP's or whatever to MP3's, can do this in the background. CD's are a snap.

My problem with satellite is only 20 degrees above the horizon and trees and hilly roads, could stay parked on the top of a hill. Same problem with cell phones but only at the bottom of a hill in some places. The greater the frequency the more line of sight you need.

But the bottom line is you certainly have a variety of choices so chose what you like.
 
#6 ·
Most of my childhood we had 5 TV stations, but that was in Atlanta. The 3 big networks, PBS and this upstart UHF station - WTCG 17. They had a few billboards around town that used their call letters for "Watch This Channel Go" and it certainly did, but when they changed their call letters to WTBS they didn't make the obvious upgrade to the signs...

I am planning to put some music on a thumb drive and copy it over into the radio's internal memory. Even though I primarily listen to classic rock and blues, I do like more variety than is in what I own.

Slacker does use more data than I like on the free account but I am pleasantly surprised at how few commercials I am getting. I usually stay under 600M per month on data since I have it set to use WiFi at home and work. So I am going to stop using it for now, but it is certainly a candidate for the future, when the SXM trial period ends.

I also have the version of Tune In that records lots of different free streams so you can play them back off line without a subscription. I am not sure they sell this version anymore, but they keep it current. Downsides with it are that nearly all the streams are ad supported (there are commercials), it records in real time (if I were planning to drive 6 hours tomorrow and wanted a fresh mix of tunes, I would have to record for 6 hours tonight) and a lot of things require a fair amount of interaction. An example of the interaction is that if I wanted to mimic the refresh stations feature of a paid Slacker account, I would need to manage the files myself, deleting the old and then scheduling the recording of the new one.

Like you say, lots of choices...
 
#8 ·
Ha, if I wanted to, could unpack my old Garrard Type A with a seven pound turntable, design a 60Hz 120VAC AC inverter and a preamp to plug that into an outlet and the aux audio input and bring a stack of LP's along.

But sure would have to watch out for those potholes.

My range of music is quite broad, did meet Johnny Cash before he became popular, country, folk, rock and roll, ha, music that is popular day is just like the stuff that didn't make in the the 50's, classics, Latin America, anything with rhythm, harmony, and a melody. Really don't care where some guy kicks the heck our of a bass jump, and if I want someone to yell can scream at me, can always hook up with my ex-wife or try to reenlist so my DI could call me every dirty name in the book.

Ha, took me a while to say, please hand me that wrench without adjectives.
 
#10 ·
Ha, if I wanted to, could unpack my old Garrard Type A with a seven pound turntable, design a 60Hz 120VAC AC inverter and a preamp to plug that into an outlet and the aux audio input and bring a stack of LP's along.

But sure would have to watch out for those potholes.
Been there and done: Music and Culture: The turntable-in-car sound system

@Tiger-Heli I only looked briefly at Spotify; it looks like for my intended use I would have to pay $10 a month to have the features I could get for $4 a month with Slacker.
Could well be correct. I'm really only familiar with the free versions. I think the free ones you only get so many skips an hour or you have to watch an ad - but that would probably work for me.

For obvious reasons, a lot of music seems to be somehow encoded to make direct recording difficult.
Haven't run into this - you can pretty easily rip from CD to MP3.

I did find it interesting that two car companies took entirely different approaches to internal hard drives for the same copyright reasons. (Hyundai/Kia has a MyJukebox feature where you can store around 750 MB - maybe 3-4 albums of songs in internal memory).

As I recall - Ford would ONLY let you store music there from CD - not from a USB stick. They wanted to make sure you bought the actual CD for the music. Kia would ONLY let you store the music from USB, not from a CD - presumably, they wanted to make sure you didn't borrow a CD from a friend and copy it to the car.
 
#9 ·
@Tiger-Heli I only looked briefly at Spotify; it looks like for my intended use I would have to pay $10 a month to have the features I could get for $4 a month with Slacker.

@NicholasD I have messed around some with recording audio using the line in on a PC using Audacity. If you spend a little time getting levels right (turn off mic boost). it sounds reasonably good but not great. If I wanted to archive old music that I might otherwise lose (cassettes or vinyl), I would use it. For obvious reasons, a lot of music seems to be somehow encoded to make direct recording difficult.
Your comment about the wrench reminds me of a cartoon back during the Gulf War when they called up so many reservists. An officer was commenting to one of his men that he didn't even remember how to use the F word anymore and the soldier replied "Just insert it like a comma, sir".
 
#18 ·
Dealer did warn me if we purchased the Limited, would not get a CD player, ha, who wants one, last car had one, never used it, really got spoiled with MP3's, no more searching over the vehicle for the CD I was looking for.

Already had my songs organize by genre, either album title or artist, very quick and easy to find. the song I was looking for.

But it did have an annoying flaw, if I opened up a given directory, and subdirectory to listen to all the songs I had in that subdirectory or folder whatever you would call it, it would not play all those songs, and would even jump to a different main genre main directory.

So I dug out that media handbook to try and figure out what was wrong, said I could only have a maximum of twenty songs in a folder, why? Don't ask me, no other MP3 player had this requirement.

So had to pull my stick and plug it into my computer and look at every subfolder and count the songs, if over 20, had two create another 1 or 2 subfolder or even more to only have a maximum of 20 songs in each one. 100 Greatest Classical Hits was the worse one, 100 hundred songs in that folder, now five folders with 20 each in each one. Now its working okay.

Really have not learned how to go up a level, seems I have to hit root, Classical Music, 100 Greatest Classical Hits, to a different subfolder to listen to the next one, if I can remember the last one. This has to be strictly firmware, wish Hyundai would change this like everyone else.

But still better than flipping CD's, only about ten songs per CD, box has ten CD's inside. With many more boxes of CD's One car I had could store six cassettes with a slot for each one, but never seen a vehicle that had CD storage, enlighten me.
 
#20 ·
Metaphorically speaking? (Kidding)....it's cool...you can admit your past in first person without being embarrassed. Buddy...you know I'm kidding :wink:
 
#24 ·
Oh, btw, bear in mind: unless you find a channel on Sirius you REALLY like, it gets repetitive FAST.

I listen mostly to Radio Classics, old radio plays from the 30's-60's. Even that repeats a bit, bu the guy who runs the channel is always looking for "new" stuff".

I like Patriot 125, but I bet you'd like Progress better...;)
 
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#25 · (Edited)
Oh, btw, bear in mind: unless you find a channel on Sirius you REALLY like, it gets repetitive FAST.

I listen mostly to Radio Classics, old radio plays from the 30's-60's. Even that repeats a bit, bu the guy who runs the channel is always looking for "new" stuff".

I like Patriot 125, but I bet you'd like Progress better...;)
Dude...what the heck are you smoking nowadays...wtf! A classic radio station by design only plays classical music...there isn't anything new to discover! >I Kid< I need to write ya to see what laziness you've been up to.
 
#27 ·
My stereo is flat from 20-20,000 cps, so what, my best scope is flat from DC to 350 MHz. Just installed a 2,000 watt system in my car, is that peak to peak power, peak power, or did you just add up the power handling capacity of your speakers were the voice coil adds up? If you had a true 2,000 watt system, you wouldn't be here, your head will be blown off.

Solid state sucks, only good sound comes from a 12AX7 vacuum tube, this is because you became accustomed to non-linear distortion. Only good sound comes from an LP record and a tone arm, this is because you became accustomed to a very limited frequency range. Tested a pair of $40,000 speakers, sounded absolutely terrible until I rotated each speaker inward 3 degrees, you just described an audiophile.

The more speakers I have, the better, wow, you must really love acoustical phase distortion. The more power the better, well the average even six inch speaker produces 110 db sound a 1KHz at one meter, anything above 85 db will cause ear damage, are you sure you are not stone deaf?

Can list more, but never found a field with more BS than audio. In terms for frequency response only instrument capable of even getting close to 30Hz is a 32 foot pipe organ, that lick butt bass occurs at 150 Ha, even the lowest note on a piano is a series of 150 Hz pulses at a 16 Hz rate.

I sure should hook up to XM, already paid for the hardware whether I wanted to or not. My HF boat radio cost a lot of money, but was in around 1970 with a radio that could communicate around the world has banned for VHF with a range of maybe 12 miles if you are lucky. But not as bad as having 30-50 thousand bucks worth or avionics on the dash of your plane, FAA is banning all of this. The only prerequisites of the heads of the FCC and FAA is they helped the president get elected. Switching to a VHF link to update GPS for landing now where any terrorists can slap a simple VHF transmitter together and interfere with it.

Did come up with 83 channels for NTSC, was worthless, as a leaf on a tree can block these signals. and this is where they stuck HDTV bands at, people either have to install a 200 foot or more antenna or pay for dish or cable. Same with cell phones 1,2,3,4 and now 5G, your perfectly good way overpriced cell phone won't work anymore, buy a new one. Windows 3 worked very good on the internet, how many new computers did we have to buy since then just to stay on the internet? To get rid of this old stuff, have to pay a recycling, but charge but future archeologists will have a blast, will find many of this stuff at the bottom of a lake.
 
#37 ·
If I can get the 5 for 5 continuous deal that could change my thinking. It's actually the best of both worlds, because I can download channels (it caches and refreshes a subset) to the phone while on WiFi, so if I am in a situation where I need BT audio in use for some other app to work or I am not in the car, I can listen. Those were the selling points of the other approaches. Sirius was DOA in the discussion largely because of price. I am warming back up to AA also; not for every little trip, but I have found some things that are tweakable that get it closer to what I was hoping it would be.
 
#41 ·
While checking out alternatives, I am starting to get suspicious of the head unit playing favorites. Sirius pretty much always works unless you go under a bridge or through a tunnel. But Google, Slacker and Tune In have all had sporadic problems in the car that I have not had with a bluetooth headset or ear buds. The stream will pause for no apparent reason. and then be difficult to restart. This doesn't happen constantly, but often enough to be annoying.
 
#42 ·
Hmmm...who's to blame; the software engineer or the hardware engineer? So embarrassing if it's a software flaw...right Mr software engineer? >I kid< You post the coolest newest discussions. Sweet!
 
#54 ·
Happened more often before electroinics - clerk lost the check or the credit card receipt before it went to the bank. Now with most everything scanned or swiped, it is either the card reader had a glitch, or more likely I put it on a credit card instead of debit ...

But whatever, I wrote it in the checkbook and it shows out of the account, so I just make a note of it so my numbers match the banks.
 
#57 ·
Just signed up again for Sirius XM - was relatively painless ...

Told them I wanted the same $5/month for 5 months that I had now.

She asked if I was considering cancelling if it went to the regular rate (I think they can't offer you a discount unless you say this).

Then she came back with 12-months for $100. - I said that was too much.

Then she came back with 6-months for $49 - most Americans can't do math ??? - I said that was more than I was paying now.

Then she said they could do the same plan as now, which was $28.46 for 5-months - it ended up at $27.72 this time b/c I was 3-days early cancelling.

I asked if they could have it so it renews at this rate continually and she said no - but I also didn't play hardball on that, not sure if it would have mattered. (Easy enough to remember to call in July and cancel if they won't match the current rate.)
 
#58 ·
They called yesterday because my trial runs out in a couple of weeks. The offer is $29.99 plus taxes and fees estimated to be about $5 for 6 months, so a little under $6 a month. The odd thing is I didn't jump at it. I have been using Sirius less and less as time goes by. I have transferred a bunch of music to the internal memory, the kids like using the AUX cord to their phones and circling back to the beginning of this thread, Slacker is looking like it may work out well for me. I have found I prefer just Bluetooth phone integration over Android Auto the vast majority of the time and it works best when I am playing BT sound; maps interrupts to tell me about upcoming turns, text announcements pause the music, etc.
 
#59 ·
After yesterday's post, I figured I should go ahead and sign up for the $3.99/month Slacker deal. It seems the free trial is only for the $9.99 package and I wanted to make sure I didn't accidentally use some feature I wouldn't have for $3.99. So with only a day or so's use, I think it is going to work out well.

I went ahead and picked 5 likely stations and downloaded them on Wifi. First time out, I was being driven which made it easier for me to change stations. That is one downside of using it with only BT. I am pretty sure if I used it through AA I can change stations using the stereo, but with only BT it seems I have to use the phone. That isn't a big deal to me as I rarely change stations on the go if I have one that fits me pretty well. I dropped one of the 5 stations pretty much right away and might drop a couple of others. One seems to be a very good "go to" for me that will probably listen to most of the time. Before I got the new car, my truck stayed on the same FM station nearly all the time.

You can skip songs with the steering wheel button, which makes a station that is a pretty good fit a nearly perfect fit. Minimal effect on battery so far. I have it restricted from using mobile data in the background; I am only playing stations from download and it will refresh them only on Wifi. After an overnight that included a full power cycle this morning (for unrelated issue), when I got in the car this morning and selected BT audio it immediately started playing the station I played last with new music.

I will have to see how it goes after a few days. I also put a fair amount of music in the stereo's memory and will add more, which will help with the "can't change station without getting phone out" issue, if it really proves to be an issue.
 
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